Abstract
The article discusses the phenomenon of the existence of different languages in
the public space in Scuol, a famous tourist locality and health resort in the Swiss
canton of Grisons. The offi cial language of the town is Romansh, but all citizens
speak fl uently also German that has become the second “mother”-tongue of the
local population. The author analyses the complexity of the linguistic landscape in
the town concentrating of the visible texts in the shops of the commercial center.
From the research work results that German is the most visible language. Romansh
appears in the fi rst place in the names of the shops and in the information about the
opening times. Other texts in Romansh are scarce and they emerge in the most cases
with the parallel texts in German. English plays as the global language an important
role too, mostly in the advertising of expensive and prestigious products but also in
more common contexts. Other languages appear only exceptionally. The relatively
unimportant role of Romansh and the dominating position of German reveal that the
existence of the oldest language of Switzerland in Scuol is endangered.
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