Questione Ladina
The Questione Ladina is a controversy over whether the Romance languages of Romansh, Ladin, and Friulian form a proper language subfamily or should rather be regarded as a part of a wider Northern Italian dialect continuum. Both the idea of a distinctive language sub-family and the denial of a Ladin unity still have strong proponents, the former especially among Swiss, German and Austrian, the latter among Italian linguists. The issue has political implications beyond the linguistic controversy, as the areas involved have been subjects of territorial disputes, especially during the first half of the 20th century.
Position of the Ascolians
The beginning of the Questione Ladina is marked in 1873 by the publication of the Saggi ladini by Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, who identified the area between the Oberalp Pass and the Gulf of Trieste as a specific language area, with some common characteristics, and called the idioms spoken there Ladin dialects.The theory gained a large circulation with the publications of the Austrian linguist Theodor Gartner, who, however, used Rhaeto-Romance instead of Ladin as an umbrella term.
Both postulated that there are a lot of common features between Romansh, Ladin – also encompassing the dialects of the Non Valley and Val di Sole – and Friulian. This led them to the conclusion that a common ancestor of those languages used to be spoken in the area. Due to settlers and linguistic pressure from both German and Italian, the unity of the languages was disrupted, resulting in the development of several distinct languages.
Position of the Battistians or Italianists
The idea of a Ladin unity was strongly opposed by Carlo Battisti, who tried to demonstrate, in several studies, that the whole range of dialects in question showed only a few common characteristics and was just as closely related to neighboring Lombard and Venetian varieties. The dialectologist Carlo Salvioni held similar views.They conclude that those "common features" are in fact features of a former Northern Italian dialect, which survived only in more isolated areas in the mountains.