Romanian language

215,796pages on
this wiki
Add New Page
Talk0 Share

Ad blocker interference detected!



Romanian, Daco-Romanian
română, limba română
Pronunciation [roˈmɨnə]
Spoken in

By a majority:

Flag of Romania.svg Romania
Flag of Moldova.svg Republic of Moldova
Flag of Transnistria.svg Transnistria (Unrecognised state)
Minority speakers in:
Flag of Albania.svg Albania
Flag of Bulgaria.svg Bulgaria
Flag of Croatia.svg Croatia
Flag of Greece.svg Greece
Flag of Hungary.svg Hungary
Flag of Italy.svg Italy
Flag of Kazakhstan.svg Kazakhstan
Flag of Uzbekistan.svg Uzbekistan
Flag of Macedonia.svg Macedonia
Flag of Russia.svg Russia
Flag of Serbia.svg Serbia
Flag of Spain.svg Spain
Flag of Ukraine.svg Ukraine
Migrant speakers in:
North and South America
Western and Southern Europe
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg United Kingdom Flag of Australia.svg Australia
Flag of Canada.svg Canada
Flag of the United States.svg USA
Flag of Israel.svg Israel
Flag of Germany.svg Germany
Flag of New Zealand.svg New Zealand
Region Southeastern, Central and Eastern Europe
Native speakers First language: 24 million
Second language: 4 million [1]
Language family
Writing system Latin alphabet (Romanian variant)
Official status
Official language in

Flag of Romania.svg Romania
Flag of Moldova.svg Moldova [2]
Flag of Vojvodina.svg Vojvodina (Serbia)

Flag of Europe.svg European Union
Recognised minority language in Flag of Ukraine.svg Ukraine
Regulated by Academia Română
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ro
ISO 639-2 rum (B)
ron (T)
ISO 639-3 ron

51-AAD-c (varieties:

51-AAD-ca to -ck)
Map Roumanophone World
Blue: region where Romanian is the dominant language. Green: areas with a notable minority of Romanian speakers.

Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română [ˈlimba roˈmɨnə]  (Speaker Icon.svg listen) ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people,[1][3] primarily in Romania and Moldova. It has official status in Romania, Republic of Moldova, the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia and in the autonomous Mount Athos in Greece. In the Republic of Moldova, the language is officially called limba moldovenească ("Moldovan").




Eastern Romance like the other branches of Romance languages descends from Vulgar Latin, adopted in Dacia by a process of romanization during early centuries CE.[4][5] The Roman Empire was forced to withdraw from Dacia in 271 CE, leaving it to the Goths.[6][7]

The history of Eastern Romance between the 3rd century and the development of Proto-Romanian by the 10th century, when the area came under the influence of the Byzantine Empire, is unknown. It is a matter of debate whether modern-day Romanians are descendants of the people who abandoned the area and settled south of the Danube or of the romanized people that remained in Dacia.


Map of the Balkans with regions inhabited by Romanians/Vlachs highlighted

During the Middle Ages, Romanian became influenced by the Slavic languages[8] and to some degree by Greek. Romanian remains unattested throughout the Middle Ages, and only enters the historical record in the early 16th century.

Early historyEdit

The oldest extant document written in Romanian is Neacşu's letter (1521). The language remains poorly attested during the Early Modern period. Miron Costin, in his De neamul moldovenilor (1687), while noting that Moldavians, Wallachians, and the Romanians living in the Hungarian Country have the same origin, says that although people of Moldavia call themselves Moldavians, they name their language Romanian (româneşte) instead of Moldavian (moldoveneşte).[9] Dimitrie Cantemir, 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.[10] 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 Greek, Turkish and Polish borrowings. Additionally, he introduces the idea that some words must have had Dacian 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 Italian.

Modern historyEdit

The first Romanian grammar was published in Vienna in 1780.[11] Following annexation of Bessarabia by Russia (after 1812), Moldavian was established as an official language in the governmental institutions of Bessarabia, used along with Russian,[12] The publishing works established by Archbishop Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni were able to produce books and lithurgical works in Moldavian between 1815-1820.[13]


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 zemstva 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".[14] Romanian finally became the official language with the Constitution of 1923.

Historical grammarEdit

Romanian has preserved a part of the Latin declension, but whereas Latin had six cases, Romanian has three: the nominative-accusative, the genitive-dative, and marginally the vocative. Romanian nouns also preserve the neuter gender. However, the verb morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compound perfect and future tense as the other Romance languages. Compared with the other Romance languages, during its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin tense system in extreme ways,[15] in particular the original Latin absence of sequence of tenses.[16]

Geographic distributionEdit

Template:Romanian language clickable map

Geographic distribution of Romanian
Country Speakers
Romania 91% 19,736,517 21,698,181
Moldova ² 76.4% 2,588,355 3,388,071
Transnistria (Eastern 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
Spain 1.7% 829,715[17] 46,661,950
Italy 1.3% 640,000[18] 60,600,000
Ukraine 5 0.8% 327,703 48,457,000
Hungary 0.1% 8,480[19] 10,198,315
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 [20] 145,537,200
The Americas
not official:
Canada 0.34% 110,000 32,207,113
United States 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 language"
³ In Transnistria, it is officially called "Moldovan language" 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).[21]

Romanian is spoken mostly in Southeastern, Central and Eastern 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,[22] and 4% of the Romance-speaking population of the world.[23]

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 of Gagauzia and Transnistria. Romanian is also an official language of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia along 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 are found in Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal.

As of 1995, the largest Romanian-speaking community in the Middle East is found in Israel, where Romanian is spoken by 5% of the population.[24][25] 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.[26] 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 state-wide.

Legal statusEdit

In RomaniaEdit

According to the Constitution of Romania of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic.[27]

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,[28] while trade signs and logos shall be written predominantly in Romanian.[29]


In MoldovaEdit

The Constitution of Moldova names the state language of the country "Moldovan". 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 SSR in 1989.[31] 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 Moldo-Romanian identity".[32] 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 with Ukrainian and Russian.

In the 2004 census, out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova, 16.5% (558,508) stated Romanian as their mother tongue, whereas 60% stated Moldovan. While 40% of all urban Romanian/Moldovan speakers identified their native tongue as Romanian, in the countryside under 12% of Romanian/Moldovan speakers indicated Romanian as their mother tongue.[33] 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.[34]

In VojvodinaEdit

Vojvodina romanian map

Official usage of Romanian language in Vojvodina, Serbia

Romanian and Vlach language in Serbia

Romanian language in entire Serbia (see also Romanians of Serbia), census 2002

  over 35%

The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia [35] 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.



In the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1.5% of Vojvodinians chose Romanian as their mother tongue.

In other countries and organizationsEdit

In parts of Ukraine where Romanians constitute a significant share of the local population (districts in Chernivtsi, Odessa and Zakarpattia oblasts) Romanian is being taught in schools as a primary language and there are newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting in Romanian.[39][40] The University of Chernivtsi trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics.[41]



Distribution of first-language native Romanian speakers by country (Altele means 'other')

As a second and foreign languageEdit

Romanian is taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such as Vojvodina in Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary. The Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) has since 1992 organised summer training courses in Romanian for language teachers in these countries.[42] 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, Hungary).

Romanian is taught as a foreign language in various tertiary institutions, mostly in European countries such as Germany, France and Italy, as well as the Netherlands, and elsewhere, like the USA. Overall, it is taught as a foreign language in 43 countries around the world.[43]

Popular cultureEdit


Also some artists wrote songs dedicated to the Romanian language. The multiplatinum pop trio O-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 musicians Doina and Ion Aldea Teodorovici performed a song entitled "The Romanian language".





Like most natural languages, Romanian can be regarded as a dialect continuum. 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:



Romance languages and Romanian

Romanian language in the Romance language family




A study done by Italian-American linguist Mario Pei in 1949, which analyzed the evolutionary degree of languages in comparison to their inheritance language (in the case of Romance languages to Latin comparing phonology, inflection, discourse, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation) revealed the following percentages:[45]

The lexical similarity with Italian is 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.

Contacts with other languagesEdit

Dacian languageEdit

The Dacian language was an Indo-European language spoken by the ancient Dacians, mostly north of the Danube river but also in Moesia 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 language, and like Thracian, Dacian was a satemized language. About 300 words found only in Romanian or with a cognate in the Albanian language may be inherited from Dacian (for example: barză "stork", 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[46] . Another way of conceiving the theory is to suppose that the Albanian language developed from a Daco-Moesian set of dialects.

Besides Dacian, other proposed sources for the pre-Latin words includes Illyrian (another candidate for being the ancestor of the Albanian language) and Thracian, rather than Dacian or Daco-Moesian. The Illyrian and Thracian theories however are still even more tenuous than the Daco-Moesian theory, because Thracian was mostly spoken in regions that became Hellenized rather than Romanized, and Illyrian may have been a centum language, not a satem language like the primary substrate language in Romanian must have been. Some scholars think Dacian, Thracian and Illyrian were satem branches descending from a close common ancestor, the Thraco-Illyrian theory.

Balkan linguistic unionEdit


The languages of the Balkan linguistic union belong to individual branches of the Indo-European language family: Bulgarian, Macedonian and Albanian, and in some cases Greek and Serbian. The shared features include a suffixed definite article, the syncretism of genitive and dative case and the formation of the future and the replacement of infinitive with subjunctive constructions.

Slavic languagesEdit

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 influencesEdit


  • Hungarian: 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[48])
  • Turkish: cafea < kahve "coffee", papuc < papuç "slipper", ciorbă < çorba "wholemeal soup, sour soup", bacşiş < bahşiş "tip"
  • Romany, the Romanian Roma have provided several words to Romanian slang: mișto "good, beautiful" < mišto,[50] gagică < gadji "girl"

French, Italian and English wordsEdit

Since the 19th century, many modern 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 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 Moldova, 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 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
agilis (quick) ager (astute) agil (it.<agile, fr.<agile)
aqua (water) apă (water) acvatic (it. <acquatico, fr.<aquatique)
dens, dentem (tooth) dinte (tooth) dentist (it.<dentista, fr.<dentiste)
directus (straight) drept (straight, right) direct (it.<diretto, fr.<direct)
frigus (cold) frig (cold - noun) frigid (it.<frigido, fr.<frigide)
rapidus (quick) repede (quick) rapid (it.<rapido, fr.<rapide)

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; 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.



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 for 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 for the person (indicative, conditional/optative, imperative, subjunctive, and presumptive) and four impersonal moods (infinitive, gerund, supine, and participle).


Romanian has seven vowels; 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 diphthongs.

In final positions after consonants, a short /i/ can be deleted, surfacing only as the palatalization 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 changesEdit

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 Dalmatian, such as /ɡn/ (probably phonetically [ŋn]) > [mn] (Lat. cognatus > Rom. cumnat, Dalm. comnut).

Among the notable phonetic changes are:

  • diphthongization of e and o
  • Lat. cera → Rom. ceară (wax)
  • Lat. sole → Rom. soare (sun)
  • iotacism [e][ie] in the beginning of the word
  • velar [k ɡ] → labial [p b m] before alveolar consonants and [w] (eg. ngumb):
  • Lat. octo → Rom. opt (eight)
  • Lat. signum → Rom. semn (sign)
  • Lat. coxa → Rom. coapsă (thigh)
  • Lat. caelum → Rom. cer (sky)
  • Lat. deus → Rom. zeu (god)
  • Lat. tenem → Rom. ține (hold)


Writing systemEdit

Scrisoarea lui Neacsu

Neacșu's letter is the oldest surviving document written in Romanian


The oldest written text in Romanian is a letter from late June 1521, in which Neacșu of Câmpulung wrote to the mayor of Brașov 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.


A sample of Romanian written in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, which was still in use in the early 19th century

In the late 18th century, 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 alphabetEdit

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, 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.



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".


  • j represents /ʒ/, as in French or Portuguese (the sound spelled with s in the English words 'vision, pleasure, treasure').
  • There are two letters with a comma below, Ș and Ț, which represent the sounds /ʃ/ and /t͡s/. However, the allographs with a cedilla instead of a comma, Ș and Ț, 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 /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 influence on Romanian.
  • ă represents the schwa, /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 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".[51][52] 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.
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 capitalizationEdit

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;
  • Punctuation signs which follow a text in parentheses always follow the final bracket;

Spelling issues between Romania's and Moldova's usageEdit

Prior to 2010, there used to be a minor spelling difference between standard forms of Romanian language used in Romania and the variant (also called Moldovan) used in the Republic of Moldova— the Academy of Sciences of Moldova hadn't switched to the new spelling rules introduced by the Romanian Academy in 1993. In 2000, the Moldovan Academy recommended adopting the spelling rules used in Romania,[53] 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).[54]

Language sampleEdit

English text:

(Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Contemporary Romanian - highlighted words are French or Italian loanwords:


Romanian, excluding French and Italian loanwords - highlighted words are Slavic loanwords:


Romanian, excluding loanwords:


See alsoEdit


  1. ^ a b 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 constitution of the Republic of Moldova refers to the country's language as Moldovan rather than Romanian, though in practice it is often called "Romanian". The introduction of the law concerning the functioning of the languages (September 1989), still effective in the Republic of Moldova according to the Constitution, asserts the linguistic identity between the Romanian language and the Moldovan language.
  3. ^ "Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People". Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People. Microsoft Encarta 2006. 
  4. ^ Matley, Ian (1970). Romania; a Profile. Praeger. p. 85. 
  6. ^ Eutropius; Justin, Cornelius Nepos (1886). Eutropius, Abridgment of Roman History. London: George Bell and Sons. 
  7. ^ Watkins, Thayer. "The Economic History of the Western Roman Empire". 
  8. ^ Graham Mallinson, “Rumanian”, in “The Romance Languages”, Taylor & Francis, 1997, p. 413: "Much more substantial than the Germanic adstrate in the Western Romance Languages is the Slavic adstrate in Balkan Romance."
  9. ^ Constantiniu, Florin, O istorie sinceră a poporului român (An honest history of the Romanian people), Univers Enciclopedic, Bucureşti, 1997, ISBN 973-9243-07-X, p. 175
  10. ^ From Descriptio Moldaviae: "Valachiae et Transylvaniae incolis eadem est cum Moldavis lingua, pronunciatio tamen rudior, ut dziur, Vlachus proferet zur, jur, per z polonicum sive j gallicum; Dumnedzeu, Deus, val. Dumnezeu: akmu, nunc, val. akuma, aczela hic, val: ahela."
  11. ^ a b Samuil Micu, Gheorghe Șincai, Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae, Vienna, 1780.
  12. ^ (Russian)Charter for the organization of the Bessarabian Oblast, April 29, 1818, in "Печатается по изданию: Полное собрание законов Российской империи. Собрание первое.", Vol 35. 1818, Sankt Petersburg, 1830, pg. 222-227. Available online at
  13. ^ King, Charles, The Moldovans, Hoover Press, 2000, ISBN 081799792X, pg. 21-22
  14. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named lidia
  15. ^ Yves D’hulst, Martine Coene, Larisa Avram, “Syncretic and analytic tenses in Romanian”, in “Balkan Syntax ans Semantics”, pag. 366: "In its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin tense system in extreme ways."
  16. ^ Yves D’hulst et al., “Syncretic and analytic tenses in Romanian”, in “Balkan Syntax ans Semantics”, p.355: "general absence of consecutio temporum."
  17. ^ Instituto Nacional de Estadística: Avance del Padrón Municipal a 1 de enero de 2010. Datos provisionales. [1].
  18. ^
  19. ^ "Number of speakers of Romanian in Hungary in 1995 according to Ethnologue". Retrieved 2010-05-23. 
  20. ^ Perepis 2002
  21. ^
  22. ^ "Latin Union - Languages and cultures online 2005". Retrieved 2010-05-23. 
  23. ^ MSN Encarta - Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People
  25. ^ "Reports of about 300,000 Jews that left the country after WW2". Retrieved 2010-05-23. 
  26. ^ "Evenimentul Zilei". Retrieved 2010-05-23. 
  27. ^ "Constitution of Romania". Retrieved 2010-05-23. 
  28. ^ Legea "Pruteanu": 500/2004 - Law on the Protection of the Romanian Language
  29. ^ Art. 27 (3), Legea nr. 26/1990 privind Registrul Comerțului
  30. ^ Ministry of Education of Romania
  31. ^ Dalby, Andrew (1998). Dictionary of Languages. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 518. ISBN 0-7475-3117-X. 
  32. ^ 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 Moldavian that live across the borders of the Republic, and - considering the existing Moldo-Romanian linguistic 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."
  33. ^ National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova: Census 2004
  35. ^ Official Gazette of Republic of Serbia, No. 1/90
  36. ^ Official Gazette of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina
  37. ^ Official use of languages and scripts in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina published by the Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities
  38. ^ Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities: Official use of the Romanian language in the APV
  39. ^ Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research: [2], [3]
  40. ^ Slovak Academy of Sciences in Kosice
  41. ^ Kramar Andriy. "University of Chernivtsi". Retrieved 2010-05-23. 
  42. ^ Cursuri de perfecționare, published in Ziua on August 19, 2005
  43. ^ Romanian Language Institute: Data concerning the teaching of the Romanian language abroad
  44. ^ "Romanian language", in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  45. ^ Pei, Mario (1949). Story of Language. ISBN 0397004001. 
  46. ^ Vladimir Georgiev (Gheorghiev), (Romanian) Raporturile dintre limbile dacă, tracă și frigiană, "Studii Clasice" Journal, II, 1960, 39-58
  47. ^ Lindstedt, J. (2000). "Linguistic Balkanization: Contact-induced change by mutual reinforcement". In D. G. Gilbers & al. (eds.). Languages in Contact ((Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics, 28.) ed.). Amsterdam & Atlanta, GA, 2000: Rodopi. pp. 231–246. ISBN 90-420-1322-2. 
  48. ^ Etymological Lexicon of the Indigenous (Thracian) Elements in Romanian by Sorin Paliga, Bucharest, Editura Evenimentul 2006 ISBN 973-87920-0-2
  49. ^ Hans Dama, "Lexikale Einflüsse im Rumänischen aus dem österreichischen Deutsch" ("Lexical influences of 'Austrian'-German on the Romanian Language") (German)
  50. ^ (Romanian) Rodica Zafiu, "Mișto și legenda bastonului", România literară, No. 6, 2009 — There is no doubt among linguists about the Romany etymology of the Romanian word mișto, but a fairly widespread folk etymology and urban legend maintains that the German phrase mit Stock "with stick" would be its true origin.
  52. ^ (Romanian) Mioara Avram, Ortografie pentru toți, Editura Litera, Chișinău, 1997, p. 29
  53. ^ The new edition of "Dicționarul ortografic al limbii române (ortoepic, morfologic, cu norme de punctuație)" – introduced by the Academy of Sciences of Moldova and recommended for publishing following a conference 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)
  54. ^ "Gheorghe Duca: Trebuie schimbată atitudinea de sorginte proletară faţă de savanţi şi în genere faţă de intelectuali" (in Romanian). Allmoldova. 2010-06-04. Retrieved 2011-01-03. 


External linksEdit

Look up Category:Romanian language in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Look up Romanian in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Romanian language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
WikibooksWp globe tiny has a book on the topic of
Romanian language edition of Wiktionary, the free dictionary/thesaurus

Learning RomanianEdit


Template:Romanian topics

Template:Languages of Europe Template:Latinunion

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

This page uses content from the English language Wikipedia. The original content was at Romanian language. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with this Familypedia wiki, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons License.

Also on Fandom

Random Wiki