Native fromBucharest,Romania, speaking Romanian. The Romanian dialect from Bucharest is standard Romanian (from the region ofMuntenia, part of the historicalWallachia).
Romanian was also known asMoldovan in Moldova, although theConstitutional Court of Moldova ruled in 2013 that "the official language of Moldova is Romanian".[c] On 16 March 2023, theMoldovan Parliament approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution. On 22 March, the president of Moldova,Maia Sandu, promulgated the law.[13]
The history of the Romanian language started in theRoman provinces north of theJireček Line inClassical antiquity but there are 3 main hypotheses about its exact territory: the autochthony thesis (it developed in left-Danube Dacia only), the discontinuation thesis (it developed in right-Danube provinces only), and the "as-well-as" thesis that supports the language development on both sides of the Danube.[14] Between the 6th and 8th century, following the accumulated tendencies inherited from the vernacular spoken in this large area and, to a much smaller degree, the influences fromnative dialects, and in the context of a lessened power of the Roman central authority the language evolved intoCommon Romanian. Thisproto-language then came into close contact with theSlavic languages and subsequently divided intoAromanian,Megleno-Romanian,Istro-Romanian, and Daco-Romanian.[15][16] Due to limited attestation between the 6th and 16th century, entire stages from its history are re-constructed by researchers, often with proposed relative chronologies and loose limits.[17]
From the 12th or 13th century, official documents and religious texts were written inOld Church Slavonic, a language that had a similar role toMedieval Latin in Western Europe. The oldest dated text in Romanian isa letter written in 1521 withCyrillic letters, and until late 18th century, including during the development of printing, the same alphabet was used. The period after 1780, starting with the writing of its first grammar books, represents the modern age of the language, during which time theLatin alphabet became official, the literary language was standardized, and a large number of words fromModern Latin and otherRomance languages entered the lexis.
Yet while the overall lexis was enriched with foreign words and internal constructs, in accordance with the history and development of the society and the diversification in semantic fields, the fundamental lexicon—the corevocabulary used in everyday conversation—remains governed by inherited elements from theLatin spoken in theRoman provinces borderingDanube, without which no coherent sentence can be made.[21]
Most scholars agree that two major dialects had developed from Common Romanian by the 10th century.[2] Daco-Romanian (the official language of Romania and Moldova) andIstro-Romanian (a language spoken today by no more than 2,000 people inIstria) descended from the northern dialect.[2] Two other languages,Aromanian andMegleno-Romanian, developed from the southern version of Common Romanian.[2] These two languages are now spoken in lands to the south of theJireček Line.[22]
Of the features that individualize Common Romanian, inherited from Latin or subsequently developed, of particular importance are:[23]
appearance ofschwa (written asă in Romanian) vowel;
growth of the plural inflectional ending -uri for the neuter gender;
The use of the denominationRomanian (română) for the language and use of the demonymRomanians (Români) for speakers of this language predate the foundation of the modern Romanian state. Romanians always used the general termrumân/român or regional terms such asardeleni (orungureni),moldoveni ormunteni to designate themselves. Both the name ofrumână orrumâniască for the Romanian language and the self-designationrumân/român are attested as early as the 16th century, by various foreign travelers into the Carpathian Romance-speaking space,[24] as well as in other historical documents written in Romanian at that time such asCronicile Țării Moldovei [ro] (The Chronicles of the land of Moldova) byGrigore Ureche.
The few allusions to the use of Romanian in writing as well as common words, anthroponyms and toponyms preserved in the Old Church Slavonic religious writings and chancellery documents, attested prior to the 16th century, along with the analysis of graphemes show that the writing of Romanian with the Cyrillic alphabet started in the second half of the 15th century.[25]
TheHurmuzaki Psalter (Psaltirea Hurmuzaki) is the oldest writing in Romanian, dated on the basis of watermarks between 1491-1504.[26] It is a copy of an older, fifteenth-century translation of the Psalter,[25][27] which was bilingual (written in Church Slavonic, with Romanian translation after each verse).[28] The oldest Romanian document precisely dated isNeacșu's letter (1521) and was written using theRomanian Cyrillic alphabet, which was used until the late 19th century. The letter is the oldest testimony of Romanian epistolary style and uses a prevalent lexis of Latin origin.[29] The slow process of Romanian establishing itself as an official language, used in the public sphere, in literature and ecclesiastically, began in the late 15th century and ended in the early decades of the 18th century, by which time Romanian had begun to be regularly used by the Church. The oldest Romanian texts of a literary nature are liturgical texts of theEastern Orthodox Church: Psalter (Hurmuzaki Psalter, Scheian Psalter, Psalter of Voroneț) andApostolos lectionary (Bratu's Codex, Codex of Voroneț). Their origins go back to the 15th century. The fact that they are bilingual writings or descend from bilingual writings shows that the initiative to translate them was prompted by the need to facilitate access to the Church Slavonic liturgical text.[28]
The language spoken during this period had a phonological system of seven vowels and twenty-nine consonants. Particular toOld Romanian are the distribution of /z/, as the allophone of /dz/ fromCommon Romanian, in the Wallachian and south-east Transylvanian varieties, the presence of palatal sonorants /ʎ/ and /ɲ/, nowadays preserved only regionally inBanat andOltenia, and the beginning of devoicing of asyllabic [u] after consonants.[25] Text analysis revealed words that are now lost from modern vocabulary or used only in local varieties. These words were of various provenience for example: Latin (cure - to run,mâneca- to leave), Old Church Slavonic (drăghicame - gem, precious stone,prilăsti - to trick, to cheat), Hungarian (bizăntui - to bear witness).[30]
The modern age of Romanian starts in 1780 with the printing in Vienna of a very important grammar book[23] titledElementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae. The author of the book,Samuil Micu-Klein, and the revisor,Gheorghe Șincai, both members of theTransylvanian School, chose to useLatin as the language of the text and presented thephonetical andgrammatical features of Romanian in comparison to its ancestor.[31] The Modern age of Romanian language can be further divided into three phases: pre-modern or modernizing between 1780 and 1830, modern phase between 1831 and 1880, and contemporary from 1880 onwards.
Beginning with the printing in 1780 ofElementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae, the pre-modern phase was characterized by the publishing of school textbooks, appearance of first normative works in Romanian, numerous translations, and the beginning of a conscious stage ofre-latinization of the language.[23] Notable contributions, besides that of theTransylvanian School, are the activities ofGheorghe Lazăr, founder of the first Romanian school, andIon Heliade Rădulescu. The end of this period is marked by the first printing of magazines and newspapers in Romanian, in particularCurierul Românesc andAlbina Românească.[32]
Starting from 1831 and lasting until 1880 the modern phase is characterized by the development of literary styles: scientific, administrative, andbelletristic. It quickly reached a high point with the printing ofDacia Literară, a journal founded byMihail Kogălniceanu and representing a literary society, which together with other publications likePropășirea andGazeta de Transilvania spread the ideas ofRomantic nationalism and later contributed to the formation of other societies that took part in theRevolutions of 1848. Their members and those that shared their views are collectively known in Romania as "of '48"(pașoptiști), a name that was extended to the literature and writers around this time such asVasile Alecsandri,Grigore Alexandrescu,Nicolae Bălcescu,Timotei Cipariu.[33]
Between 1830 and 1860 "transitional alphabets" were used, adding Latin letters to theRomanian Cyrillic alphabet. The Latin alphabet became official at different dates in Wallachia and Transylvania - 1860, and Moldova -1862.[34]
Following theunification of Moldavia and Wallachia further studies on the language were made, culminating with the founding ofSocietatea Literară Română on 1 April 1866 on the initiative ofC. A. Rosetti, an academic society that had the purpose of standardizing the orthography, formalizing the grammar and (via a dictionary) vocabulary of the language, and promoting literary and scientific publications. This institution later became theRomanian Academy.[35]
The third phase of the modern age of Romanian language, starting from 1880 and continuing to this day, is characterized by the prevalence of the supradialectal form of the language, standardized with the express contribution of the school system and Romanian Academy, bringing a close to the process of literary language modernization and development of literary styles.[20] It is distinguished by the activity of Romanian literature classics in its early decades:Mihai Eminescu,Ion Luca Caragiale,Ion Creangă,Ioan Slavici.[36]
The current orthography, with minor reforms to this day and using Latin letters, was fully implemented in 1881, regulated by the Romanian Academy on a fundamentally phonological principle, with few morpho-syntactic exceptions.[37]
The firstRomanian grammar was published in Vienna in 1780.[38] Following theannexation of Bessarabia by Russia in 1812, Moldavian was established as an official language in the governmental institutions ofBessarabia, used along with Russian,[39]The publishing works established by ArchbishopGavril Bănulescu-Bodoni were able to produce books and liturgical works in Moldavian between 1815 and 1820.[40]
Bessarabia during the 1812–1918 era witnessed the gradual development ofbilingualism. Russian continued to develop as the official language of privilege, whereas Romanian remained the principal vernacular.[citation needed]
The period from 1905 to 1917 was one of increasing linguistic conflict spurred by an increase in Romanian nationalism.[citation needed] In 1905 and 1906, the Bessarabianzemstva 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, Romanian-language newspapers and journals began to appear, such asBasarabia (1906),Viața Basarabiei (1907),Moldovanul (1907),Luminătorul (1908),Cuvînt moldovenesc (1913),Glasul Basarabiei (1913). From 1913, the synod permitted that "the churches inBessarabia use the Romanian language". Romanian finally became the official language with theConstitution of 1923.
Romanian has preserved a part of the Latindeclension. However, whileLatin had sixcases, from a morphological viewpoint, Romanian has only three: thenominative/accusative,genitive/dative, and marginally thevocative. Romanian nouns also preserve the neutergender, although instead of functioning as a separate gender with its own forms in adjectives, the Romanian neuter became a mixture of masculine and feminine. Theverb morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compoundperfect andfuture tense as the other Romance languages. Compared with the otherRomance languages, during its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latintense system.[41]
Romanian is spoken mostly inCentral,South-Eastern, andEastern Europe, 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,[42] and 4% of the Romance-speaking population of the world.[43]
Romanian is the single official and national language in Romania and Moldova, although it shares the official status at regional level with other languages in the Moldovan autonomies ofGagauzia andTransnistria. Romanian is also an official language of theAutonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia along with five other languages. Romanian minorities are encountered in Serbia (Timok Valley), Ukraine (Chernivtsi andOdesaoblasts), and Hungary (Gyula). Large immigrant communities are found in Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal.
In 1995, the largest Romanian-speaking community in the Middle East was found in Israel, where Romanian was spoken by 5% of the population.[44][45] Romanian is also spoken as a second language by people from Arabic-speaking countries who have studied in Romania. It is estimated that almost half a million Middle Eastern Arabs studied in Romania during the 1980s.[46] Small Romanian-speaking communities are to be found in Kazakhstan and Russia. Romanian is also spoken within communities of Romanian and Moldovan immigrants in the United States, Canada and Australia, although they do not make up a large homogeneous community statewide.
1 Many are Moldavians 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 language" 3 In Transnistria, it is officially called "Moldovan language" and is written inMoldovan Cyrillic alphabet. 4 Officially divided into Vlachs and Romanians 5 Most in Northern Bukovina and Southern Bessarabia; according to aMoldova Noastră study (based on the latest Ukrainian census).[57]
According to theConstitution of Romania of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic.[58]
Romania mandates the use of Romanian in official government publications, public education and legal contracts. Advertisements as well as other public messages must bear a translation of foreign words,[59] while trade signs and logos shall be written predominantly in Romanian.[60]
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.[61]
Romanian is the official language of the Republic of Moldova. The 1991Declaration of Independence named the official language Romanian,[64][65] and theConstitution of Moldova as originally adopted in 1994 named the state language of the countryMoldovan. In December 2013, a decision of theConstitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the Declaration of Independence took precedence over the Constitution and the state language should be called Romanian.[66] In 2023, the Moldovan parliament passed a law officially adopting the designation "Romanian" in all legal instruments, implementing the 2013 court decision.[67]
Scholars agree that Moldovan and Romanian are the same language, with theglottonym "Moldovan" used in certain political contexts.[68] It has been the sole official language since the adoption of the Law on State Language of theMoldavian SSR in 1989.[69] This law mandates the use of Moldovan in all the political, economic, cultural and social spheres, as well as asserting the existence of a "linguistic Moldo-Romanian identity".[70] 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 Transnistria, it is co-official withUkrainian and Russian.
In the2014 census, out of the 2,804,801 people living in Moldova, 24% (652,394) stated Romanian as their most common language, whereas 56% stated Moldovan. While in the urban centers speakers are split evenly between the two names (with the capitalChișinău showing a strong preference for the name "Romanian", i.e. 3:2), in the countryside hardly a quarter of Romanian/Moldovan speakers indicated Romanian as their native language.[71] Unofficial results of this census first showed a stronger preference for the name Romanian, however the initial reports were later dismissed by the Institute for Statistics, which led to speculations in the media regarding the forgery of the census results.[72]
Official usage of Romanian language inVojvodina, Serbia
Romanian language in entire Serbia (see alsoRomanians in Serbia), census 2002
1–5%
5–10%
10–15%
15–25%
25–35%
over 35%
TheConstitution 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.[73]
The Statute of the Autonomous Province ofVojvodina determines that, together with theSerbian language and the Cyrillic script, and the Latin script as stipulated by the law, theCroat,Hungarian,Slovak, Romanian andRusyn languages 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.[74][75] The bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are: the Assembly, the Executive Council and the provincial administrative bodies.
In parts of Ukraine whereRomanians constitute a significant share of the local population (districts inChernivtsi,Odesa andZakarpattiaoblasts) Romanian is taught in schools as a primary language and there are Romanian-language newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting.[78][79]TheUniversity of Chernivtsi in western Ukraine trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics.[80]
Romanian is an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations, such as theLatin Union and theEuropean Union. Romanian is also one of the five languages in which religious services are performed in the autonomous monastic state ofMount Athos, spoken in the monastic communities ofProdromos andLakkoskiti. In the unrecognised state ofTransnistria, Moldovan is one of the official languages. However, unlike all other dialects of Romanian,this variety of Moldovan is written in Cyrillic script.
Distribution of first-language native Romanian speakers by country.Voivodina is an autonomous province of northernSerbia bordering Romania, whileAltele means "Other"
Romanian is taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such asVojvodina in Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary. TheRomanian Cultural Institute (ICR) has since 1992 organised summer courses in Romanian for language teachers.[81] There are also non-Romanians who study Romanian as a foreign language, for example the Nicolae Bălcescu High-school inGyula, Hungary.
Romanian is taught as aforeign language in tertiary institutions, mostly in European countries such as Germany, France and Italy, and the Netherlands, as well as in the United States. Overall, it is taught as a foreign language in 43 countries around the world.[82]
Romanian as secondary or foreign language in Central and Eastern Europe
Also some artists wrote songs dedicated to the Romanian language. The multi-platinum pop trioO-Zone (originally from Moldova) 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 English as "I won't forsake our language, our Romanian language". Also, the Moldovan musiciansDoina and Ion Aldea Teodorovici performed a song called "The Romanian language".
Romanian is also called Daco-Romanian in comparative linguistics to distinguish from the other dialects ofCommon Romanian:Aromanian,Megleno-Romanian, andIstro-Romanian. The origin of the term "Daco-Romanian" can be traced back to the first printed book of Romanian grammar in 1780,[38] bySamuil Micu andGheorghe Șincai. There, the Romanian dialect spoken north of theDanube is calledlingua Daco-Romana to emphasize its origin and its area of use, which includes the formerRoman province ofDacia, although it is spoken also south of the Danube, inDobruja, theTimok Valley and northern Bulgaria.
This article deals with the Romanian (i.e. 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 and spoken standard (literary) Romanian language used by all speakers, regardless of region. Like most natural languages, Romanian dialects are part of adialect continuum. The dialects of Romanian are also referred to as 'sub-dialects' and are distinguished primarily by phonetic differences. Romanians themselves speak of the differences as 'accents' or 'speeches' (in Romanian:accent orgrai).[83]
Depending on the criteria used for classifying these dialects, fewer or more are found, ranging from 2 to 20, although the most widespread approaches give a number of five dialects. These are grouped into two main types, southern and northern, further divided as follows:
Romanian is a Romance language, belonging to theItalic branch of theIndo-European language family, having much in common with languages such as Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese.[89]
Compared with the other Romance languages, the closest relative of Romanian is Italian.[89] Romanian has had a greater share of foreign influence than some other Romance languages such as Italian in terms of vocabulary and other aspects. A 1949 study by the Italian-American linguistMario Pei, analyzing the degree to which seven Romance languages diverged from Vulgar Latin with respect to their accent vocalization, yielded the following measurements of divergence (with higher percentages indicating greater divergence from the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin):
The study emphasized, however, that it represented only "a very elementary, incomplete and tentative demonstration" of how statistical methods could measure linguistic change, assigned "frankly arbitrary" point values to various types of change, and did not compare languages in the sample with respect to any characteristics or forms of divergence other than stressed vowels, among other caveats.[90]
Thelexical similarity of Romanian with Italian has been estimated at 77%, followed by French at 75%, Sardinian 74%, Catalan 73%, Portuguese andRhaeto-Romance 72%, Spanish 71%.[91]
The Romanian vocabulary became predominantly influenced by French and, to a lesser extent, Italian in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[92]
While most of Romanian grammar and morphology are based on Latin, there are some features that are shared only with other languages of theBalkans and not found in other Romance languages. The shared features of Romanian and the other languages of theBalkan language area (Bulgarian,Macedonian,Albanian, Greek, andSerbo-Croatian) include a suffixeddefinite article, thesyncretism of genitive and dative case and the formation of the future and the alternation of infinitive with subjunctive constructions.[93][94] According to a well-established scholarly theory, most Balkanisms could be traced back to the development of the Balkan Romance languages; these features were adopted by other languages due tolanguage shift.[95]
Slavic influence on Romanian is especially noticeable in its vocabulary, with words of Slavic origin constituting about 10–15% of modern Romanian lexicon,[96][97] and with further influences in its phonetics, morphology and syntax. The greater part of its Slavic vocabulary comes fromOld Church Slavonic,[98][99] which was the official written language ofWallachia andMoldavia from the 14th to the 18th century (although not understood by most people), as well as theliturgical language of theRomanian Orthodox Church.[100][101] As a result, much Romanian vocabulary dealing with religion, ritual, and hierarchy is Slavic.[102][100] The number of high-frequency Slavic-derived words is also believed to indicate contact or cohabitation withSouth Slavic tribes from around the 6th century, though it is disputed where this took place (seeOrigin of the Romanians).[100] Words borrowed in this way tend to be more vernacular (comparesfârși, "to end", withsăvârși, "to commit").[102] It has also been argued that Slavic borrowing was a key factor in the development of[ɨ] (î andâ) as a separatephoneme.[103]
Furthermore, during theHabsburg and, later on,Austrian rule ofBanat,Transylvania, andBukovina, a large number of words were borrowed fromAustrian High German, in particular in fields such as the military, administration, social welfare, economy, etc.[104] Subsequently, German terms have been taken out of science and technics, like:șină <Schiene "rail",știft <Stift "peg",liță <Litze "braid",șindrilă <Schindel "shingle",ștanță <Stanze "punch",șaibă <Scheibe "washer",ștangă <Stange "crossbar",țiglă <Ziegel "tile",șmirghel <Schmirgelpapier "emery paper";
Greek:folos <ófelos "use",buzunar <buzunára "pocket",proaspăt <prósfatos "fresh",cutie <cution "box",portocale <portokalia "oranges". While Latin borrowed words of Greek origin, Romanian obtained Greek loanwords on its own. Greek entered Romanian through theapoikiai (colonies) andemporia (trade stations) founded in and aroundDobruja, through the presence ofByzantine Empire in north of theDanube, throughBulgarian during Bulgarian Empires that converted Romanians to Orthodox Christianity, and after the Greek Civil War, when thousands of Greeks fled Greece.
Additionally, theRomani language has provided a series of slang words to Romanian such as:mișto "good, beautiful, cool" <mišto,[105]gagică "girlie, girlfriend" <gadji,a hali "to devour" <halo,mandea "yours truly" <mande,a mangli "to pilfer" <manglo.
Since the 19th century, many literary or learned words were borrowed from the other Romance languages, especially from French and Italian (for example:birou "desk, office",avion "airplane",exploata "exploit"). It was estimated that about 38% of words in Romanian are of French and/or Italian origin (in many cases both languages); and adding this to Romanian's native stock, about 75%–85% of Romanian words can be traced to Latin. The use of these Romanianized French and Italian learned loans has tended to increase at the expense of previous 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 Moldova, the re-latinization of the vocabulary has tended to reinforce the Latin character of the language.
In the process of lexical modernization, much of the native Latin stock have acquired doublets from otherRomance languages, thus forming a further and more modern and literary lexical layer. Typically, the native word is a noun and the learned loan is an adjective. Some examples of doublets:
In the 20th century, an increasing number of English words have been borrowed (such as:gem < jam;interviu < interview;meci < match;manager < manager;fotbal < football;sandvici/sendviș < sandwich;bișniță < business;chec < cake;veceu < WC;tramvai < tramway). These words are assigned grammatical gender in Romanian and handled according to Romanian rules; thus "the manager" ismanagerul. Some borrowings, for example in the computer field, appear to have awkward (perhaps contrived and ludicrous) 'Romanisation,' such ascookie-uri which is the plural of the Internet termcookie; normally, the hyphen isn't used for plural endings and definite articles.
In some cases, there are multiple variants of loanwords, such asmaus/mauși (masculine) andmouse/mouse-uri (neuter).
A 1988 statistic by Marius Sala is based on 2,581 words chosen on the criteria of frequency, semantic richness and productivity, which also contain words formed on the territory of the Romanian language. This statistic gives the percentages below:[96]
If the analysis is restricted to a core vocabulary of 2,500 frequent, semantically rich and productive words, then the Latin inheritance comes first, followed by Romance and classical Latin neologisms, whereas the Slavic borrowings come third.
Romanian nouns are characterized by gender (feminine, masculine, and neuter), anddeclined by number (singular and plural) and case (nominative/accusative,dative/genitive andvocative). The articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns,agree in gender, number and case with the noun they modify.
Romanian has sevenvowels:/i/,/ɨ/,/u/,/e/,/ə/,/o/ and/a/. Additionally,/ø/ and/y/ may appear in someborrowed words. Arguably, the diphthongs/e̯a/ and/o̯a/ are also part of the phoneme set. There are twenty-two consonants. The twoapproximants/j/ and/w/ can appear before or after any vowel, creating a large number of glide-vowel sequences which are, strictly speaking, notdiphthongs.
In final positions after consonants, a short/i/ can be deleted, surfacing only as thepalatalization of the preceding consonant (e.g.,[mʲ]). Similarly, a deleted/u/ may promptlabialization of a preceding consonant, though this has ceased to carry any morphological meaning.
Owing to its isolation from the other Romance languages, the phonetic evolution of Romanian was quite different, but the language does share a few changes with Italian, such as[kl] →[kj] (Lat.clarus → Rom.chiàr, Ital.chiaro, Lat. clamare → Rom.chemare, Ital.chiamare) and[ɡl] →[ɡj] (Lat. *glacia (glacies) → Rom.ghéață, Ital.ghiaccia,ghiaccio, Lat. *ungla (ungula) → Rom. unghie, Ital. unghia), although this did not go as far as it did in Italian with other similar clusters (Rom.plàce, Ital.piace).
Another similarity with Italian is the change from[ke] or[ki] to[tʃe] or[tʃi] (Lat. pax, pacem → Rom. and Ital. pace, Lat. dulcem → Rom. dulce, Ital. dolce, Lat.circus → Rom.cerc, Ital.circo) and[ɡe] or[ɡi] to[dʒe] or[dʒi] (Lat.gelu → Rom.gèr, Ital.gelo, Lat. marginem → Rom. and Ital. margine, Lat.gemere → Rom.gèm (gemere), Ital.gemere).
There are also a few changes shared withDalmatian, such as/ɡn/ (probably phonetically[ŋn]) →[mn] (Lat. cognatus → Rom. cumnat, Dalm. comnut) and/ks/ →[ps] in some situations (Lat. coxa → Rom. cópsă, Dalm. copsa).
Among the notable phonetic changes are:
diphthongization of e and o → ea and oa, before ă (or e as well, in the case of o) in the next syllable:
Alveolars[dt] assibilated to[(d)z][(t)s] when before short[e] or long[iː]
Lat.deus → Rom.ḑèŭ →zèŭ (god)
Lat.tenem → Rom.ține (hold)
Romanian has entirely lost Latin/kw/ (qu), turning it either into/p/ (Lat.quattuor → Rom.pàtru, "four"; cf. It.quattro) or/k/ (Lat.quando → Rom.când, "when"; Lat.quale → Rom.càre, "which").
The first written record about aRomance language spoken in the Middle Ages in the Balkans is from 587. A Vlach muleteer accompanying the Byzantine army noticed that the load was falling from one of the animals and shouted to a companionTorna, torna, fratre! (meaning "Return, return, brother!").Theophanes Confessor recorded it as part of a 6th-century military expedition byComentiolus andPriscus against the Avars and Slovenes.[112]
The oldest surviving written text in Romanian is a letter from late June 1521,[113] in which Neacșu ofCâmpulung wrote to the mayor ofBrașov about an imminent attack of the Turks. It was written using theCyrillic alphabet, like most early Romanian writings. The earliest surviving writing in Latin script was a late 16th-centuryTransylvanian text which was written with theHungarian alphabet conventions.[citation needed]
In the 18th century,Transylvanian scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted theLatin alphabet to the Romanian language, using some orthographic rules fromItalian, recognized as Romanian's closest relative. The Cyrillic alphabet remained in (gradually decreasing) use until 1860, when Romanian writing was first officially regulated.
In theSoviet Republic of Moldova, the Russian-derivedMoldovan Cyrillic alphabet was used until 1989, when the Romanian Latin alphabet was introduced; in the breakaway territory of Transnistria the Cyrillic alphabet remains in use.[114]
K, Q, W and Y, are not part of the native alphabet; they were officially introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982 and are mostly used to write loanwords likekilogram,quasar,watt, andyoga.
The Romanian alphabet is based on theLatin script with five additional lettersĂ,Â,Î,Ș,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 breve marker was used, which survives only in ă.
Today the Romanian alphabet is largelyphonemic. However, the lettersâ andî both represent the sameclose central unrounded vowel/ɨ/. is used only inside words;î is used at the beginning or the end of non-compound words and in the middle of compound words. Another exception from a completely phonetic writing system is the fact thatvowels and their respectivesemivowels are not distinguished in writing. In dictionaries the distinction is marked by separating the entry word intosyllables for words containing ahiatus.
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" whiletrei cópii means "three copies".
h is not silent like in other Romance languages such as Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan and French, but represents the phoneme/h/, except in the digraphsch /k/ andgh /g/ (see below)
j represents/ʒ/, as in French, Catalan or Portuguese (the sound spelled withs in the English words "vision, pleasure, treasure").
There are two letters with a comma below,Ș andȚ, which represent the sounds/ʃ/ and/t͡s/. However, the allographs with a cedilla instead of a comma,Ş andŢ, became widespread when pre-Unicode and early Unicodecharacter sets did not include the standard form.
î andâ both represent the sound/ɨ/. In rapid speech (for example in the name of the country) theâ sound may sound similar to a casual listener to the shortschwa soundă (in fact,Aromanian does merge the two, writing themã) but careful speakers will distinguish the sound. The nearest equivalent is the vowel in the last syllable of the wordroses for some English dialects which distinguish it fromRosa's or the second syllable of the word "rhythm". It is also roughly equivalent to European Portuguese/ɨ/, the Polishy or the Russianы.
The lettere generally represents themid front unrounded vowel[e], somewhat like in the English wordset. However, the lettere is pronounced as[je] ([j] sounds like 'y' in 'you') when it is the first letter of any form of the verba fi "to be", or of a personal pronoun, for instanceeste/jeste/ "is" andel/jel/ "he".[115][116] This addition of the semivowel/j/ does not occur in more recent loans and their derivatives, such aseră "era",electric "electric" etc. Some words (such asiepure "hare", formerly spelledepure) are now written with the initiali to indicate the semivowel.
x represents either the phoneme sequence/ks/ as inexpresie = expression, or/ɡz/ as inexemplu = example, as in English.
As in Italian, the lettersc andg represent the affricates/tʃ/ and/dʒ/ beforei ande, and/k/ and/ɡ/ elsewhere. When/k/ and/ɡ/ are followed by vowels/e/ and/i/ (or their correspondingsemivowels or the final/ʲ/) the digraphsch andgh are used instead ofc andg, as shown in the table below. Unlike Italian, however, Romanian usesce- andge- to write/t͡ʃ/ and/d͡ʒ/ before a central vowel instead ofci- andgi-.
Quotation marks use one of thePolish quotation formats, specifically „quote «inside» quote”, that is, „…” for a normal quotation, and «…» for a quotation inside a quotation.
Proper quotations which span multiple paragraphs do not start each paragraph with quotation marks; quotation marks are placed only at the beginning and the end of the entire quotation, regardless of how many paragraphs it contains.
TheOxford comma 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", butgerman "German").
In 1993, new spelling rules were proposed by theRomanian Academy. In 2000, the Moldovan Academy recommended adopting the same spelling rules,[117] and in 2010 the Academy launched a schedule for the transition to the new rules that was intended to be completed by publications in 2011.[118]
On 17 October 2016, the Moldovan minister of education signed Order No. 872, adopting the revised spelling rules as recommended by the Moldovan Academy of Sciences, and giving the following two school years as a transition period. Thus the spelling used by institutions under Moldova's ministry of education has been brought in line with the Romanian Academy's 1993 recommendation. This order, however, did not apply to other government institutions, and Law 3462 of 1989 (which provided for the means of transliterating Cyrillic to Latin) has not been amended to reflect the ministry of education's changes either; thus, most Moldovan government institutions, along with most Moldovans, prefer to use the spelling adopted in 1989 (when the use of Latin script became official).
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.
The same sentence, with French and Italianloanwords highlighted instead:
Toate ființeleumane se nasclibere șiegale îndemnitate și în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate curațiune șiconștiință și trebuie să secomporte unele față de altele înspiritulfraternității.
The sentence rewritten to exclude French and Italian loanwords. Slavic loanwords are highlighted:
Toate ființele omenești se nascslobode șideopotrivă îndestoinicie și în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu înțelegere și cuget șitrebuie să se poarte unele față de altele înduh de frățietate.
The sentence rewritten to exclude all loanwords. The meaning is unchanged:
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 frățește.
^abThe internal classification of the Eastern Romance languages presented in Petrucci (1999) proposes a bipartite split into Northern and Southern branches, with the Northern branch splitting into Istro-Romanian and Daco-Romanian.[2] By contrast, the classification presented withinGlottolog v4.8 proposes a bipartite split between Aromanian and Northern Romanian, the latter of which is further split into Istro-Romanian and Eastern Romanian, from which Daco-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian are hypothesized to have split.[3]
^Sala, Marius (2012).De la Latină la Română] [From Latin to Romanian]. Editura Pro Universitaria. p. 13.ISBN978-606-647-435-1.
^Brâncuș, Grigore (2005).Introducere în istoria limbii române] [Introduction to the History of Romanian Language]. Editura Fundației România de Mâine. p. 16.ISBN973-725-219-5.
^Sala, Marius (2012).De la Latină la Română] [From Latin to Romanian]. Editura Pro Universitaria. p. 44.ISBN978-606-647-435-1.
^Schulte, Kim (2009). "Loanwords in Romanian". In Haspelmath, Martin; Tadmor, Uri (eds.).Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 231–250.ISBN978-3-11-021843-5.
^abPană Dindelegan, Gabriela,The Grammar of Romanian, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-964492-6, page 5
^Sala, Marius (2012).De la Latină la Română] [From Latin to Romanian]. Editura Pro Universitaria. pp. 63–64.ISBN978-606-647-435-1.
^Sala, Marius (2012).De la Latină la Română] [From Latin to Romanian]. Editura Pro Universitaria. p. 160.ISBN978-606-647-435-1.
^Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela,The Grammar of Romanian, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-964492-6, page 5
^abMicu, Samuil; Șincai, Gheorghe (1780).Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae (in Latin). Vienna.
^(in Russian)Charter for the organization of the Bessarabian Oblast, 29 April 1818, in "Печатается по изданию: Полное собрание законов Российской империи. Собрание первое.", Vol 35.1818,Sankt Petersburg, 1830, pg. 222–227. Available online athrono.infoArchived 24 September 2012 at theWayback Machine
^King, Charles (2000).The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. pp. 21–22.ISBN08-1799-792-X.
^D’hulst, Yves; Coene, Martine; Avram, Larisa (2004). "Syncretic and Analytic Tenses in Romanian: The Balkan Setting of Romance". In Mišeska Tomić, Olga (ed.).Balkan Syntax and Semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. p. 355.doi:10.1075/la.67.18dhu.ISBN978-90-272-2790-4.general absence of consecutio temporum.
^"Redirect to Census data page".www.abs.gov.au.Archived from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved15 November 2019. c=AU; o=Commonwealth of Australia; ou=Australian Bureau of Statistics.
^Schulte, Kim (2009). "Loanwords in Romanian". In Haspelmath, Martin; Tadmor, Uri (eds.).Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 230–259.ISBN978-3-11-021843-5.
^Lindstedt, J. (2000). "Linguistic Balkanization: Contact-induced change by mutual reinforcement". In D. G. Gilbers; et al. (eds.).Languages in Contact. Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics, 28. Amsterdam & Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. p. 235.ISBN90-4201-322-2.
^abcMarius Sala (coord), Mihaela Bîrlădeanu, Maria Iliescu, Liliana Macarie, Ioana Nichita, Mariana Ploae-Hanganu, Maria Theban, Ioana Vintilă-Rădulescu,Vocabularul reprezentativ al limbilor romanice (VRLR) (Bucharest: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, 1988).
^Macrea, Dimitrie (1961). "Originea și structura limbii române (7–45)".Probleme de lingvistică română (in Romanian). Bucharest: Editura Științifică. p. 32.
^Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela, ed. (2013).The Grammar of Romanian (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 3.ISBN9780199644926.
^Zafiu, Rodica (2009)."Mișto și legenda bastonului".România literară (in Romanian). No. 6. Archived fromthe original on 21 September 2018. Retrieved21 September 2018.There is no doubt among linguists about the Romany etymology of the Romanian wordmișto, but a fairly widespread folk etymology and urban legend maintains that the German phrasemit Stock 'with stick' would be its true origin.
^Vocabularul reprezentativ diferă de vocabularul fundamental (VF) și de fondul principal lexical (FP). Cf. SCL (Studii și cercetări lingvistice), an XXVII (1976), nr. 1, p. 61-66 și SCL (1974) nr. 3, p. 247. Cf. Theodor Hristea, "Structura generală a lexicului românesc",Sinteze de limba română, eds., Theodor Hristea (coord.), Mioara Avram, Grigore Brâncuș, Gheorghe Bulgăr, Georgeta Ciompec, Ion Diaconescu, Rodica Bogza-Irimie & Flora Șuteu (Bucharest: 1984), 13.
^Baynes, Thomas Spencer, ed. (1898)."Vlachs".Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature. Vol. 24 (9th ed.). Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. p. 269.
^Dyer, Donald L. (1999). "Some Influences of Russian on the Romanian of Moldova during the Soviet Period".The Slavic and East European Journal.43 (1):85–98.doi:10.2307/309907.JSTOR309907.
^The new edition of "Dicționarul ortografic al limbii române (ortoepic, morfologic, cu norme de punctuație)" – introduced by theAcademy of Sciences of Moldova and recommended for publishing following a conference on 15 November 2000 – applies the decision of the General Meeting of theRomanian Academy from 17 February 1993, regarding the reintroduction to "â" and "sunt" in the orthography of the Romanian language. (Introduction, Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova)
Andreose, Alvise;Renzi, Lorenzo (2013). "Geography and Distribution of the Romance Languages in Europe". In Maiden, Martin; Smith, John Charles; Ledgeway, Adam (eds.).The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages. Vol. 2: Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 283–334.ISBN978-0-521-80073-0.
Giurescu, Constantin C. (1972).The Making of the Romanian People and Language. Bucharest: Meridiane.
Kahl, Thede, ed. (2009).Das Rumänische und seine Nachbarn (in German). Berlin: Frank & Timme.
