Its origin is as a dialect of the provincial Latin of the central Alps, which were incorporated into the Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus. Before the Roman conquest, this area was Celtic-speaking in the north and Rhaetian-speaking in the south. By the end of the Roman Empire, there was an unbroken region of distinctive Romance speech here, gradually secluded into the high valleys by the encroachment of German from the north and of Italian from the south. Indeed, the Germanized zone north and south of the watershed of the Central Alps was formerly an old Romance-speaking area linking Swiss Romansh with the Dolomites until the close of the 17th century.citation needed
Features
Rhaeto-Romance is distinguished by a number of features which separate it from its neighbors.
diphthongization of Vulgar Latin closed e into ei
pei "foot"
fieste "party, feast"
occasional change of stressed a to e, particularly after a palatalized velar
rounding (fronting?) of long u into ü (mainly Swiss)
Lad plü "more"
fall of final vowels save -a, which often weakens into -e (in Friulian there is also a feminine plural in -is)
Lad sëra, Friul sere "evening"
Lad festa, Friul fieste "party"
Friul pie 'pia (pious, f.)' "press"
general palatalization of the ca and ga groups
cjampanis "bells" [tSampanis]
conservation of cl-, pl-, fl-; conservation of Germanic w
SwRom clav/clev "key"
Friul plui "more"
SwRom flad, Lad fle, Friul flât "breath"
Lad vera, Friul vuere "war"
voicing of intervocalic unvoiced consonants
fall of intervocalic voiced consonants
conservation of final -s, lead to single case based on acc (oblique); formerly a double case system
