Questione Ladina

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.

[1]: 16 [4] 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.

[5] The idea of a Ladin unity was strongly opposed by Carlo Battisti (1882–1977), 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.

[1]: 16–17 A third position has been taken by other linguists (e.g. Heinrich Schmid, Andreas Schorta, Pierre Bec, and Geoffrey Hull), who agree with the Italianists that the Rhaeto-Romance languages are archaic variants of the adjacent vernaculars of Lombardy, Trentino and Venetia, but differ from them in considering the entire Rhaeto-Cisalpine or Padanian linguistic unity to be an integral unit of Gallo-Romance and structurally not Italo-Romance, in spite of superficial Italian influences in certain areas (Liguria, Veneto, and Istria primarily, but also in Friuli and parts of Lombardy).

[1]: 17  On the other hand, Swiss linguists regarded mere grammatical features as subordinated to sociolinguistic and historic considerations, and they strongly supported the idea of a separate language.