Velleman Anton. Grammatica teoretica, pratica ed istorica della lingua ladina d’Engiadin’Ota. Part 1. Il Substantiv, l’Articul, l’Aggettiv, il Pronom

Cun un pled d’accumagnamaint da Dr. Felix Calonder, Cussgliêr federêl. — Zürich: Art. Institut Orell Füssli, 1915. — xii + 444 (456) p.Romansh is a Romance language spoken in the Swiss canton of Grisons (Graubünden in German). It has been the fourth national language of Switzerland since 1938. Speakers aged 15 and above were 36.622 in 2012, i.e. 0.9% of Switzerland’s 7,7 million inhabitants. Romansh is divided in five main dialects. This grammar (in two volumes) is the largest description of a Romansh dialect, namely Upper Engadinese or Putér (spoken in Upper Endagadine where the famous Alpine resort of St. Moritz is located). Even though the author, Anton Velleman, was an Austrian (born in Vienna, 1875, died in Switzerland in 1962), his grammar is written in Upper Engadinese. A good knowledge of Italian can allow to understand most of the metalinguistic lexicon (except some words such as pled ‘word’) but a Romansh Engadinese dictionary is important to understand the whole text. A remarkable aspect of Velleman’s grammar is represented by frequent quotations from one of the oldest documents in Romansh, i.e. the protestant translation of the New Testament, L’g Nouf Sainc Testamaint (1560), by Jachiam Bifrun (1506-1572). The first part of the two-volume grammar deals with the nominal categories (noun, article, adjective, pronoun).