Account of the Romansh Language / In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S.

The essay surveys the language spoken in the high valleys of the Grisons, identifying two principal dialect groups—the Engadine variety (often called Ladin) and the Grey League variety (Cialover)—each subdivided into numerous village forms and represented in printed texts, including a Bible in the lower Engadine dialect. It traces how successive migrations and contact among Celtic inhabitants, Tuscan and Roman settlers, and later German-speaking enclaves produced divergent but related idioms, and considers how geographic isolation, social history, administrative practices, and scarce documentary evidence have shaped pronunciation, vocabulary, and regional variation.