'Romanian' (''limba română'', ) is a
Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people
, primarily in
Romania and
Moldova. It has official status in
Romania,
Moldova and the Autonomous Province of
Vojvodina (
Serbia). The official form of the
Moldovan language [ in the Republic of Moldova is identical to the official form of Romanian, although prior to 2001, there existed a minor difference in spelling, that was finally abolished.[2] Romanian is also an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations (such as the Latin Union and the European Union).]
Romanian speakers are also found abroad in many other countries, notably in Italy, Spain, Israel, Portugal, United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, France and Germany (cf. Romanians).
History
The Romanian territory was inhabited in ancient times by the Dacians, an Indo-European people. They were defeated by the Roman Empire in 106 and part of Dacia (Oltenia, Banat and Transylvania) became a Roman province. For the next 165 years, there is evidence of considerable Roman colonization in the area, the region being in close communication with the rest of the Roman empire. Vulgar Latin became the language of the administration and commerce.
Under the pressure of the Free Dacians and of the Goths, the Roman administration and legions were withdrawn from Dacia between 271-275. Whether the Romanians are the descendants of these people that abandoned the area and settled south of the Danube or of the people that remained in Dacia is a matter of debate. ''For further discussion, see Origin of Romanians''.
The place of Romanian within the Romance language family
Due to its geographical isolation, Romanian was probably the first language that split from Latin and until the modern age was not influenced by other Romance languages, which can explain why it is one of the most uniform languages in Europe. It is more conservative than other Romance languages in nominal morphology. Romanian has preserved declension, but whereas Latin had seven cases, Romanian has three, the nominative/accusative, the genitive/dative, and the vocative, and holds the neuter gender as well. However, the verbal morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compound perfect and future tense as the other Romance languages.
Map of Balkans with regions inhabited by Romanians/Vlachs highlighted
All the dialects of Romanian are believed to have been unified in a Common Romanian language until sometime between the 7th and the 10th century when the area was influenced by the Byzantine Empire and Romanian became influenced by the Slavonic languages and to some degree the Greek language as well. Aromanian language has very few Slavonic words. Also, the variations in the Daco-Romanian dialect (spoken throughout Romania and Moldova) are very small. The use of this uniform Daco-Romanian dialect extends well beyond the borders of the Romanian state: a Romanian-speaker from Moldova speaks the same language as a Romanian-speaker from the Serbian Banat.
Romanian developed in isolation with regard to the other Romance languages. Therefore, it was influenced by Slavonic (due to migration/assimilation, and feudal/ecclesiastical relations), Greek (Byzantine, then Phanariote), Turkish, and Hungarian, while the other Romance languages adopted words and features of Germanic.
Classification
Romanian is a Romance language, belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family, having much in common with languages such as French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
However, the languages closest to Romanian are the other Eastern Romance languages, spoken south of Danube: Aromanian/Macedo-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian, which are sometimes 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 Roman province of Dacia).
The Romanian variety spoken in Moldova has been named the Moldovan language by the Soviet and later Moldovan authorities, but linguists do not recognize it as a different language.
Out of the main Romance languages, Romanian is closest to Italian, the two show limited degree of asymmetrical mutual intelligibility, especially in their cultivated forms: speakers of Romanian seem to understand Italian more easily than the other way around. Even though Romanian has obvious lexical and grammatical similarities with French, Catalan, Spanish or Portuguese, it is not mutually intelligible with them to a practical extent; Romanian speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary before being able to understand even the simplest sentences in those languages (and vice-versa).
In the following sample sentence (meaning "She always closes the window before having dinner.") cognates are written in bold:
:'''Ea semper fenestram claudit antequam cenet.''' (Latin)
:'''Ea închide' întotdeauna 'fereastra înainte de a cina.''' (Romanian)
:'''Ella' 'chiude sempre la finestra' prima 'di cenare'''. (Italian)
:'''Elle' ferme toujours 'la fenêtre avant de' dîner.'' (French)
:'''Ella siempre' cierra la ventana 'antes de cenar'.'' (Spanish)
:'''Ela' fecha 'sempre' a janela 'antes de' jantar.'' (Portuguese)
:'''Ella' tanca 'sempre la finestra' 'abans de' sopar.'' (Catalan)
On the other hand, Romanian vocabulary has been strongly influenced by French and Italian in the Modern Age (see French, Italian and other international words). At present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 77%, whereas French follows at 75%, Sardinian 74%, Catalan 73%, Spanish at 71%, Portuguese and Rhaeto-Romance at 72%.
Geographic distribution
'Roumanophone countries and territories' Dark red: national; red: official language; Light red: national minority; green: minority.
national | official | national minority | minority |
| 'Country' | Speakers (%) | Speakers (native) | Population (2005) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Europe |
|---|
| Romania | 91% | 19,736,517 | 21,698,181 |
| Moldova ² | 76.4% | 2,588,355 | 3,388,071 |
| Transnistria (Moldova)³ | 31.9% | 177,050 | 555,500 |
| Vojvodina (Serbia) | 1.5% | 29,512 | 2,031,992 |
| not official: |
| Timočka Krajina (Serbia) 4 | 8.2% | 58,221 | 712,050 |
| Ukraine 5 | 0.8% | 327,703 | 48,457,000 |
| Spain | 0.83% | 312,000[3] | 44,708,964 |
| Italy | 0.51% | 297,570 | 58,462,375 |
| Hungary | 0.08% | 8,482 | 10,198,315 |
| Asia |
|---|
| not official: | |||
| Israel | 3.7% | 250,000 | 6,800,000 |
| Kazakhstan 1 | 0.1% | 20,054 | 14,953,126 |
| Russia 1 | 0.12% | 169,698 [4] | 145,537,200 |
| The Americas |
|---|
| not official: | |||
| Canada | 0.2% | 60,520 | 32,207,113 |
| United States 6 | 0.11% | 340,000 | 281,421,906 |
1 Many are Moldovans 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 called "Moldovan language"
³ Transnistria's independence is not internationally recognized
Here it is called "Moldovan language" and it is written in Cyrillic
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); the study also says that there are 409,000 ethnic Romanians in Ukraine. [5]
6 See Romanian-American |
|---|
Romanian is spoken mostly in Southeastern 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 from Romania to their original countries. Romanian speakers account for 0,5% of the world's population,[5] and 4% of the Romance-speaking population of the world.[6]
In Europe, Romanian language 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 of Gagauzia and Transnistria. Romanian is also an official language of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia together with five other languages. Romanian minorities are encountered in Serbia (Timok Valley), Ukraine (Chernivtsi and Odessa oblasts), Hungary (Gyula) and Bulgaria (Vidin). Large immigrant communities in Europe are found in Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal.
The largest Romanian-speaking community in Asia is found in Israel, where as of 1995 Romanian is spoken by 5% of the population.[7][8] Romanian is also spoken as a secondary language by people from Arab-speaking countries that made their studies in Romania. It is estimated that almost half a million Middle Eastern Arabs studied in Romania during the 1980s.[9] Some smaller Romanian-speaking communities are to be found in Kazakhstan and Russia.
In the Americas and Australia, Romanian is often encountered within the communities of Romanian and Moldovan immigrants in the United States, Canada and Australia, although they don't build up a large homogeneous community state-wide.
Legal status in Romania
(See Languages of Romania)
According to the Constitution of Romania of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic.[10]
Romania mandates the use of Romanian in official government publications, public education and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words.
"Institutul Limbii Române" (Romanian Language Institute), established by the Ministry of Education of Romania, promotes the knowledge of the Romanian language and supports people willing to learn this language, working together with the MFA's Department for Romanians Abroad.[11]
Legal status in Moldova
Main articles: Moldovan language
About 10% of the world's Roumanophones are Moldovan, and Romanian is the single official language of Moldova. In the Constitution, the language is officially named Moldovan, although most linguists consider it the same as the Romanian language (challenging the existence of a distinct Moldovan language). Also, the language used in schools, media, scientific environment and in the colloquial speech and writing is called Romanian.
Romanian has been the only official language of Moldova since the endorsement of the law on language of the Moldavian SSR. This law, still in force today, mandates the use of Moldovan in all the political, economical, cultural and social spheres, as it also does assert the real existence of "linguistic Moldo-Romanian identity". [12]
Title I, Article 13 of the Moldovan Constitution, names it the "national language" (''limba de stat'') of the country. In the unrecognized state of Transnistria, it is co-official with Ukrainian and Russian.
In the 2004 census, out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova, 16.5% (558,508) chose Romanian as their mother tongue, whereas 60% chose Moldovan. While 40% of all urban Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose Romanian as their mother tongue, in the countryside hardly each 7th Romanian/Moldovan speaker indicated Romanian as his mother tongue.[13] 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 using them.[14]
Legal status in Vojvodina
Main articles: Official status of Romanian language in Vojvodina
Romanian language in Vojvodina
Article 8 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia (published in the "Official Gazette of RS", No. 1/90) stipulates that in the Republic of Serbia the Serbo-Croat language and the Cyrillic script shall be officially used, while the Latin script shall be officially used in the manner established by the law. In addition to that, the provision in Article 8/2 precisely 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.
Distribution of first-language native Romanian speakers by country
Article 6 of the Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (published in the "Official Gazette of APV") determines that, together with the Serbo-Croat language and the Cyrillic script, and the Latin script as stipulated by the law, the Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian and Rusyn 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. The bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are: the Assembly, the Executive Council and the Provincial administrative bodies.[15]
The Romanian language and script are officially used in 8 municipalities: Alibunar, Biserica Albă, Zitişte, Zrenianin, Kovăciţa, Cuvin, Plandişte and Secanj. In the municipality of Vârşeţ, Romanian is official only in the villages of Voivodinţ, Marcovăţ, Straja, Jamu Mic, Srediştea Mică, Mesici, Jablanka, Sălciţa, Râtişor, Oreşaţ and Coştei.[16]
In the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1,5% Vojvodinians chose Romanian as their mother tongue (barely 0,1% of the world's Roumanophones).
Legal status in other countries and organisations
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In other parts of Serbia the Romanian communities (see Vlach language) have very few rights regarding the use and preservation of their language in schools, press, administration and institutions.
In parts of Ukraine where Romanians constitute a significant share of the local population (districts in Chernivtsi, Odessa and Zakarpattia oblasts) the Romanian language is being taught in schools as a primary language and there are newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting in Romanian.[17][18]
The University of Chernivtsi trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics.[19]
Romanian is also an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations (such as the Latin Union and the European Union).
Romanian is one of the five languages in which religious services are performed in the autonomous monastic state of Mount Athos, spoken in the ''sketae'' of Prodromos and Lacu (a ''sketa'' being a community of monks; ''sketae'' is plural).
Romanian as a second and foreign language
Places of the world were Romanian is thought as a foreign language. Colour scale varies depending on the amount of centres that teach Romanian language for non-native speakers
Use of Romanian as a second language is recorded among many of the ethnic minorities in Romania, as well as Moldova. According to a 1979 census in the Moldavian SSR (as it was then), approximately 4% of the population indicated Romanian/Moldovan as their second language [20].
Romanian is studied and taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such as Serbia (Vojvodina), Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary. The Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) has since 1992 organised summer training courses in Romanian for language teachers in these countries.[21] In some of the schools, there are non-Romanian nationals, that study Romanian as a foreign language (for example the Nicolae Bălcescu High-school in Gyula, Hungary).
Romanian is taught as a foreign language in various Tertiary institutions, most prevalently in neighboring European countries (such as Germany, France and Italy, as well as the Netherlands) but also elsewhere, such as the USA. Overall, it is taught as a foreign language in 38 countries around the world.[22]
Dialects
Main articles: Romanian dialects
The term "Romanian" in a general sense envelops four hardly mutually intelligible speech varieties commonly regarded as independent languages. For more on these, please see the article "Eastern Romance languages".
It is thought that the Romanian language appeared north and south of the Danube. All the four dialects are offsprings of the Romance language spoken both in the North and South Danube, before the settlement of the Slavonian tribes south of the river - Daco-Romanian in the North, and the other three dialects in the south.
However, this article deals primarily with Daco-Romanian, and thus the regional variations of that will be discussed here instead. The differences between these varieties are usually very small, usually consisting in a few dozen regional words and some phonetic changes.
Romanian varieties (''graiuri'')
Blue: Southern varieties
Red: Northern varieties
Like all other languages, Romanian can be regarded as a dialect continuum. However, such a formulation tends to obscure the high homogeneity and uniformity of the language. The Romanian language cannot be neatly divided into separate dialects and Romanians themselves speak of the differences as accents or "speeches" (in Romanian: "accent" or "grai"). This correctly conveys the linguistics notion of accent, as language variants that only feature slight pronunciation differences (Romanian accents are fully mutually intelligible). Several accents are usually distinguished:
★ Muntenian accent (Graiul muntenesc), spoken mainly in Wallachia and southern parts of Dobruja.
★ Moldavian accent (Graiul moldovenesc), spoken mainly in Moldavia, northern parts of Dobruja and the Republic of Moldova. Written is realised as /k/; written before front vowels is realised as . Written <ă>, in final position, is palatalized.
★ Maramureşian accent (Graiul maramureşean), spoken mainly in Maramureş.
★ Transylvanian accent (Graiul ardealean), spoken mainly in Ardeal.
★ Banatian accent (Graiul bănăţean), spoken mainly in Banat. Written before front vowels is realised as and as .
★ Oltenian accent (Graiul oltenesc), spoken mainly in Oltenia and by the Romanian minority in Timok region of Serbia. In Oltenia a notable dialectal feature is the usage of the simple perfect tense rather than the compound perfect which is used elsewhere.
Over the last century, however, regional accents have been weakened due to mass communications and greater mobility.
Contacts with other languages
Dacian language
The Dacian language was an Indo-European language spoken by the ancient Dacians. It may have been the first language to influence the Latin spoken in Dacia, but there is very little knowledge about it. About 300 words found only in Romanian (in all dialects) or with a cognate in the Albanian language may be inherited from Dacian, many of them being related to pastoral life (for example: ''balaur'' "dragon", ''brânză'' "cheese", ''mal'' "shore"; see Eastern Romance substratum). Some linguists have asserted that Albanians are Dacians who were not Romanized, and migrated south.[23]
A different view is that these non-Latin words (many 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. However, the Eastern Romance substratum appears to have been a satem language, while the Paleo-Balkan languages spoken in Northern Greece (Ancient Macedonian language) and Albania (Illyrian language) were most likely centum languages.
The general view is that Dacian was a satem language, as was Thracian.
Balkan linguistic union
While most of Romanian grammar and morphology are based on Vulgar Latin, there are some features that are shared only with other languages of the Balkans and not found in other Romance languages.
The languages of the "Balkan linguistic union" belong to distinct branches of the Indo-European language family: Bulgarian and Albanian, and in some cases Greek and Serbian.
The shared features include a postposed definite article, the syncretism of genitive and dative case, the formation of the future and perfect tenses, as well as the avoidance of infinitive.
Slavic languages
The Slavic influence was first due to the migration of Slavic tribes, which traversed the territory of present-day Romania during the early evolution of the language. It is interesting to note that Slavs were assimilated north of the Danube, whereas they almost completely assimilated the Romanized population (Vlachs) living south of Danube. An important part of this population was still Vlach in the 10th century, only to fade away along with Vlach political power. For more information about this, see Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian. The other surrounding languages (all Slavic, with the exception of Hungarian) also influenced Romanian, through centuries of mutual interactions.
Of great importance was the influence of Old Church Slavonic, as it was the liturgical language of the Romanian Orthodox Church (compared to western and central European countries which used Latin) from the Middle Ages, until the 18th century. However, Latin held an important position in Transylvania during the Middle Ages, a part of the western-styled feudal Kingdom of Hungary at that moment. Liturgical Romanian was first officially used there after the union of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Transylvania with Rome,[25] giving birth to the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church in 1698 [26] (the most numerous church in Transylvania until the World War II [27]). This caused Romanian to lose many of its borrowings form Slavonic as the first standardisation of it (among others the switch to the Latin alphabet) was done by Şcoala Ardeleană, founded in Transylvania.
Borrowings from Old Church Slavonic include:
''a izbăvi'' < ''izbaviti'' "to deliver", ''a blagoslovi'' < ''blagosloviti'' "to bless", ''blajin'' < ''blažĕnŭ'' "meek, peaceful", ''cinste'' < ''čĩştĩ'' "honesty", ''ispravă'' < ''isprava'' "deed, accomplishment", ''vrednic'' < ''vrĕdĩnŭ'' "dignified, worthy", ''jertfă'' < ''žrŭtyva'' "sacrifice, immolation", ''mir'' < ''miro'' "chrism, holy oil", ''veşnicie'' < ''vĕčinŭ'' "forever, perpetual, undying", 'veac'' < ''věkŭ'' "age", ''sfânt'' < ''svĕntŭ'' "holy, saint", ''a sluji'' < ''služiti'' "to serve", ''amvon'' < ''amŭvonŭ'' "pulpit", ''strană'' < ''strana'' "pew", ''milă'' < ''milŭ'' "mercy", ''nădejde'' < ''nadežda'' "hope", ''stăpân'' < ''stopanŭ'' "master", ''trup'' < ''trupŭ'' "body", ''duh'' < ''duhŭ'' "spirit", ''slavă'' < ''slava'' "praise", ''smerenie'' < ''sŭmĕrjenije'' "humility", ''a spovedi'' < ''ispovĕdati'' "to confess", ''rai'' < ''raj'' "paradise", ''mucenic'' < ''mučenikŭ'' "martyr", ''sobor'' < ''sŭborŭ'' "gathering, meeting", ''stareţ'' < ''starici'' "abbot", ''pustnic'' < ''pustynĩnikŭ'' "hermit, recluse", ''oltar'' < ''olŭtari'' "altar, communion table", ''potcap'' < ''podŭkapŭ'' "cap (worn by priests and monks)", ''molitvă'' < ''molitva'' "prayer (used by priests at certain circumstances, such as baptizing or to heal the sick)", ''cazanie'' < ''kazanije'' "homily", ''iad'' < ''jadŭ'' "hell", ''proroc'' < ''prorokŭ'' "prophet", ''bogdaproste'' < ''bogŭ da prosti'' "God bless you".
Most of these words have traditional or neological Latin-based synonyms that are usually preferred in the use of the modern language.
As was characteristic of the Middle Ages, the Church had a great influence on people's lives. Thus even basic words such as ''a iubi'' "to love", ''glas'' "voice", ''nevoie'' "need", and ''prieten'' "friend" are of Church Slavonic origin. Names were also influenced by the use of Slavonic in Church and in administration.
However, many Slavic words are archaisms and it is estimated that in modern Romanian 90% of the vocabulary is of Latin origin, the remainder representing Slavic, Greek, Hungarian, and Turkic borrowings as well as the Dacian substratum. Slavonic influences are also encountered in some phonetic particularities as well as in many suffixes.
Other influences
Even before the 19th century, Romanian came in contact with several other languages. Some notable examples include:
★ Greek: ''folos'' < ''ófelos'' "use", ''buzunar'' < ''buzunára'' "pocket", ''proaspăt'' < ''prósfatos'' "fresh"
★ Hungarian: ''oraş'' < ''város'' "town", ''a cheltui'' < ''költeni'' "to spend", ''a făgădui'' < ''fogadni'' "to promise", ''a mântui'' < ''menteni'' "to save"
★ Turkish: ''cafea'' < ''kahve'' "coffee", ''cutie'' < ''kutu'' "box", ''papuc'' < ''papuç'' "slipper", ''ciorbă'' < ''çorba'' "wholemeal soup, sour soup"
★ German: ''cartof'' < ''Kartoffel'' "potato", ''bere'' < ''Bier'' "beer", ''şurub'' < ''Schraube'' "screw"
French, Italian and other international words
Since the 19th century, many modern words were borrowed from the other Romance languages, especially from French and Italian (for example: ''birou'' < ''bureau'' "desk, office", ''avion'' "airplane", ''exploata'' "exploit"). It was estimated that about 38% of the number of words in Romanian are of French or Italian origin and adding this to the words that were inherited from Latin, about 75%-85% of Romanian words can be traced to Latin.
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 languages, 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) | apa (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) |
| frater (brother) | frate (brother) | fratern (it.<''fraterno'', fr<''fraternel'')
(brotherly) |
| frigus (cold) | frig (cold - ''noun'') | frigid (it.<''frigido'', fr.<''frigide'')
(frigid) |
| crassus (fat) | gras (fat) | cras (it.<''crasso'', fr.<''crasse'')
(blatant) |
| angelus (angel) | înger (angel) | angelic (it.<''angelico'', fr.<''angelique'')
(angelic) |
| mania (madness) | mânie (anger) | manie (it.<''mania'', fr.<''manie'')
(mania) |
| monumentum (monument) | mormânt (grave) | monument (it.<''monumento'', fr.<''monument'')
(monument) |
| oculus (eye) | ochi (eye) | ocular (it.<''oculare'', fr.<''oculaire'')
(ocular) |
| pulveris (dust) | pulbere (dust) | pulveriza (it.<''polverizzare'', fr.<''pulveriser'')
(pulverise) |
| virtuosus (strong, worthy) | vîrtos (strong) | virtuos (it.<''virtuoso'', fr.<''vertueux'')
(virtuous) |
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; ''bişniţă'' < business). These words are assigned grammatical gender in Romanian and handled according to Romanian rules; thus "the manager" is ''managerul''. Some of these English words are in turn Latin lexical constructions - calqued or borrowed/constructed from Latin or other Romance languages, like "management" and "interview" (from the French "entrevue").
Grammar
Main articles: Romanian grammar
Romanian nouns are inflected by gender (feminine, masculine and neuter), number (singular and plural) and case (nominative/accusative, dative/genitive and vocative). The articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns, agree in gender with the noun they reference.
Romanian is the only Romance language where definite articles are ''enclitic'': that is, attached to the end of the noun (as in North Germanic languages), 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 according to person, number, tense, mood, voice. The usual word order in sentences is SVO (Subject - Verb - Object). Romanian has four verbal conjugations which further split into ten conjugation patterns. Verbs can be put in five moods that are inflected according to the person (indicative, conditional/optative, imperative, subjunctive, and presumptive) and four impersonal moods (infinitive, gerund, supine, and participle).
Phonology
Main articles: Romanian phonology
Romanian has seven vowels: , , , , , , and . Additionally, and may appear in some words.
In final positions after consonants (rarely inside words) a short non-syllabic can occur, which is and is produced as a palatalization of the preceding consonant. A similar sound, the voiceless ending ''u'', existed in old Romanian but has disappeared from the standard language.
There are also four semivowels and twenty consonants.
Diphthongs
Descending diphthongs: ai, au, ei, eu, ii, iu, oi, ou, ui, ăi, ău, îi, îu.
Ascending diphthongs: ea, eo, ia, ie, io, iu, oa, ua, uă.
Triphthongs
Pattern S-V-S (main vowel between two semivowels): eai, eau, iai, iau, iei, ieu, ioi, iou, oai.
Pattern S-S-V (two-semivowel glide before the main vowel): eoa, ioa.
Phonetic changes
Main articles: Latin to Romanian sound changes
Due 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. 'cl'arus > Rom. 'chi'ar, Ital. 'chi'aro) and also a few with Dalmatian, such as /gn/ (probably phonetically [ŋn]) > [mn] (Lat. co'gn'atus > Rom. cu'mn'at, Dalm. co'mn'ut).
Among the notable phonetic changes are:
★ diphthongization of e and o
★ : Lat. c'e'ra > Rom. c'ea'ră (wax)
★ : Lat. s'o'le > Rom. s'oa're (sun)
★ iotacism [e] → [ie] in the beginning of the word
★ : Lat. h'e'rba > Rom. 'ia'rbă (grass, herb)
★ velar [k], [g] → labial [p], [b], [m] before alveolar consonants:
★ : Lat. o'ct'o > Rom. o'pt' (eight)
★ : Lat. 'qu'attuor > Rom. 'p'atru (four)
★ : Lat. li'ng'ua > Rom. li'mb'ă (tongue, language)
★ : Lat. si'gn'um > Rom. se'mn' (sign)
★ : Lat. co'x'a > Rom. coa'ps'ă (thigh)
★ rotacism [l] → [r] between vowels
★ : Lat. cae'l'um > Rom. ce'r' (sky)
★ Alveolars [d] and [t] palatalized to [dz]/[z] and [ts] when before short [e] or long [i]
★ : Lat. 'd'eus > Rom. 'z'eu (god)
★ : Lat. 't'enem > Rom. 'ţ'ine (hold)
On the other hand, it (along with French) has ''lost'' the /kw/ ('qu') sound from original Latin, turning it either into 'p' (''patru'', "four"; cf. It. ''quattro'') or a hard or soft 'c' (''când'', "when"; ''calitate'', "quality").
Writing system
Neacşu's letter is the oldest surviving document written in Romanian
The first written record of a Romanic 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 Avars 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 Neacşu of Câmpulung wrote to the mayor of Braşov about an imminent attack of the Turks. It was written using the Cyrillic alphabet, like most early Romanian writings. The earliest writing in Latin script was a late 16th century Transylvanian text which was written with the Hungarian alphabet conventions.
In the late 1700s, Transylvanian scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted the Latin alphabet to the Romanian language, using some rules from Italian, 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 Moldova, 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
Main articles: 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 / haş); I, i (i); Î, î (î din i); J, j (je), K, k (ka de la kilogram), L, l (le / el); M, m (me / em); N, n (ne / en); O, o (o); P, p (pe); R, r, (re / er); S, s (se / es); (e); T, t (te); (e); U, u (u); V, v (ve); X, x (ics); Z, z (ze / zet).
The Romanian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and has five additional letters (these are not diacriticals, but letters in their own right). Initially, there were as many as 12 additional letters, but some of them disappeared in subsequent reforms. Also, until the early 20th century, a short vowel marker was used.
Today, the Romanian alphabet is largely phonetic. However, the "â" (used inside the words) and "î" (used at the beginning or the end; it can also be used in the middle of a composite word, see the exception below) both represent the same close central unrounded vowel .
Until 1904 there were four letters representing the sound: ''â'', ''ê'', ''î'' and ''û''. By the middle of the century, through successive simplifications, only ''â'' and ''î'' remained in use. A further simplification was mandated in 1953 whereby ''î'' would be used exclusively, including in such words as ''România'' (which became ''Romînia'') or ''limba română'' (which became ''romînă''). In 1965, exceptions were made for ''România'' and the other related words; these would continue to be spelled with ''â''.
A pair of street signs in
Bucharest show the before and after of the 1993 spelling reform.
In 1993 the Romanian Academy decided to fully revert to the pre-1953 spelling rules. According to the current usage accepted by the Romanian Academy, is transcribed as either ''î'' when used as the first or last letter of words, or ''â'' when it occurs in the middle of the word (exception: ''î'' occurs also in the middle of composite words; examples: ''bineînţeles'' cf. ''bine'' + ''înţeles'', ''reînvestire'' cf. ''re'' + ''învestire''). Also the first person singular and third person plural of the verb ''a fi'' "to be" have to be spelled and pronounced as ''sunt'' instead of the previous form ''sînt''. However this move was met with resistance, especially in the linguistic community. The Academy rules are mandatory in government organisations and in state schools. In practice, either usage is acceptable, and indeed there are publishing houses and printed magazines who use either of the two rules.
Another exception from a completely phonetic writing system is the fact that vowels and their respective semivowels are not distinguished in writing. In dictionaries the distinction is marked by separating the entry word into syllables for the words containing a hiatus that might be mispronounced as a diphthong or a triphthong.
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".
Letters ''K'', ''Q'', ''W'', and ''Y'' are not part of the native Romanian alphabet; they are used mainly to write loanwords, such as ''kilogram'', ''quasar'', ''watt'', and ''yoga''.
Because early computer encoding systems did not provide the letters and (representing () and , respectively) writing them with a cedilla (i.e., ''ş'', ''ţ'') instead of a comma below is now rather widespread. However, the Romanian Academy has declared the use of cedilla incorrect, and the use of comma below is preferable where the quality of typography is important. The comma below, like the cedilla, in fact derived from an earlier ''z'', with and thus originally representing ''sz'' and ''tz''.
Reading rules
Reading Romanian involves learning a few rules, quite similar to reading Italian.
★ ''h'' always represents . It is never aspirated, nor mute.
★ ''j'' represents
★ There are two letters with a comma below, and , which represent the sounds and . However, the allographs with a cedilla instead of a comma, ''Ş'' and ''Ţ'', became widespread when pre-Unicode 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'' "wolf" vs. ''lupi'' "wolves").
★ ''ă'' represents the schwa, .
★ ''î'' and ''â'' represent .
★ The letter ''e'' is generally pronounced as the diphthong ''ie'' when it is in the beginning of a form of the verb ''a fi'' "to be", e. g. ''este'' "is". This rule also applies to personal pronouns beginning with ''e'', e. g. ''el'' "he".
★ ''x'' represents either the phoneme as in ''expresie'' = expression, or as in ''exemplu'' = example.
★ Similarly to the reading rules in Italian, the letters ''c'' and ''g'' represent the affricates and before ''i'' and ''e'', and and elsewhere. When and are followed by vowels and (or their corresponding semivowels or the final ) the digraphs ''ch'' and ''gh'' are used instead of ''c'' and ''g'', as shown in the table below.
| Group | Phoneme | Pronunciation | Examples |
|---|
| ce, ci | | ''ch'' in 'chest', 'cheek' | ''cerc'' (circle), ''cine'' (who) |
| che, chi | | ''k'' in 'kettle', 'kiss' | ''chem'' (I call), ''chimie'' (chemistry) |
| ge, gi | | ''j'' in 'jelly', 'jigsaw' | ''ger'' (frost), ''gimnast'' (gymnast) |
| ghe, ghi | | ''g'' in 'get', 'give' | ''gheţar'' (glacier), ''ghid'' (guide) |
Punctuation and capitalization
The main particularities Romanian has relative to other languages using the Latin alphabet are:
★ The quotation marks use the Polish format in the format „quote «inside» quote”, that is, 99 down and 99 up for normal quotations, with the addition of non-French double angle quotes without space for inside quotation when necessary.
★ 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 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")
Exceptions and trends
Dialogues are identified with quotation dashes in everyday use, although the specific character is typically replaced with an ordinary dash ("-") in informal electronic communication.
Usage of Polish or German quotation marks has decreased considerably in favor of the much more convenient English-language format, at least in informal messages. Even in writing, because of the awkwardness of properly drawing German dashes (reversing the direction of writing upwards for the final quotation symbol), the proper format is rarely used, typically using the Polish format, if any attempt at proper formatting is done. In practice, only the most formal documents, such as literary works or very formal letters, use what are formally considered the proper form of quotation marks.
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)''
Contemporary Romanian - highlighted words are French or Italian loanwords:
: Toate fiinţele 'umane' se nasc 'libere' şi 'egale' în 'demnitate' şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu 'raţiune' şi 'conştiinţă' şi trebuie să se 'comporte' unele faţă de altele în 'spiritul' 'fraternităţii'.
Romanian, excluding French and Italian loanwords - highlighted words are Slavic loanwords:
: Toate fiinţele omeneşti se nasc 'slobode' şi 'deopotrivă' în 'destoinicie' şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu înţelegere şi cuget şi 'trebuie' să se poarte unele faţă de altele în 'duh' de frăţietate.
Romanian, excluding loanwords:
: Toate fiinţele omeneşti se nasc nesupuse şi asemenea în preţuire şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu înţelegere şi cuget şi se cuvine să se poarte unele faţă de altele după firea frăţiei.
Common words and phrases
| English | Romanian | Phonetical transcription
|
|---|
| Romanian (person) | (m.) 'român', (f.) 'româncă' | ,
|
| Hello! | 'Salut!' |
|
| What's your name? | 'Cum te cheamă?' |
|
| How are you? | 'Ce mai faci?' |
|
| Goodbye! | 'La revedere!' |
|
| Bye! | 'Pa!' |
|
| Please. | 'Vă rog.' |
|
| Sorry. | 'Îmi pare rău.' |
|
| Thank you. | 'Mulţumesc.' |
|
| Yes. | 'Da.' |
|
| No. | 'Nu.' |
|
| I don't understand. | 'Nu înţeleg.' |
|
| Where's the bathroom? | 'Unde este toaleta?' |
|
| Do you speak English? | 'Vorbiţi engleza?' |
|
| I am a student. | 'Sunt student.' |
|
Notes
1. The Latin Union reports 28 million speakers for Romanian, out of whom 24 million are native speakers of the language: ''Latin Union - The odyssey of languages:'' ro, es, fr, it, pt; see also Ethnologue report for Romanian
2. The new edition of „Dicţionarul ortografic al limbii române (ortopepic, morfologic, cu norme de punctuaţie)” – introduced by the Academy of Sciences of Moldova and recommended for publishing following the board reunion on 15 November 2000 – applies the decision of the General Meeting of the Romanian Academy from 17 February 1993, regarding the return to „â” and „sunt” in the orthography of the Romanian language. (Introduction, Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova) The decision is mandatory in schools and other official use of the language.
3. Instituto Nacional de Estadística: ''Avance del Padrón Municipal a 1 de enero de 2006. Datos provisionales.'' [3]. According to FEDROM – Federaţia Asociaţiilor Româneşti din Spania, the total number of Romanians living in Spain could be well over 500,000 people.
4. [4] Perepis 2002
5. Latin Union - Languages and cultures online 2005
6. MSN Encarta - Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People
7. According to the 1993 ''Statistical Abstract of Israel'' there were 250,000 Romanian speakers in Israel, at a population of 5,548,523 (census 1995).
8. Reports of about 300,000 Jews that left the country after WW2
9. Evenimentul Zilei
10. Constitution of Romania
11. Ministry of Education of Romania
12. Legea cu privire la functionarea limbilor vorbite pe teritoriul RSS Moldovenesti Nr.3465-XI din 01.09.89 Vestile nr.9/217, 1989 (Law regarding the usage of languages spoken on the territory of the Republic of Moldova): ''"Moldavian RSS supports the desire of the Moldovans that live across the borders of the Republic, and considering the really existing linguistical Moldo-Romanian identity - of the Romanians that live on the territory of the USSR, of doing their studies and satisfying their cultural needs in their maternal language."''
13. National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova: Census 2004
14. Experts Offering to Consult the National Statistics Bureau in Evaluation of the Census Data, ''Moldova Azi'', May 19, 2005, story attributed to AP Flux. Retrieved October 11, 2005.
15. Official use of languages and scripts in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina published by the ''Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities''
16. Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities: Official use of the Romanian language in the APV
17. Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research: [6], [7]
18. Slovak Academy of Sciences in Kosice
19. University of Chernivtsi
20. Language, religion and culture in the Moldavian SSR
21. ''Cursuri de perfecţionare'', published in Ziua on August 19, 2005
22. Romanian Language Institute: Data concerning the teaching of the Romanian language abroad
23. Vladimir Georgiev
24. Ivan Duridanov
25. P.S. Florentin Crihălmeanu in "Formula AS": ''După unirea cu Roma, “boscorodirea”, specifică epocii de dominaţie slavonă, va fi înlocuită cu slujba în limba română (curăţată pe cât posibil de impurităţile slavone, prin osârdia extraordinară a latiniştilor Şcolii Ardelene).''
26. http://www.bru.ro/istorie/madrid.asp?id=cap22c History of the Romanian Church United with Rome]
27. The census in 1930 recorded a Greek-Catholic relative majority (31,1% of the population), whereas Orthodox Church came only second (27,8% of the population).
References
★ Rosetti, Alexandru, ''Istoria limbii române'', 2 vols., Bucharest, 1965-1969.
★ Uwe, Hinrichs (ed.), ''Handbuch der Südosteuropa-Linguistik'', Wiesbaden, 1999.
See also
★ Romanian vocabulary
★ Romanianization
External links
Learning Romanian
★ Learn Romanian
★ EasyRomanian - Learn Romanian Online
★ Comparative French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian
★ Romanian Lessons
★ Verbix - Romanian verbs conjugation
★ Romanian Reference Grammar, by Dana Cojocaru, University of Bucharest (183 pages) - 4.6 MB - pdf
Phrasebooks
★ Romanian phrasebook on Wikitravel
★ Romanian Basic Words
Dictionaries
★ Online Romanian-English dictionary
★ DEX Online - Romanian explicative dictionary
★ JaDEX - A Java front-end to DEX by Federico Mestrone, runs on all Java-enabled platforms, incl. Mac OS X, Linux and Windows
★ Free downloadable dictionary
★ Romanian bilingual dictionaries
Miscellaneous
★ SAMPA for Romanian
★ The Letter of Neacşu from Câmpulung - The oldest written document in Romanian (English translation)
★ Ethnologue report for Romanian
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