Abstract
In 1988, the Dolomites Ladin cultural institutes " Micurà de Rü " (in San Martin de Tor/St. Martin in Thurn/San Martino in Badia, South Tyrol, Italy) and " Majon di Fascegn " (in Vich/Vigo di Fassa, Trentino, Italy) appointed Prof. Heinrich Schmid (University of Zurich), an expert in Rhaeto-Romance languages, to formulate guidelines for the creation of a common Dolomites Ladin written language: Ladin Dolomitan. The direct model for it in both linguistic and socio-linguistic terms was to be Rumantsch Grischun, the Romansh Dachsprache [umbrella language] of the Swiss canton of Grisons. But from the very beginning on, the problems in the Dolomites were greater than those in Grisons, as was already made noticeable with the formulation of the Wegleitung [guide], the work on the basic rules of the new written language (manuscript only in 1994 and publication only in 1998). And in contrast to Rumantsch Grischun, Ladin Dolomitan did not have the time to be established even on a rudimentary level, since as early as 2003, the use of two local idioms, Gherdëina in the Val Gardena (in German: Gröden) and Ladin dla Val Badia in the Val Badia (in German: Gadertal), was obligatorily prescribed. With this, the critics of Ladin Dolomitan were in fact right for the time being, but the discussion regarding the necessity of a unified Dolomites Ladin written language could not be stopped by it. It now regularly arises on concrete occasions in which the Dolomites Ladins should (or must) exercise their supralocal rights (for instance, a personal identity card in Ladin) with a local language form.