When I was a teenager (which was a lot of years ago) I had the good fortune to spend several years in Switzerland. I was in the German-speaking region, and enjoyed many visits to the French and Italian speaking sections. I was told repeatedly by the Swiss that there is still a small region in the center of Switzerland where most people still speak Romansche, which I was told was quite close to Latin (much closer than any of the latin-based languages commonly in use today). Does anyone else have information on this?

Thanks,

There are Rhaeto-Romance dialects spoken in Switzerland (called collectively Romansh) and some in the Tyrolian Dolomite section of Italy (called Ladin). They are most closely related to a Romance language (or Italian dialect, depending on your politics) called Friulian. The Italian filmmaker Pasolini wrote poetry in Friulian. I've heard another Romance language, Sardinian, called the most conservative. Non of the Romance languages are close to Latin, in that most of the latter's distinct grammatical characteristics have disappeared or been highly modified: i.e., the loss of case in the nominal system and the massive changes in the verbal system. What is usually meant is that Romansh and Sardinian have preserved some Latin sounds (i.e., velar stops do not become palatalized as they do in French, Spanish, or any of the other majority Romance languages abecome fricatives or affricates).

For further reading on Romance languages and linguistics, you might want to find: W.D. Elcock. 1975. The Romance Languages. Also, there's a collaborative site called Orbis Latinus.

Welcome aboard; hope you stick around.