Titsch, Töitschu, Deutsch! Walser idioms in the Aosta Valley

Walserdeutsch is an Alemannic language that spread through the Alps with the migration of the Walser people during the Middle Ages. Today, it is seriously threatened with extinction due to the small number of speakers and to being besieged by other languages. The Walser of the Lys Valley speak two variants of German, Titsch and Töitschu, which date back to the 13th century. The linguistic and cultural distinctiveness of this German-speaking area in a region with strong Romance roots, the Valle d’Aosta, has been the subject of numerous studies, but only a few of them deal with Walser idioms. The research project WaLys Isole di cultura: lo scrigno walser dell’Alta Valle del Lys‚‘WaLys Islands of culture: the Walser treasure of the Upper Lys Valley’, launched at the University of Aosta Valley in 2022, describes the Titsch and Töitschu idioms and compares them with those of German. Within the lexicon, idioms were chosen as the object of this study because they preserve and hand down the words, knowledge and traditions of a people. This paper presents some of the materials developed within the framework of this project.