Romanian is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
,
BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
,
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
,
RussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
,
PortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
,
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Romanian language' Start a new discussion about 'Romanian language' Answer questions from other users |
Romanian is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
,
BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
,
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
,
RussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
,
PortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
,
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Prehistory
Eastern Romance languagesThe Eastern Romance languages in their narrow conception, sometimes known as the Vlach languages, are a group of Romance languages that developed in Southeastern Europe from the local eastern variant of Vulgar Latin. Some classifications include the Italo-Dalmatian languages; when Italian is...
like the other branches of
Romance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
descends from
Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
, adopted in
DaciaIn ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians or Getae as they were known by the Greeks—the branch of the Thracians north of the Haemus range...
by a process of
RomanizationRomanization or latinization indicate different historical processes, such as acculturation, integration and assimilation of newly incorporated and peripheral populations by the Roman Republic and the later Roman Empire...
during early centuries CE.
The
Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
withdrew from
DaciaIn ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians or Getae as they were known by the Greeks—the branch of the Thracians north of the Haemus range...
in 271-5 CE, leaving it to the
GothsThe Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
.
During nearly 10 centuries the region was under the rule of Bulgarian Empire, and the official language was the Bulgarian.
The history of Eastern Romance between the 3rd century and the development of
Proto-RomanianProto-Romanian is a Romance language evolved from Vulgar Latin and considered to have been spoken by the ancestors of today's Romanians and related Balkan Latin peoples before ca...
by the 10th century, when the area came under the influence of the
Byzantine EmpireThe Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
, is unknown. It is a matter of debate whether Proto-Romanian developed among Romanized people that were left behind in Dacia by the Roman withdrawal or among Latin-speakers in the Balkans South of the Danube.
During the Middle Ages, Romanian became influenced by the
Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
and to some degree by
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
.
Romanian remains unattested throughout the Middle Ages, and only enters the historical record in the early 16th century.
Early history
The oldest extant document written in Romanian is Neacşu's letter (1521).
The language remains poorly attested during the Early Modern period.
Miron CostinMiron Costin was a Moldavian political figure and chronicler. His main work, Letopiseţul Ţărâi Moldovei [de la Aron Vodă încoace] was meant to extend Grigore Ureche's narrative, covering events from 1594 to 1660...
, in his
De neamul moldovenilor (1687), while noting that Moldavians, Wallachians, and the Romanians living in the
Hungarian CountryThe Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
have the same origin, says that although people of Moldavia call themselves
Moldavians, they name their language
Romanian (
româneşte) instead of
Moldavian (
moldoveneşte).
Dimitrie CantemirDimitrie Cantemir was twice Prince of Moldavia . He was also a prolific man of letters – philosopher, historian, composer, musicologist, linguist, ethnographer, and geographer....
, in his
Descriptio Moldaviae (Berlin, 1714), points out that the inhabitants of Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania spoke the same language. He notes, however, that there are some differences in accent and vocabulary.
Cantemir's work is one of the earliest histories of the language, in which he notes, like Ureche before him, the evolution from Latin and notices the
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
,
TurkishTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
and
PolishPolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
borrowings. Additionally, he introduces the idea that some words must have had
DacianThe extinct Dacian language may have developed from proto-Indo-European in the Carpathian region around 2,500 BC and probably died out by AD 600. In the 1st century AD, it was the predominant language of the ancient regions of Dacia and Moesia and, possibly, of some surrounding regions.It belonged...
roots. Cantemir also notes that while the idea of a Latin origin of the language was prevalent in his time, other scholars considered it to have derived from
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
.
Modern history
The first
Romanian grammarStandard Romanian shares largely the same grammar and most of the vocabulary and phonological processes with the other three surviving varieties of Eastern Romance, viz...
was published in Vienna in 1780.
Following annexation of Bessarabia by Russia (after 1812), Moldavian was established as an official language in the governmental institutions of
BessarabiaBessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
, used along with
RussianRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
,
The publishing works established by Archbishop
Gavril Bănulescu-BodoniGavril Bănulescu-Bodoni was a Romanian clergyman who served as Metropolitan of Moldavia , Metropolitan of Kherson and Crimea , Metropolitan of Kiev and Halych , Exarch of Moldo-Wallachia , and Metropolitan of Chişinău , being the first head of the church in Bessarabia after the Russian...
were able to produce books and lithurgical works in Moldavian between 1815-1820.
The linguistic situation in Bessarabia from 1812 to 1918 was the gradual development of bilingualism.
RussianRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
continued to develop as the official language of privilege, whereas Romanian remained the principal vernacular.
The period from 1905 to 1917 was one of increasing linguistic conflict, with the re-awakening of Romanian national consciousness. In 1905 and 1906, the Bessarabian
zemstvaZemstvo was a form of local government that was instituted during the great liberal reforms performed in Imperial Russia by Alexander II of Russia. The idea of the zemstvo was elaborated by Nikolay Milyutin, and the first zemstvo laws were put into effect in 1864...
asked for the re-introduction of Romanian in schools as a "compulsory language", and the "liberty to teach in the mother language (Romanian language)". At the same time, the first Romanian language newspapers and journals began to appear:
Basarabia (1906),
Viaţa Basarabiei (1907),
Moldovanul (1907),
Luminătorul (1908),
Cuvînt moldovenesc (1913),
Glasul Basarabiei (1913). From 1913, the synod permitted that "the churches in Besserabia use the Romanian language".
Romanian finally became the official language with the
Constitution of 1923The 1923 Constitution of Romania, also called the Constitution of Union, was intended to align the organisation of the state on the basis of universal male suffrage and the new realities that arose after the Great Union of 1918. Four draft constitutions existed: one belonging to the National...
.
Historical grammar
Romanian has preserved a part of the Latin
declensionIn linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
, but whereas Latin had six cases, Romanian has three: the nominative-accusative, the genitive-
dativeThe dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
, and marginally the vocative. Romanian nouns also preserve the neuter
genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
. However, the
verbA verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compound perfect and
future tenseIn grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
as the other Romance languages. Compared with the other
Romance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
, during its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin
tenseA tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
system in extreme ways, in particular the original Latin absence of
sequence of tensesIn grammar, the sequence of tenses is a rule of a particular language governing the relationship between the grammatical tenses of verbs in related clauses or sentences to show the temporal relationship of the events to...
.
Geographic distribution
Geographic distribution of Romanian
| Country |
Speakers
(%) |
Speakers
(native) |
Population |
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
|
RomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
|
91% |
19,736,517 |
21,698,181 |
RussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
1 |
0.12% |
169,698 |
145,537,200 |
MoldovaMoldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
² |
76.4% |
2,588,355 |
3,388,071 |
TransnistriaTransnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...
(Eastern Moldova)³ |
31.9% |
177,050 |
555,500 |
VojvodinaVojvodina, officially called Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province of Serbia. Its capital and largest city is Novi Sad...
(SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
) |
1.5% |
29,512 |
2,031,992 |
| not official: |
| Timočka Krajina Timočka Krajina is a geographical region located in Serbia. It is situated in eastern Serbia around the Timok River. The population of Timočka Krajina is 284,112 .-Name:...
(Serbia) 4 |
8.2% |
58,221 |
712,050 |
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
|
1.7% |
829,715 |
46,661,950 |
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
|
1.3% |
640,000 |
60,600,000 |
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
5 |
0.8% |
327,703 |
48,457,000 |
HungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
|
0.1% |
8,480 |
10,198,315 |
AsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
|
| not official: |
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
|
3.7% |
250,000 |
6,800,000 |
KazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
1 |
0.1% |
20,054 |
14,953,126 |
The AmericasThe Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
|
| not official: |
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
|
0.34% |
110,000 |
32,207,113 |
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
6 |
0.12% |
340,000 |
281,421,906 |
1 Many are Moldavian who were deported
² Data only for the districts on the right bank of Dniester (without Transnistria and the city of Tighina). In Moldova, it is sometimes referred to as the "Moldovan languageMoldovan is one of the names of the Romanian language as spoken in the Republic of Moldova, where it is official. The spoken language of Moldova is closer to the dialects of Romanian spoken in northeastern Romania, and the two countries share the same literary standard...
"
³ In Transnistria, it is officially called "Moldovan languageMoldovan is one of the names of the Romanian language as spoken in the Republic of Moldova, where it is official. The spoken language of Moldova is closer to the dialects of Romanian spoken in northeastern Romania, and the two countries share the same literary standard...
" and is written in Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet.
4 Officially divided into Vlachs and Romanians
5 Most in Northern Bukovina and Southern Bessarabia; according to a Moldova Noastră study (based on the latest Ukrainian census).
6 |
Romanian is spoken mostly in Southeastern,
CentralCentral Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
and
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, although speakers of the language can be found all over the world, mostly due to emigration of Romanian nationals and the return of immigrants to Romania back to their original countries. Romanian speakers account for 0.5% of the world's population, and 4% of the Romance-speaking population of the world.
Romanian is the single official and national language in
RomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
and
MoldovaMoldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
, although it shares the official status at regional level with other languages in the Moldovan autonomies of
GagauziaGagauzia , formally known as the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Găgăuzia , is an autonomous region of...
and
TransnistriaTransnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...
. Romanian is also an official language of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in
SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
along with five other languages. Romanian minorities are encountered in
SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
(Timok Valley),
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
(
ChernivtsiChernivtsi Oblast is an oblast in western Ukraine, bordering on Romania and Moldova. It has a large variety of landforms: the Carpathian Mountains and picturesque hills at the foot of the mountains gradually change to a broad partly forested plain situated between the Dniester and Prut rivers....
and
Odessa oblastOdesa Oblast, also written as Odessa Oblast , is the southernmost and largest oblast of south-western Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Odessa.-History:...
s),
HungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
(
GyulaGyula is a city in Békés county in south-eastern Hungary. It lies close to the border with Romania, on the river Fehér-Körös.-History:The first recorded reference to Gyula was in a document dated 1313 which mentions a monastery called Gyulamonostor . By 1332 the settlement around the monastery was...
) and
BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
(
VidinVidin is a port town on the southern bank of the Danube in northwestern Bulgaria. It is close to the borders with Serbia and Romania, and is also the administrative centre of Vidin Province, as well as of the Metropolitan of Vidin...
). Large immigrant communities are found in
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
,
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and
PortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
.
As of 1995, the largest Romanian-speaking community in the Middle East is found in
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, where Romanian is spoken by 5% of the population. Romanian is also spoken as a second language by people from Arabic-speaking countries who have studied in
RomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
. It is estimated that almost half a million
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
ern Arabs studied in Romania during the 1980s. Small Romanian-speaking communities are to be found in
KazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
and
RussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. Romanian is also spoken within communities of Romanian and Moldovan immigrants in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, although they do not make up a large homogeneous community state-wide.
In Romania
According to the
Constitution of RomaniaThe 1991 Constitution of Romania, adopted on 21 November 1991, voted in the referendum of 8 December 1991 and introduced on the same day, is the current fundamental law that establishes the structure of the government of Romania, the rights and obligations of the country's citizens, and its mode...
of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic.
RomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
mandates the use of Romanian in official government publications, public
educationEducation in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
and legal
contractA contract is an agreement entered into by two parties or more with the intention of creating a legal obligation, which may have elements in writing. Contracts can be made orally. The remedy for breach of contract can be "damages" or compensation of money. In equity, the remedy can be specific...
s. Advertisements as well as other public messages must bear a translation of foreign words, while trade signs and logos shall be written predominantly in Romanian.
The Romanian Language Institute (
Institutul Limbii Române), established by the Ministry of Education of Romania, promotes Romanian and supports people willing to study the language, working together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Department for Romanians Abroad.
In Moldova
The
Constitution of MoldovaThe Constitution of the Republic of Moldova is that country's supreme law.The current Constitution of Moldova was adopted on July 29, 1994 and published in Monitorul Oficial al R. Moldova, N1, July 18, 1994.- Constitutions of Moldova :...
names the state language of the country "
MoldovanMoldovan is one of the names of the Romanian language as spoken in the Republic of Moldova, where it is official. The spoken language of Moldova is closer to the dialects of Romanian spoken in northeastern Romania, and the two countries share the same literary standard...
". However, linguists consider it to be largely identical to Romanian. It has been the sole official language since the adoption of the Law on State Language of the
Moldavian SSRThe Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic , commonly abbreviated to Moldavian SSR or MSSR, was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union...
in 1989. This law mandates the use of Moldovan in all the political, economical, cultural and social spheres, as well as asserting the existence of a "linguistic
MoldoMoldovan is one of the names of the Romanian language as spoken in the Republic of Moldova, where it is official. The spoken language of Moldova is closer to the dialects of Romanian spoken in northeastern Romania, and the two countries share the same literary standard...
-Romanian identity". It is also used in schools, mass media, education and in the colloquial speech and writing. Outside the political arena the language is most often called "Romanian". In the breakaway territory of
TransnistriaTransnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...
, it is co-official with
UkrainianUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
and
RussianRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
.
In the
2004 censusThe 2004 Republic of Moldova Census was carried between October 5 and October 12, 2004. The breakaway Transnistria failed to come into an agreement with the central government in Chişinău, and carried out its own census during between November 11 and November 18, 2004...
, out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova, 16.5% (558,508) stated Romanian as their native language, whereas 60% stated Moldovan. While 40% of all
urbanAn urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...
Romanian/Moldovan speakers identified their native tongue as Romanian, in the countryside under 12% of Romanian/Moldovan speakers indicated Romanian as their native language. However, the group of experts from the international census observation Mission to the Republic of Moldova concluded that the items in the questionnaire dealing with nationality and language proved to be the most sensitive ones, particularly with reference to the recording of responses to these questions as being "Moldovan" or "Romanian", and therefore it concluded that special care would need to be taken in interpreting them.
In Vojvodina
The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia determines that in the regions of the Republic of Serbia inhabited by national minorities, their own languages and scripts shall be officially used as well, in the manner established by law.
The Statute of the Autonomous Province of
VojvodinaVojvodina, officially called Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province of Serbia. Its capital and largest city is Novi Sad...
determines that, together with the Serbo-Croat language and the Cyrillic script, and the Latin script as stipulated by the law, the
HungarianHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
,
SlovakSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
, Romanian and
Rusyn languageRusyn , also known in English as Ruthenian, is an East Slavic language variety spoken by the Rusyns of Central Europe. Some linguists treat it as a distinct language and it has its own ISO 639-3 code; others treat it as a dialect of Ukrainian...
s and their scripts, as well as languages and scripts of other nationalities, shall simultaneously be officially used in the work of the bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in the manner established by the law. The bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are: the Assembly, the Executive Council and the Provincial administrative bodies.
The Romanian language and script are officially used in eight municipalities:
AlibunarAlibunar is a town and municipality in South Banat District of Vojvodina, Serbia. Alibunar town has a population of 3,402, and Alibunar municipality 22,856.-Name:...
, Biserica Albă ,
ZitișteŽitište is a town and municipality in Central Banat District of Vojvodina, Serbia. The town has a population of 3,236, while Žitište municipality has 20,144 inhabitants.-Name:...
(Žitište), Zrenianin (Zrenjanin), Kovăcița (Kovačica), Cuvin (Kovin),
PlandiștePlandište is a village and municipality in South Banat District of Vojvodina, Serbia. The village has a population of 4,248, while Plandište municipality has 13,355 inhabitants...
(Plandište) and
SečanjSečanj is a village and municipality in Central Banat District of Vojvodina, Serbia. The village has a population of 2,645, while the Sečanj municipality has 16,298 inhabitants.-Name:...
. In the municipality of Vârșeț (Vršac), Romanian is official only in the villages of Voivodinț (Vojvodinci), Marcovăț (Markovac),
StrajaStraja is a ski resort in the Jiu Valley region of Hunedoara County, Romania.-External links:* - the regional web portal of the Jiu Valley region and host of the official Jiu Valley websites...
(Straža), Jamu Mic (Mali Žam),
Srediștea MicăMalo Središte is a village in Serbia. It is situated in the Vršac municipality, in the South Banat District, Vojvodina province. The village has a Romanian ethnic majority and its population numbering 78 people .-See also:*List of places in Serbia*List of cities, towns and villages in Vojvodina...
(Malo Središte),
MesiciMesić is a village in Serbia. It is situated in the Vršac municipality, in the South Banat District, Vojvodina province. The village has a Romanian ethnic majority and its population numbering 202 people ....
(Mesić),
JablankaJablanka is a village in Serbia. It is situated in the Vršac municipality, in the South Banat District, Vojvodina province. The village has a Romanian ethnic majority and its population numbering 247 people ....
, Sălcița (Salčica),
RâtișorRitiševo is a village in Serbia. It is situated in the Vršac municipality, in the South Banat District, Vojvodina province. The village has a Romanian ethnic majority and its population numbering 496 people ....
(Ritiševo), Oreșaț (Orašac) and Coștei (Kuštilj).
In the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1.5% of Vojvodinians stated Romanian as their native language.
In other countries and organizations
In parts of Ukraine where Romanians constitute a significant share of the local population (districts in
ChernivtsiChernivtsi Oblast is an oblast in western Ukraine, bordering on Romania and Moldova. It has a large variety of landforms: the Carpathian Mountains and picturesque hills at the foot of the mountains gradually change to a broad partly forested plain situated between the Dniester and Prut rivers....
,
OdessaOdesa Oblast, also written as Odessa Oblast , is the southernmost and largest oblast of south-western Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Odessa.-History:...
and
ZakarpattiaThe Zakarpattia Oblast is an administrative oblast located in southwestern Ukraine. Its administrative center is the city of Uzhhorod...
oblastOblast is a type of administrative division in Slavic countries, including some countries of the former Soviet Union. The word "oblast" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "zone", "province", or "region"...
s) Romanian is being taught in schools as a primary language and there are newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting in Romanian.
The University of Chernivtsi trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics.
Romanian is an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations, such as the
Latin UnionThe Latin Union is an international organization of nations that use Romance languages, with the aim of protecting, projecting, and promoting the common cultural heritage and unifying identities of the Latin, and Latin-influenced, world. It was created in 1954 in Madrid, Spain, and has existed as a...
and the
European UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
. Romanian is also one of the five languages in which religious services are performed in the autonomous monastic state of
Mount AthosMount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in Macedonia, Greece. A World Heritage Site, it is home to 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and forms a self-governed monastic state within the sovereignty of the Hellenic Republic. Spiritually, Mount Athos comes under the direct jurisdiction of the...
, spoken in the monk communities of
ProdromosThe Romanian Skete Prodromos is a Romanian cenobitic skete belonging to the Great Lavra Monastery, located in the eastern extremity of the Eastern Orthodox Monastic State of the Holy Mountain Athos, between the Aegean Sea in the East and the peak of Athos rising 2033 m in the West, nearby the...
and Lacu.
As a second and foreign language
Romanian is taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such as
VojvodinaVojvodina, officially called Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province of Serbia. Its capital and largest city is Novi Sad...
in Serbia,
BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and
HungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
. The
Romanian Cultural InstituteThe Romanian Cultural Institute is a state-funded institution that promotes Romanian culture and civilization in Romania and abroad. The ICR was formerly set up through reorganization of the Romanian Cultural Foundation and Romanian Cultural Publishing Foundation...
(ICR) has since 1992 organised summer training courses in Romanian for language teachers in these countries. In some of the schools, there are non-Romanian nationals who study Romanian as a foreign language (for example the Nicolae Bălcescu High-school in
Gyula, HungaryGyula is a city in Békés county in south-eastern Hungary. It lies close to the border with Romania, on the river Fehér-Körös.-History:The first recorded reference to Gyula was in a document dated 1313 which mentions a monastery called Gyulamonostor . By 1332 the settlement around the monastery was...
).
Romanian is taught as a
foreign languageA foreign language is a language indigenous to another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her...
in various tertiary institutions, mostly in European countries such as
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
,
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, as well as the
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, and elsewhere, like the USA. Overall, it is taught as a foreign language in 43 countries around the world.
Popular culture
Romanian has become popular in other countries through movies and songs performed in the Romanian language. Examples of recent Romanian acts that had a great success in non-Romanophone countries are the bands
O-ZoneO-Zone was a Romania/Moldovan pop music trio that was active from 1998 to 2005 and consisted of Dan Bălan, Radu Sîrbu, and Arsenie Todiraş. The group gained global popularity with their song "Dragostea din tei" and their subsequent album DiscO-Zone....
(which had great success with their #1 single
Dragostea din tei"Dragostea din tei" , also informally known as "The Numa Numa Song" , is the most successful single by the Moldovan pop group O-Zone, sung in Romanian. It shot to the number one spot on the Eurochart Hot 100, where it remained for 12 weeks between June and early September 2004...
/Numa Numa across the world),
AkcentAkcent is a Romanian dance-pop act.- Biography :Adrian Claudiu Sînă started the group in 1999. At the time, it consisted of him and his female counterpart, Ramona Barta....
(popular in the
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
,
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and other European countries),
ActivActiv is a Romanian disco band. Nowadays it is a trance, techno music band. The members of this band are from Arad and Timişoara.-Success:The albums Motive and Superstar were quite successful...
(successful in some Eastern European countries) and
Dj ProjectDJ Project is a Romanian dance music group, initially made up of Gino Manzotti and DJ Maxx as producers and Elena Baltagan as the vocalist...
(popular as clubbing music) as well as high-rated movies like
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a 2007 Romanian film written and directed by Cristian Mungiu. It won the Palme d'Or and the FIPRESCI Award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival....
,
The Death of Mr. LazarescuThe Death of Mr. Lazarescu is a 2005 Romanian dark comedy film by director Cristi Puiu. In the film an old man is carried by an ambulance from hospital to hospital all night long, as doctors keep refusing to treat him and send him away....
,
12:08 East of Bucharest12:08 East of Bucharest is a 2006 Romanian film directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, released in 2006 and winner of the Camera d'Or Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It was also released in the United States under the abridged titles East of Bucharest and 12:08 Bucharest...
or
California Dreamin' (all of them with awards at the
Cannes Film FestivalThe Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
).
Also some artists wrote songs dedicated to the Romanian language. The multiplatinum pop trio
O-ZoneO-Zone was a Romania/Moldovan pop music trio that was active from 1998 to 2005 and consisted of Dan Bălan, Radu Sîrbu, and Arsenie Todiraş. The group gained global popularity with their song "Dragostea din tei" and their subsequent album DiscO-Zone....
(originally from
MoldovaMoldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
) released a song called "
Nu mă las de limba noastră" ('I won't forsake our language'). The final verse of this song,
Eu nu mă las de limba noastră, de limba noastră cea română is translated in
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
as
I won't forsake our language, our Romanian language. Also, the
MoldovaMoldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
n musicians Doina and Ion Aldea Teodorovici performed a song entitled "The Romanian language".
Dialects
The term
Romanian is sometimes used also in a more general sense, which envelops four languages or dialects:
Daco-RomanianDaco-Romanian is the term used to identify the Romanian language in contexts where distinction needs to be made between the various Eastern Romance languages...
,
AromanianAromanian , also known as Macedo-Romanian, Arumanian or Vlach is an Eastern Romance language spoken in Southeastern Europe...
,
Megleno-RomanianMegleno-Romanian is a Romance language, similar to Aromanian and Romanian, or a dialect of the Romanian language...
, and
Istro-RomanianIstro-Romanian is an Eastern Romance language that is still spoken today in a few villages and hamlets in the peninsula of Istria, on the northern part of the Adriatic Sea, in what is now Croatia as well as in other countries around the world where the Istro-Romanian people settled after the two...
. The four languages, whose mutual intelligibility is difficult, are the offspring of the
Romance varietiesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
spoken both to the north and to south of
DanubeThe Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
, before the settlement of the
SlavonianThe Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
tribes south of the river: Daco-Romanian in the north, Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian in the south, whereas Istro-Romanian is believed to be the offspring of a 11th century migration from Romania. These four are also known as the
Eastern Romance languagesThe Eastern Romance languages in their narrow conception, sometimes known as the Vlach languages, are a group of Romance languages that developed in Southeastern Europe from the local eastern variant of Vulgar Latin. Some classifications include the Italo-Dalmatian languages; when Italian is...
.
When the term
Romanian is used in this larger sense, the term
Daco-RomanianDaco-Romanian is the term used to identify the Romanian language in contexts where distinction needs to be made between the various Eastern Romance languages...
is used for Romanian proper. The origin of the term
Daco-Romanian can be traced back to the first printed book of Romanian grammar in 1780, by Samuil Micu and
Gheorghe ȘincaiGheorghe Șincai was an ethnic Romanian Transylvanian historian, philologist, translator, poet, and representative of the Enlightenment-influenced Transylvanian School....
. There, the Romanian dialect spoken north of the
DanubeThe Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
is called
lingua Daco-Romana to emphasize its origin and its area of use, which includes the former
RomanAncient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
province of
DaciaIn ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians or Getae as they were known by the Greeks—the branch of the Thracians north of the Haemus range...
, although it is spoken also south of the Danube, in Dobrudja, Central Serbia and northern Bulgaria.
This article deals with the Romanian (specifically Daco-Romanian) language, and thus only its dialectal variations are discussed here. The differences between the regional varieties are small, limited to regular phonetic changes, few grammar aspects, and lexical particularities. There is a single written standard (literary) Romanian language used by all speakers, regardless of region.
Like most natural languages, Romanian can be regarded as a
dialect continuumA dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the...
. The varieties of Romanian are usually called
subdialects (see reasons for this terminology) and are distinguished primarily by phonetic differences. Romanians themselves speak of the differences as
accents or
speeches (in Romanian:
accent or
grai).
Depending on the criteria used for classifying these subdialects, fewer or more are found, ranging from 2 to 20, although the most widespread approaches give a number of five subdialects. These are grouped into two main types, southern and northern, further divided as follows:
- The southern type has only one member:
- the Wallachian subdialect
The Wallachian subdialect is one of the several subdialects of the Romanian language, specifically of the Daco-Romanian dialect. Its geographic distribution covers approximately the historical region of Wallachia, occupying the southern part of Romania, roughly between the Danube and the Southern...
, spoken in the southern part of RomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, in the historical regions of MunteniaMuntenia is a historical province of Romania, usually considered Wallachia-proper . It is situated between the Danube , the Carpathian Mountains and Moldavia , and the Olt River to the west...
, OlteniaOltenia is a historical province and geographical region of Romania, in western Wallachia. It is situated between the Danube, the Southern Carpathians and the Olt river ....
and the southern part of DobrujaDobruja is a historical region shared by Bulgaria and Romania, located between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, including the Danube Delta, Romanian coast and the northernmost part of the Bulgarian coast...
, but also extending in the southern parts of TransylvaniaTransylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
.
- The northern type consists of several subdialects:
- the Moldavian subdialect
The Moldavian subdialect is one of the several subdialects of the Romanian language...
, spoken in the historical region of MoldaviaMoldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
, now split among RomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, the Republic of Moldova, and UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
(BukovinaBukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
and BessarabiaBessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
), as well as northern DobrujaDobruja is a historical region shared by Bulgaria and Romania, located between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, including the Danube Delta, Romanian coast and the northernmost part of the Bulgarian coast...
;
- the Banat subdialect
The Banat subdialect is one of the several subdialects of the Romanian language, specifically of the Daco-Romanian dialect...
, spoken in the historical region of BanatThe Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
, including parts of SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
;
- a group of finely divided and transition-like Transylvanian varieties
The Transylvanian varieties of Romanian are a grouping of speech varieties of the Romanian language, specifically of the Daco-Romanian dialect...
, among which two are most often distinguished, those of CrișanaThe Crișana subdialect is one of the several varieties of the Romanian language, specifically of the Daco-Romanian dialect...
and MaramureșThe Maramureş subdialect is one of the several varieties of the Romanian language, specifically of the Daco-Romanian dialect...
.
Over the last century, however, regional accents have been weakened due to mass communication and greater mobility.
Classification
Romanian is a Romance language, belonging to the
Italic branchThe Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed...
of the
Indo-European language familyThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, having much in common with languages such as
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
,
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, and
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
.
However, the languages closest to Romanian are the other
Eastern Romance languagesThe Eastern Romance languages in their narrow conception, sometimes known as the Vlach languages, are a group of Romance languages that developed in Southeastern Europe from the local eastern variant of Vulgar Latin. Some classifications include the Italo-Dalmatian languages; when Italian is...
, spoken south of Danube:
Aromanian/Macedo-RomanianAromanian , also known as Macedo-Romanian, Arumanian or Vlach is an Eastern Romance language spoken in Southeastern Europe...
,
Megleno-RomanianMegleno-Romanian is a Romance language, similar to Aromanian and Romanian, or a dialect of the Romanian language...
and
Istro-RomanianIstro-Romanian is an Eastern Romance language that is still spoken today in a few villages and hamlets in the peninsula of Istria, on the northern part of the Adriatic Sea, in what is now Croatia as well as in other countries around the world where the Istro-Romanian people settled after the two...
, which are frequently classified as dialects of Romanian. An alternative name for Romanian used by linguists to disambiguate with the other Eastern Romance languages is "Daco-Romanian", referring to the area where it is spoken (which corresponds roughly to the onetime
RomanThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
province of
DaciaIn ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians or Getae as they were known by the Greeks—the branch of the Thracians north of the Haemus range...
).
Compared with the other Romance languages, the closest relative of Romanian is
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
; the two languages show a limited degree of asymmetrical
mutual intelligibilityIn linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort...
, especially in their cultivated forms: speakers of Romanian seem to understand Italian more easily than the other way around. Romanian has obvious grammatical and
lexical similaritiesIn linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words....
with
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
,
CatalanCatalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
,
SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, with a high phonological similarity with Portuguese in particular; however, it is not mutually intelligible with them to any practical extent. Romanian speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary before being able to understand more than individual words and simple sentences. The same is true for speakers of these languages trying to understand Romanian.
A study done by Italian-American linguist
Mario PeiMario Andrew Pei was an Italian-American linguist and polyglot, who wrote a number of popular books known for their accessibility to readers who lack a professional background in linguistics.-Life:...
in 1949, which analyzed the evolutionary degree of languages in comparison to their inheritance language (in the case of
Romance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
to
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
comparing
phonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
,
inflectionIn grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
,
discourseDiscourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
,
syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
,
vocabularyA person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
, and
intonationIn linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
) revealed the following percentages (the higher the percentage, the greater the distance from Latin):
- Sardinian
Sardinian is a Romance language spoken and written on most of the island of Sardinia . It is considered the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for its Paleosardinian substratum....
: 8%;
- Italian
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
: 12%;
- Spanish
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
: 20%;
- Romanian: 23.5%;
- Occitan: 25%;
- Portuguese
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
: 31%;
- French
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
: 44%.
The
lexical similarityIn linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words....
of Romanian with Italian has been estimated at 77%, followed by French at 75%, Sardinian 74%, Catalan 73%, Spanish 71%, Portuguese, and Rhaeto-Romance at 72%.
In modern times Romanian vocabulary has been strongly influenced by French, Italian and other languages.
Dacian language
The
Dacian languageThe extinct Dacian language may have developed from proto-Indo-European in the Carpathian region around 2,500 BC and probably died out by AD 600. In the 1st century AD, it was the predominant language of the ancient regions of Dacia and Moesia and, possibly, of some surrounding regions.It belonged...
was an Indo-European language spoken by the ancient Dacians, mostly north of the Danube river but also in
MoesiaMoesia was an ancient region and later Roman province situated in the Balkans, along the south bank of the Danube River. It included territories of modern-day Southern Serbia , Northern Republic of Macedonia, Northern Bulgaria, Romanian Dobrudja, Southern Moldova, and Budjak .-History:In ancient...
and other regions south of the Danube. It may have been the first language to influence the Latin spoken in Dacia, but little is known about it. Dacian is usually considered to have been a Northern branch of the
Thracian languageThe Thracian language was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times in Southeastern Europe by the Thracians, the northern neighbors of the Ancient Greeks. The Thracian language exhibits satemization: it either belonged to the Satem group of Indo-European languages or it was strongly...
, and like Thracian, Dacian was a satem language. About 300 words found only in Romanian or with a cognate in the
Albanian languageAlbanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
may be inherited from Dacian (for example:
barză "
storkStorks are large, long-legged, long-necked wading birds with long, stout bills. They belong to the family Ciconiidae. They are the only family in the biological order Ciconiiformes, which was once much larger and held a number of families....
",
balaur "dragon",
mal "shore",
brânză "cheese"). Some of these possibly Dacian words are related to pastoral life (for example,
brânză "cheese"). Some linguists and historians have asserted that Albanians are Dacians who were not Romanized and migrated southward.
A different view is that these non-Latin words with Albanian cognates are not necessarily Dacian, but rather were brought into the territory that is modern Romania by Romance-speaking shepherds migrating north from Albania, Serbia, and northern Greece who became the Romanian people.
Balkan linguistic union
While most of Romanian grammar and morphology are based on Latin, there are some features that are shared only with other languages of the Balkans and not found in other Romance languages. Nonetheless, Romanian together with Greek and Romani present the lowest "factor of Balkanization" among the languages common included in this sprachbund.
The languages of the
Balkan linguistic unionThe Balkan sprachbund or linguistic area is the ensemble of areal features—similarity in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology—among the languages of the Balkans. Several features are found across these languages though not all need apply to every single language...
belong to individual branches of the Indo-European language family:
BulgarianBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
,
MacedonianMacedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
and
AlbanianAlbanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
, and in some cases
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and
SerbianSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
. The shared features include a suffixed
definite articleAn article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
, the
syncretismIn linguistics, syncretism is the identity of form of distinct morphological forms of a word. This phenomenon is typical of fusional languages....
of genitive and dative case and the formation of the future and the alternation of infinitive with subjunctive constructions.
Slavic languages
The Slavic influences on Romanian are especially noticeable and can be observed at all linguistic levels: lexis, phonetics, morphology and syntax. About 14% of Romanian words are of Slavic origin. This is due to the migration of Slavic tribes who traversed the territory of present-day Romania during the early evolution of the language. This process of the introduction of Slavic in Dacia was similar to the appearance of various Germanic dialects in the Western Roman Empire, where Gallic Latin and Northern Italian dialects became strongly germanized. However, due to the lower Romance-speaking populace in the East, Slavic remained spoken for much longer and did not die out immediately.
Other influences
Even before the 19th century, Romanian came in contact with several other languages. Some notable examples include:
- Greek
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
: folos < ófelos "use", buzunar < buzunára "pocket", proaspăt < prósfatos "fresh", cutie < cution "box"
- Hungarian
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
: a cheltui < költeni "to spend", a făgădui < fogadni "to promise", a mântui < menteni "to save" and maybe oraș < város "city" (note that linguistically, Romanian oraș couldn’t be borrowed from Hungarian varos. It would have been a form *veras)
- Turkish
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
: cafea < kahve "coffee", papuc < papuç "slipper", ciorbă < çorba "wholemeal soup, sour soup", bacşiş < bahşiş "tip"
- German
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: cartof < Kartoffel "potato", bere < Bier "beer", șurub < Schraube "screw", turn < Turm "tower", ramă < Rahmen "frame", muștiuc < Mundstück "mouth piece", bormașină < Bohrmaschine "drilling machine", cremșnit < Kremschnitte "cream slice", șvaițer < Schweizer "Swiss cheese", șlep < Schleppkahn "barge", șpriț < Spritzer "wine with soda water", abțibild < Abziehbild "decal picture", șnițel < Schnitzel "cutlet", șuncă < dialectal Schunke (Schinken) "ham", punct < Punkt "point", maistru < Meister "master", rundă < Runde "round". During the Austrian administration in BanatThe Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
, TransylvaniaTransylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
, and BukovinaBukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
, a large number of words were borrowed from Austrian German, in particular in fields such as the military, administration, social welfare, economy, etc. Later on German terms have been taken out of science and technics, like: șină < Schiene "rail", știft < Stift "peg", liță < Litze "braid", ștanță < Stanze "punch", șaibă < Scheibe "washer", ștangă < Stange "crossbar",et al.
- Romany
Romani or Romany, Gypsy or Gipsy is any of several languages of the Romani people. They are Indic, sometimes classified in the "Central" or "Northwestern" zone, and sometimes treated as a branch of their own....
, the Romanian Roma have provided several words to Romanian slangSlang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
: mișto "good, beautiful" < mišto, gagică < gadjiGadjo is the alias of the German DJ, producer and remixer, Murat Arslan. He is best known for his hit "So Many Times", featuring Alexandra Prince on vocals. It became an international club hit in the winter of 2005, peaking in 2006...
"girl"
French, Italian and English words
Since the 19th century, many modern words were borrowed from the other Romance languages, especially from
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
(for example:
birou "desk, office",
avion "airplane",
exploata "exploit"). It was estimated that about 38% of the number of words in Romanian are of French and/or Italian origin (in many cases both languages); and adding this to the words that were inherited from Latin, about 75%-85% of Romanian words can be traced to Latin. The use of these Romanianized French and Italian loanwords has tended to increase at the expense of Slavic loanwords, many of which have become rare or fallen out of use. As second or third languages, French and Italian themselves are better known in Romania than in Romania's neighbors. Along with the switch to the Latin alphabet in
MoldovaMoldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
, the re-latinization of the vocabulary has tended to reinforce the Latin character of the language.
In the process of lexical modernization, many of the words already existing as Latin direct heritage, as a part of its core or
popular vocabulary, have been doubled by words borrowed from other
Romance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
, thus forming a further and more modern and literary lexical layer. Typically, the
popular word is a noun and the borrowed word an adjective. Some examples:
| Latin |
Romanian
direct Latin heritage |
Romanian
neologism |
| agilis (quick) |
ager (astute) |
agil (it.<agile, fr.<agile)
(agile) |
| aqua (water) |
apă (water) |
acvatic (it. <acquatico, fr.<aquatique)
(aquatic) |
| dens, dentem (tooth) |
dinte (tooth) |
dentist (it.<dentista, fr.<dentiste)
(dentist) |
| directus (straight) |
drept (straight, right) |
direct (it.<diretto, fr.<direct)
(direct) |
| frigus (cold) |
frig (cold - noun) |
frigid (it.<frigido, fr.<frigide)
(frigid) |
| rapidus (quick) |
repede (quick) |
rapid (it.<rapido, fr.<rapide)
(quick) |
In the 20th century, an increasing number of
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
words have been borrowed (such as:
gem < jam;
interviu < interview;
meci < match;
manager < manager;
fotbal < football;
sandviș < sandwich;
bișniță < business;
ciungă < chewing gum;
chec < cake). These words are assigned grammatical gender in Romanian and handled according to Romanian rules; thus "the manager" is
managerul.
Grammar
Romanian nouns are characterized by gender (feminine, masculine, and neuter), and
declinedIn linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
by number (singular and plural) and case (
nominativeThe nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
/
accusativeThe accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
,
dativeThe dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
/
genitiveIn grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
and
vocativeThe vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
). The articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns,
agreeIn languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
in gender, number and case with the noun they reference.
Romanian is the only Romance language where
definite articlesAn article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
are
enclitic: that is, attached to the end of the noun (as in
ScandinavianThe North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages...
and
BulgarianBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
), instead of in front (
proclitic). They were formed, as in other Romance languages, from the Latin demonstrative pronouns.
As in all Romance languages, Romanian verbs are highly inflected for person, number, tense, mood, voice. The usual word order in sentences is SVO (Subject - Verb - Object). Romanian has four verbal
conjugationsIn linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
which further split into ten conjugation patterns. Verbs can be put in five moods that are inflected for the person (indicative,
conditionalIn linguistics, the conditional mood is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances...
/
optativeThe optative mood is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope. It is similar to the cohortative mood, and closely related to the subjunctive mood....
,
imperativeThe imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
,
subjunctiveIn grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....
, and presumptive) and four impersonal moods (
infinitiveIn grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
,
gerundIn linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
,
supineIn grammar a supine is a form of verbal noun used in some languages.-In Latin:In Latin there are two supines, I and II . They are originally the accusative and dative or ablative forms of a verbal noun in the fourth declension, respectively. The first supine ends in -um. It has two uses. The first...
, and
participleIn linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
).
Phonology
Romanian has seven
vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s; the more "exotic" ones are /ɨ/, /ə/ (also in stressed positions), and the diphthongs /e̯a/ and /o̯a/. Additionally, /ø/ and /y/ may appear in some borrowed words. There are also twenty-two consonants. The two approximants /j/ and /w/ can appear before or after any vowel, creating a large number of glide-vowel sequences which are, strictly speaking, not
diphthongA diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s.
In final positions after consonants, a short /i/ can be deleted, surfacing only as the
palatalizationIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
of the preceding consonant (e.g. [mʲ]). Similarly, a deleted /u/ may prompt labialization of a preceding consonant, though this has ceased to carry any morphological meaning.
Phonetic changes
Owing to its isolation from the other Romance languages, the phonetic evolution of Romanian was quite different, but does share a few changes with Italian, such as [kl] > [kj] (Lat.
clarus > Rom.
chiar, Ital.
chiaro) and also a few with
DalmatianDalmatian was a Romance language spoken in the Dalmatia region of Croatia, and as far south as Kotor in Montenegro. The name refers to a pre-Roman tribe of the Illyrian linguistic group, Dalmatae...
, such as /ɡn/ (probably phonetically [ŋn]) > [mn] (Lat. co
gnatus > Rom. cu
mnat, Dalm. co
mnut).
Among the notable phonetic changes are:
- diphthongization of e and o
- Lat. cera → Rom. ceară (wax)
- Lat. sole → Rom. soare (sun)
- iotacism
Iotacism is the process by which a number of vowels and diphthongs in Ancient Greek converged in pronunciation so that they all sound like iota in Modern Greek....
[e] → [ie] in the beginning of the word
- Lat. herba → Rom. iarbă (grass, herb)
- velar [k ɡ] → labial [p b m] before alveolar consonants and [w] (eg. ngu → mb):
- Lat. octo → Rom. opt (eight)
- Lat. lingua → Rom. limbă (tongue, language)
- Lat. signum → Rom. semn (sign)
- Lat. coxa → Rom. coapsă (thigh)
- rhotacism
Rhotacism refers to several phenomena related to the usage of the consonant r :*the excessive or idiosyncratic use of the r;...
[l] → [r] between vowels
- Lat. caelum → Rom. cer (sky)
- Alveolars [d t] palatalized to [(d)z] [ts] when before short [e] or long [iː]
- Lat. deus → Rom. zeu (god)
- Lat. tenem → Rom. ține (hold)
On the other hand, it (along with French) has
lost /kw/ (
qu) sound before /a/ from original Latin, turning it either into /p/ (Lat.
quattuor → Rom.
patru, "four"; cf. It.
quattro) or /k/ (Lat.
quando → Rom.
când, "when"; Lat.
qualitas → Rom.
calitate, "quality").
Writing system
The first written record of a Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages in the Balkans was written by the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes Confessor in the 6th century about a military expedition against the
AvarsThe Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars were a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups...
from 587, when a Vlach muleteer accompanying the Byzantine army noticed that the load was falling from one of the animals and shouted to a companion
Torna, torna fratre (meaning "Return, return brother!").
The oldest written text in Romanian is a letter from late June 1521, in which Neacșu of
CâmpulungCâmpulung , or Câmpulung Muscel, is a city in the Argeş County, Wallachia, Romania. It is situated among the outlying hills of the Transylvanian Alps, at the head of a long well-wooded glen traversed by the Râul Târgului, a tributary of the Argeş.Its pure air and fine scenery render Câmpulung a...
wrote to the mayor of
BrașovBrașov is a city in Romania and the capital of Brașov County.According to the last Romanian census, from 2002, there were 284,596 people living within the city of Brașov, making it the 8th most populated city in Romania....
about an imminent attack of the Turks. It was written using the
Cyrillic alphabetThe Romanian Cyrillic alphabet was used to write the Romanian language before 1860–1862, when it was officially replaced by a Latin-based Romanian alphabet. Cyrillic remained in occasional use until circa 1920...
, like most early Romanian writings. The earliest writing in Latin script was a late 16th century
TransylvaniaTransylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
n text which was written with the
Hungarian alphabetThe Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language.One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional...
conventions.
In the late 18th century,
TransylvaniaTransylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
n scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
to the Romanian language, using some rules from
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, recognized as Romanian's closest relative. The Cyrillic alphabet remained in (gradually decreasing) use until 1860, when Romanian writing was first officially regulated.
In the
Soviet Republic of MoldovaThe Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic , commonly abbreviated to Moldavian SSR or MSSR, was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union...
, a special version of the Cyrillic alphabet derived from the Russian version was used, until 1989, when it returned to the Romanian Latin alphabet.
Romanian alphabet
The Romanian alphabet is as follows:
- A, a (a); Ă, ă (ă); Â, â (â din a); B, b (be); C, c (ce); D, d (de); E, e (e); F, f (fe / ef); G, g (ghe / ge); H, h (ha / haș); I, i (i); Î, î (î din i); J, j (je); K, k (ka / kapa); L, l (le / el); M, m (me / em); N, n (ne / en); O, o (o); P, p (pe); Q (chiu); R, r, (re / er); S, s (se / es); , ș (șe); T, t (te); Ț, ț (țe); U, u (u); V, v (ve); W (dublu ve); X, x (ics); Y (i grec); Z, z (ze / zet).
K, Q, W and Y are not part of the native alphabet, were officially introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982 and are mostly used to write loanwords like
kilogram,
quasar,
watt, and
yoga.
The Romanian alphabet is based on the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
with five additional letters Ă, Â, Î, , Ț. Formerly, there were as many as 12 additional letters, but some of them were abolished in subsequent reforms. Also, until the early 20th century, a short vowel marker was used.
Today the Romanian alphabet is largely
phonemicA phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. In terms of orthographic depth, these are termed shallow orthographies, contrasting with deep orthographies...
. However, the letters
â and
î both represent the same
close central unrounded vowelThe close central unrounded vowel, or high central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The IPA symbol is the letter i with a horizontal bar...
/ɨ/.
 is used only inside words;
î is used at the beginning or the end of single words and in the middle of compound words. Another exception from a completely phonetic writing system is the fact that
vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s and their respective
semivowelIn phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
s are not distinguished in writing. In dictionaries the distinction is marked by separating the entry word into
syllableA syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
s for words containing a
hiatusIn phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong....
.
Stressed vowels also are not marked in writing, except very rarely in cases where by misplacing the stress a word might change its meaning and if the meaning is not obvious from the context. For example
trei copíi means "three children" while
trei cópii means "three copies".
Pronunciation
- h is not silent like in other Romance languages such as Spanish and French, but represents the phoneme /h/, except in the digraphs ch /k/ and gh /g/ (see below)
- j represents /ʒ/, as in French
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
or PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
(the sound spelled with s in the English words 'vision, pleasure, treasure').
- There are two letters with a comma below, and , which represent the sounds /ʃ/ and /t͡s/. However, the allographs with a cedilla instead of a comma, Ș
S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
and ȚT is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets...
, became widespread when pre-UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
and early Unicode character sets did not include the standard form.
- A final orthographical i after a consonant often represents the palatalization of the consonant (e. g. lup /lup/ "wolf" vs. lupi /lupʲ/ "wolves") -- it is not pronounced like Italian lupi (which also means "wolves"), and is indeed an example of the Slavic
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
influence on Romanian.
- ă represents the schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
, /ə/.
- î and â both represent the sound /ɨ/. In rapid speech (for example in the name of the country) the â sound may sound similar to a casual listener to a short schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
sound but careful speakers will distinguish the sound. The nearest equivalent is the vowel in the last syllable of the word roses for some English speakers.
- The letter e generally represents the mid front unrounded vowel [e], somewhat like in the English word set. However, the letter e is pronounced as ie [je] ([j] sounds like 'y' in 'you') when it is the first letter of any form of the verb a fi "to be", or of a personal pronoun, for instance este /jeste/ "is" and el /jel/ "he". This addition of the semivowel /j/ does not occur in more recent loans and their derivatives, such as eră "era", electric "electric" etc. Some words (such as iepure "hare", formerly spelled epure) are now written with the initial i to indicate the semivowel.
- x represents either the phoneme /ks/ as in expresie = expression, or /ɡz/ as in exemplu = example, as in English
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
.
- As in Italian
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, the letters c and g represent the affricates /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ before i and e, and /k/ and /ɡ/ elsewhere. When /k/ and /ɡ/ are followed by vowels /e/ and /i/ (or their corresponding semivowelIn phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
s or the final /ʲ/) the digraphs ch and gh are used instead of c and g, as shown in the table below.
| Group |
Phoneme |
Pronunciation |
Examples |
| ce, ci |
/tʃ/ |
ch in chest, cheek |
cerc (circle), cine (who), cercel (earring), cină (dinner), ciocan (hammer) |
| che, chi |
/k/ |
k in kettle, kiss |
chemare (call), chimie (chemistry), chimen (caraway), chinez (Chinese), ureche (ear) |
| ge, gi |
/dʒ/ |
j in jelly, jigsaw |
ger (frost), gimnast (gymnast), gem (jam), girafă (giraffe), geantă (bag) |
| ghe, ghi |
/ɡ/ |
g in get, give |
ghețar (glacier), ghid (guide), ghindă (acorn), ghidon (handle bar), stingher (lonely) |
Punctuation and capitalization
Uses of punctuation peculiar to Romanian are:
- The quotation marks use the Polish format in the format „quote «inside» quote”, that is, „. . .” for a normal quotation, and double angle symbols for a quotation inside a quotation.
- Proper quotations which span multiple paragraphs don't start each paragraph with the quotation marks; one single pair of quotation marks is always used, regardless of how many paragraphs are quoted;
- Dialogues are identified with quotation dashes;
- The Oxford comma
The serial comma is the comma used immediately before a coordinating conjunction preceding the final item in a list of three or more items...
before "and" is considered incorrect ("red, yellow and blue" is the proper format);
- Punctuation signs which follow a text in parentheses always follow the final bracket;
- In titles, only the first letter of the first word is capitalized, the rest of the title using sentence capitalization (with all its rules: proper names are capitalized as usual, etc.).
- Names of months and days are not capitalized (ianuarie "January", joi "Thursday")
- Adjectives derived from proper names are not capitalized (Germania "Germany", but german "German")
Spelling issues between Romania and Moldova
Prior to 2010, there used to be a minor spelling difference between standard forms of Romanian language used in
RomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
and the variant (also called
MoldovanMoldovan is one of the names of the Romanian language as spoken in the Republic of Moldova, where it is official. The spoken language of Moldova is closer to the dialects of Romanian spoken in northeastern Romania, and the two countries share the same literary standard...
) used in the Republic of Moldova— the
Academy of Sciences of MoldovaThe Academy of Sciences of Moldova , established in 1946, is the main scientific organization of the Republic of Moldova and coordinates research in all areas of science and technology.- Presidents :...
hadn't switched to the new spelling rules introduced by the
Romanian AcademyThe Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....
in 1993. In 2000, the Moldovan Academy recommended adopting the spelling rules used in Romania, and in 2010 the Academy launched a schedule for the transition to the new rules that was completed in 2011 (regarding publications) and is currently under implementation in the educational system (due to be completed within two school years).
Language sample
English text:
- All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
- (Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
)
Contemporary Romanian - highlighted words are French or Italian
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s:
- Toate ființele umane se nasc libere și egale în demnitate și în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu rațiune și conștiință și trebuie să se comporte unele față de altele în spiritul fraternității.
Romanian, excluding French and Italian loanwords - highlighted words are Slavic loanwords:
- Toate ființele omenești se nasc slobode și deopotrivă în destoinicie și în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu înțelegere și cuget și trebuie să se poarte unele față de altele în duh de frățietate.
Romanian, excluding loanwords:
- Toate ființele omenești se nasc nesupuse și asemenea în prețuire și în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu înțelegere și cuget și se cuvine să se poarte unele față de altele după firea frăției.
See also
- Latin Europe
Latin Europe is a loose term for the region of Europe with an especially strong Latin cultural heritage inherited from the Roman Empire.-Application:...
- Romanian lexis
The lexis of the Romanian language , a Romance language, has changed over the centuries as the language evolved from Vulgar Latin, to Proto-Romanian, to medieval, modern and contemporary Romanian.-Medieval Romanian:...
- Romanianization
Romanianization or Rumanization is the term used to describe a number of ethnic assimilation policies implemented by the Romanian authorities during the 20th century...
External links
Learning Romanian
Phrasebooks