Romansh people though with ever-increasing sovereignty and recognition at the federal level to the point that Romansh is now considered one of the official federal languages of the Swiss Confederation. The Romansh national leadership in Switzerland expressly stated its interest in Switzerland joining the European Union in terms of a pro-European stance and not an anti-Swiss-Confederation one, openly recognizing that the Confederation, though dominated by the German Swiss and with large Swiss French and Swiss Italian contingents, had sheltered the tiny Romansh minority population for nearly 200 years, never engaging in programs to erase their identity or language nor forcing them to
Romansh language Engadine, many of these Italian words fell out of usage (such as "contadin" 'farmer' instead of "paur", "nepotin" 'nephew' rather than "abiadi", "ogni" 'everyone' instead of "inmincha", "saimper" 'always' instead of "adüna", and "abbastanza" 'enough' instead of "avuonda"), while others persisted as synonyms of more traditional Ladin words (such as "tribunal" 'court' alongside "drettüra", "chapir" alongside "incleger", and "testimoni" 'witness' alongside "perdütta"). Aside from the written language, everyday Romansh was also influenced by Italian through the large number of emigrants, especially from the Engadine, to Italy, the so-called Randulin. These emigrants often returned with their Romansh speech influenced by Italian.