Swiss Review 3/2021

Swiss Review / June 2021 / No.3 7 By Max Spring, the “Swiss Review” cartoonist ety of languages even appears to have economic benefits. A study carried out by theUniversity of Geneva in 2008 found that multilingualism accounted for nine per cent of Swiss GDP. A new study is currently ongoing, because this per- centage is likely to have increased in recent years. Motivating young people Naomi Arpagaus from Grisons is another fan of language diversity. The 21-year-old grew up speaking Romansh as well as Swiss German, learned English and Italian at school, specialised in Spanish at upper secondary school and is now taking French lessons. “I currently live in Berne because I am studying there, so I use a lot of German fromday to day. However, Imix a lot with friendswho speakRomansh.” This language is close to her heart. As president of GiuRu, the Swiss association of Romansh-speaking young people, Ar- pagaus does a lot to promote Grison’s minority language and encourage interaction among speakers of the canton’s five Romansh dialects: Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Puter and Vallader. “We organise Romansh concert and games nights, we have our own column in the Grisons daily newspaper “La Quotidiana”, and we are in contact with speakers of other minority languages around Europe,” she explains, adding that there is great interest inRomansh among younger peo- ple. “Many believe that speaking Romansh puts themat an advantage. Romansh is a gateway to other Latin languages like French, Spanish or Portuguese. And it is almost like a secret language.” But young people use German on social media, not Romansh, don’t they? “People of my agemainly post in English,” she laughs. English is dominant It is true that English is emerging as Switzerland’s “fifth na- tional language” (if you discount standard German; see box). English is by far themost-spoken non-Swiss language