Most people with a decent grasp of European languages know about the existence of Romansch, the unofficial "fourth language" of Switzerland. Only 70,000 people people Romansch. Odd, then, that so very few people know about Fruilian, a related language of which there are some half million native speakers in northern Italy.

Many linguists, in fact, now classify Romansch, Ladin and Friulian as dialects of a single Rhaeto-Romanic language; I don't think you'd find many who'd say, "I speak Rhaeto-Romanic," though.