Heinrich Schmid

Heinrich Schmid (1921 to 1999) was a Swiss linguist known as the father of the Rhaeto-Romance umbrella languages Rumantsch Grischun and Ladin Dolomitan. Born in Zürich with a hearing impairment, he read Romance studies at the University of Zürich and graduated summa cum laude in 1946, with the history and geography of languages as the core of his studies. He worked for fifteen years on the Rhaetian Lexicon of Names and the Dicziunari Rumantsch Grischun and qualified as a professor at Zürich in 1962. In 1982 the Lia Rumantscha asked him to create a common written language for the five main varieties of Romansh, and he presented his guidelines after six months of work; in 1988 representatives of the Dolomite Ladins asked him to do the same for Ladin, a work that appeared in print after his death in 1999.