Chur – Hauptstadt des dreisprachigen Kantons Graubünden

The city of Chur is the capital of Grisons, the only trilingual canton in Switzerland. Our study investi-gates to what extent the city of Chur is plurilingual, with regard to the three indigenous languages, i.e. German, Romansh and Italian. German is the main language of the canton as well as of Chur. Hence, we examine the use of the minority languages in monolingual families (both parents are Romansh or Italian speaking) and bilingual families (one parent Romansh or Italian, the other German), paying special attention to which language is transmitted from one generation to the next. Furthermore, we show the various possibilities of receiving bilingual education and we scrutinise the motives why parents opt for or against it. Finally, we explore to what extent associations for members (?) of the minorities and the cantonal administration, where people from all over the canton are engaged, provide an opportunity to use the minority languages.