{"history":[],"article":{"id":"d3f03058-09e5-479c-809f-71c328e45754","title":"Romanian language","slug":"romanian-language","content":":::summary\n**Name:** Romanian \n**Altname:** Daco-Romanian \n**Nativename:** limba română, românește, română \n**States:** [Romania](https://bliptext.com/articles/romania), [Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldova) \n**Region:** [Central Europe](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-europe), [Southeastern Europe](https://bliptext.com/articles/southeast-europe), and [Eastern Europe](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-europe) \n**Ethnicity:** Romanians · (including Moldovans) \n**Speakers:** million \n**Date:** 2020 \n**Ref:** e27 \n**Familycolor:** Indo-European \n**Fam 2:** [Italic](https://bliptext.com/articles/italic-languages) \n**Fam 3:** [Latino-Faliscan](https://bliptext.com/articles/latino-faliscan-languages) \n**Fam 4:** [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) \n**Fam 5:** [Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) \n**Fam 6:** [Eastern](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-romance-languages) \n**Fam 7:** [Northern Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-romance-languages)? \n**Fam 8:** [Eastern Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-romance-languages)? \n**Dia 1:** [Transylvanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvanian-varieties-of-romanian) \n**Dia 2:** [Crișana](https://bliptext.com/articles/cri-ana-dialect) \n**Dia 3:** [Moldavian](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldavian-dialect) \n**Dia 4:** [Banat](https://bliptext.com/articles/banat-romanian-dialect) \n**Dia 5:** [Wallachian](https://bliptext.com/articles/wallachian-dialect) \n**Dia 6:** [Maramureș](https://bliptext.com/articles/maramure-dialect) \n**Dia 7:** [Bukovinian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bukovinian-romanian-dialect) \n**Dia 8:** [Oltenian](https://bliptext.com/articles/oltenian-dialect) \n**Ancestor:** [Proto-Indo-European](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-indo-european-language) \n**Ancestor 2:** [Proto-Italic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-italic-language) \n**Ancestor 3:** [Old Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-latin) \n**Ancestor 4:** [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) \n**Ancestor 5:** [Proto-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-romance-language) \n**Ancestor 6:** [Common Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/common-romanian) \n**Script:** [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-script) ([Romanian alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-alphabet)) · [Cyrillic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script) · Moldovan [Cyrillic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script) alphabet ([Transnistria](https://bliptext.com/articles/transnistria) only) · Romanian [Cyrillic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script) alphabet (historical) · [Romanian Braille](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-braille) \n**Nation:** 🇷🇴 Romania · 🇲🇩 Moldova · Transnistria (as \"Moldovan\") · Vojvodina (Serbia) · 🇪🇺 European Union \n**Minority:** 🇭🇺 Hungary · 🇷🇸 Serbia (both as Romanian and \"Vlach\") · 🇺🇦 Ukraine \n**Agency:** [Romanian Academy](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-academy) \n**Iso 1:** ro \n**Iso 2b:** rum \n**Iso 2t:** ron \n**Iso 3:** ron \n**Lingua:** 51-AAD-c (varieties: 51-AAD-ca to -ck) \n**Map:** Map Roumanophone World.png \n**Mapcaption:** Blue: region where Romanian is the dominant language. Cyan: areas with a notable minority of Romanian speakers. \n**Map 2:** Idioma rumano.PNG \n**Mapcaption 2:** Distribution of the Romanian language in Romania, Moldova and surroundings \n**Notice:** IPA \n**Glotto:** roma1327 \n**Glottorefname:** Romanian \n:::\n\n# \n**[Romania](https://bliptext.com/articles/romania)n** (obsolete spelling: **Roumanian**;, or românește , lit. 'in **[Romania](https://bliptext.com/articles/romania)n**') is the official and main language of [Romania](https://bliptext.com/articles/romania) and [Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldova).\nRomanian is part of the [Eastern Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-romance-languages) sub-branch of [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) which separated from the Western [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries.\nTo distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called [Daco-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/) as opposed to its closest relatives, [Aromanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/aromanian-language), [Megleno-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/megleno-romanian-language), and [Istro-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/istro-romanian-language).\nIt is also spoken as a [minority language](https://bliptext.com/articles/minority-language) by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania ([Bulgaria](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanians-in-bulgaria), [Hungary](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanians-in-hungary), [Serbia](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanians-in-serbia) and [Ukraine](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanians-in-ukraine)), and by the large [Romanian diaspora](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-diaspora).\nIn total, it is spoken by 25 million people as a [first language](https://bliptext.com/articles/first-language).\nRomanian was also known as [Moldovan](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-language) in Moldova, although the [Constitutional Court of Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/constitutional-court-of-moldova) ruled in 2013 that \"the official language of Moldova is Romanian\".\nOn 16 March 2023, the [Moldovan Parliament](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-parliament) approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution.\nOn 22 March, the president of Moldova, [Maia Sandu](https://bliptext.com/articles/maia-sandu), promulgated the law.\n\n# Overview\nThe history of the Romanian language started in the [Roman provinces](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-province) north of the [Jireček Line](https://bliptext.com/articles/jire-ek-line) in [Classical antiquity](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-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.\nBetween 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 from [native dialects](https://bliptext.com/articles/substrate-in-romanian), and in the context of a lessened power of the Roman central authority the language evolved into [Common Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/common-romanian).\nThis [proto-language](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-language) then came into close contact with the [Slavic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/slavic-migrations-to-southeastern-europe) and subsequently divided into [Aromanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/aromanian-language), [Megleno-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/megleno-romanian-language), [Istro-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/istro-romanian-language), and Daco-Romanian.\nDue 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.\nFrom the 12th or 13th century, official documents and religious texts were written in [Old Church Slavonic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-church-slavonic), a language that had a similar role to [Medieval Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/medieval-latin) in Western Europe.\nThe oldest dated text in Romanian is [a letter](https://bliptext.com/articles/neac-u-s-letter) written in 1521 with [Cyrillic letters](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script), and until late 18th century, including during the development of printing, the same alphabet was used.\nThe period after 1780, starting with the writing of its first grammar books, represents the modern age of the language, during which time the [Latin alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-script) became official, the literary language was standardized, and a large number of words from [Modern Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/neo-latin) and other [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) entered the lexis.\nIn the process of language evolution from fewer than 2500 attested words from [Late Antiquity](https://bliptext.com/articles/late-antiquity) to a [lexicon](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-lexis) of over 150,000 words in its contemporary form, Romanian showed a high degree of lexical permeability, reflecting contact with [Thraco-Dacian](https://bliptext.com/articles/thraco-dacian), [Slavic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/slavic-languages) (including [Old Slavic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-church-slavonic), [Serbian](https://bliptext.com/articles/serbian-language), [Bulgarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulgarian-language), [Ukrainian](https://bliptext.com/articles/ukrainian-language), and [Russian](https://bliptext.com/articles/russian-language)), [Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/greek-language), [Hungarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/hungarian-language), [German](https://bliptext.com/articles/german-language), [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language), and to languages that served as cultural models during and after the [Age of Enlightenment](https://bliptext.com/articles/age-of-enlightenment), in particular [French](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-language).\nThis lexical permeability is continuing today with the introduction of [English](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-language) words.\nYet 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 core [vocabulary](https://bliptext.com/articles/vocabulary) used in everyday conversation—remains governed by inherited elements from the [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) spoken in the [Roman](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-empire) provinces bordering [Danube](https://bliptext.com/articles/danube), without which no coherent sentence can be made.\n\n# History\n\n## Common Romanian\nRomanian descended from the [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) spoken in the [Roman provinces](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-province) of [Southeastern Europe](https://bliptext.com/articles/southeastern-europe) north of the [Jireček Line](https://bliptext.com/articles/jire-ek-line) (a hypothetical boundary between the dominance of Latin and Greek influences).\nMost scholars agree that two major dialects developed from Common Romanian by the 10th century.\nDaco-Romanian (the official language of Romania and Moldova) and [Istro-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/istro-romanian-language) (a language spoken by no more than 2,000 people in [Istria](https://bliptext.com/articles/istria)) descended from the northern dialect.\nTwo other languages, [Aromanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/aromanian-language) and [Megleno-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/megleno-romanian-language), developed from the southern version of Common Romanian.\nThese two languages are now spoken in lands to the south of the [Jireček Line](https://bliptext.com/articles/jire-ek-line).\nOf the features that individualize Common Romanian, inherited from Latin or subsequently developed, of particular importance are:\n\n## Old Romanian\nThe use of the denomination Romanian (română) for the language and use of the demonym Romanians (Români) for speakers of this language predates the foundation of the modern Romanian state.\nRomanians always used the general term rumân/român or regional terms like ardeleni (or ungureni), moldoveni or munteni to designate themselves.\nBoth the name of rumână or rumâniască for the Romanian language and the self-designation rumân/român are attested as early as the 16th century, by various foreign travelers into the Carpathian Romance-speaking space, as well as in other historical documents written in Romanian at that time such as Letopisețul Țării Moldovei (The Chronicles of the land of Moldova) by [Grigore Ureche](https://bliptext.com/articles/grigore-ureche).\nThe 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.\nThe oldest extant document in Romanian precisely dated is [Neacșu's letter](https://bliptext.com/articles/neac-u-s-letter) (1521) and was written using the [Romanian Cyrillic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-cyrillic-alphabet), which was used until the late 19th century.\nThe letter is the oldest testimony of Romanian epistolary style and uses a prevalent lexis of Latin origin.\nHowever, dating by [watermarks](https://bliptext.com/articles/watermark) has shown the [Hurmuzaki Psalter](https://bliptext.com/articles/hurmuzaki-psalter) is a copy from around the turn of the 16th century.\nThe 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.\nThe oldest Romanian texts of a literary nature are religious manuscripts (Codicele Voronețean, Psaltirea Scheiană), translations of essential Christian texts.\nThese are considered either propagandistic results of confessional rivalries, for instance between [Lutheranism](https://bliptext.com/articles/lutheranism) and [Calvinism](https://bliptext.com/articles/calvinism), or as initiatives by Romanian monks stationed at [Peri Monastery](https://bliptext.com/articles/s-p-n-a) in [Maramureș](https://bliptext.com/articles/maramure) to distance themselves from the influence of the [Mukacheve](https://bliptext.com/articles/mukacheve) eparchy in Ukraine.\nThe language spoken during this period had a phonological system of seven vowels and twenty-nine consonants.\nParticular to [Old Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-romanian) are the distribution of /z/, as the allophone of /dz/ from [Common Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/common-romanian), in the Wallachian and south-east Transylvanian varieties, the presence of palatal sonorants /ʎ/ and /ɲ/, nowadays preserved only regionally in [Banat](https://bliptext.com/articles/banat) and [Oltenia](https://bliptext.com/articles/oltenia), and the beginning of devoicing of asyllabic [u] after consonants.\nText analysis revealed words that are now lost from modern vocabulary or used only in local varieties.\nThese 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).\n# [Neacșu's letter is the oldest surviving document written in Old Romanian that can be precisely dated | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Neac%C5%9Fu%27s///letter.jpg]\n\n## Modern Romanian\nThe modern age of Romanian starts in 1780 with the printing in Vienna of a very important grammar book titled [Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae](https://bliptext.com/articles/elementa-linguae-daco-romanae-sive-valachicae).\nThe author of the book, [Samuil Micu-Klein](https://bliptext.com/articles/samuil-micu-klein), and the revisor, [Gheorghe Șincai](https://bliptext.com/articles/gheorghe-incai), both members of the [Transylvanian School](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvanian-school), chose to use [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) as the language of the text and presented the [phonetical](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-phonology) and [grammatical](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-grammar) features of Romanian in comparison to its ancestor.\nThe 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.\n# [Samuil Micu-Klein | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Samuil///Micu.jpg]\n\n### Pre-modern period\nBeginning with the printing in 1780 of Elementa 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 of [re-latinization](https://bliptext.com/articles/re-latinization-of-romanian) of the language.\nNotable contributions, besides that of the [Transylvanian School](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvanian-school), are the activities of [Gheorghe Lazăr](https://bliptext.com/articles/gheorghe-laz-r), founder of the first Romanian school, and [Ion Heliade Rădulescu](https://bliptext.com/articles/ion-heliade-r-dulescu).\nThe end of this period is marked by the first printing of magazines and newspapers in Romanian, in particular [Curierul Românesc](https://bliptext.com/articles/curierul-rom-nesc) and [Albina Românească](https://bliptext.com/articles/albina-rom-neasc).\n# [Lithograph of a group portrait by Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, showing Paris-based revolutionaries during the early 1840s. From left: Rosenthal (wearing a Phrygian cap), C. A. Rosetti, anonymous Wallachian | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Rosenthal///Rosetti///Phrygian.jpeg]\n\n### Modern period\nStarting from 1831 and lasting until 1880 the modern phase is characterized by the development of literary styles: scientific, administrative, and [belletristic](https://bliptext.com/articles/belletristic).\nIt quickly reached a high point with the printing of [Dacia Literară](https://bliptext.com/articles/dacia-literar), a journal founded by [Mihail Kogălniceanu](https://bliptext.com/articles/mihail-kog-lniceanu) and representing a literary society, which together with other publications like Propășirea and Gazeta de Transilvania spread the ideas of [Romantic nationalism](https://bliptext.com/articles/romantic-nationalism) and later contributed to the formation of other societies that took part in the [Revolutions of 1848](https://bliptext.com/articles/revolutions-of-1848).\nTheir 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 as [Vasile Alecsandri](https://bliptext.com/articles/vasile-alecsandri), [Grigore Alexandrescu](https://bliptext.com/articles/grigore-alexandrescu), [Nicolae Bălcescu](https://bliptext.com/articles/nicolae-b-lcescu), [Timotei Cipariu](https://bliptext.com/articles/timotei-cipariu).\nBetween 1830 and 1860 \"transitional alphabets\" were used, adding Latin letters to the [Romanian Cyrillic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-cyrillic-alphabet).\nThe Latin alphabet became official at different dates in Wallachia and Transylvania - 1860, and Moldova -1862.\nFollowing the [unification of Moldavia and Wallachia](https://bliptext.com/articles/unification-of-moldavia-and-wallachia) further studies on the language were made, culminating with the founding of Societatea Literară Română on 1 April 1866 on the initiative of [C. A. Rosetti](https://bliptext.com/articles/c-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.\nThis institution later became the [Romanian Academy](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-academy).\n# [Ion Creangă | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Ion///Creanga-Foto03.jpg]\n\n### Contemporary period\nThe 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.\nIt is distinguished by the activity of Romanian literature classics in its early decades: [Mihai Eminescu](https://bliptext.com/articles/mihai-eminescu), [Ion Luca Caragiale](https://bliptext.com/articles/ion-luca-caragiale), [Ion Creangă](https://bliptext.com/articles/ion-creang-writer), [Ioan Slavici](https://bliptext.com/articles/ioan-slavici).\nThe 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.\n\n### Modern history of Romanian in Bessarabia\nThe first [Romanian grammar](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-grammar) was published in Vienna in 1780.\nFollowing the [annexation of Bessarabia by Russia](https://bliptext.com/articles/treaty-of-bucharest-1812) in 1812, Moldavian was established as an official language in the governmental institutions of [Bessarabia](https://bliptext.com/articles/bessarabia), used along with Russian,\nThe publishing works established by Archbishop [Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni](https://bliptext.com/articles/gavril-b-nulescu-bodoni) were able to produce books and liturgical works in Moldavian between 1815 and 1820.\nBessarabia during the 1812–1918 era witnessed the gradual development of [bilingualism](https://bliptext.com/articles/bilingualism).\nRussian continued to develop as the official language of privilege, whereas Romanian remained the principal vernacular.\nThe period from 1905 to 1917 was one of increasing linguistic conflict spurred by an increase in Romanian nationalism.\nIn 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)\".\nAt the same time, Romanian-language newspapers and journals began to appear, such as Basarabia (1906), Viața Basarabiei (1907), Moldovanul (1907), Luminătorul (1908), Cuvînt moldovenesc (1913), Glasul Basarabiei (1913).\nFrom 1913, the synod permitted that \"the churches in [Bessarabia](https://bliptext.com/articles/bessarabia) use the Romanian language\".\nRomanian finally became the official language with the [Constitution of 1923](https://bliptext.com/articles/1923-constitution-of-romania).\n\n## Historical grammar\nRomanian has preserved a part of the [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) [declension](https://bliptext.com/articles/declension), but whereas [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) had six [cases](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-case), from a morphological viewpoint, Romanian has only three: the [nominative](https://bliptext.com/articles/nominative)/[accusative](https://bliptext.com/articles/accusative), [genitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/genitive)/[dative](https://bliptext.com/articles/dative-case), and marginally the [vocative](https://bliptext.com/articles/vocative).\nRomanian nouns also preserve the neuter [gender](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-gender), although instead of functioning as a separate [gender](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-gender) with its own forms in adjectives, the Romanian neuter became a mixture of masculine and feminine.\nThe [verb](https://bliptext.com/articles/verb) morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compound [perfect](https://bliptext.com/articles/perfect-grammar) and [future tense](https://bliptext.com/articles/future-tense) as the other Romance languages.\nCompared with the other [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), during its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin [tense](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-tense) system.\n\n# Geographic distribution\nRomanian is spoken mostly in [Central](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-europe), [South-Eastern](https://bliptext.com/articles/southeast-europe), and [Eastern Europe](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\nRomanian speakers account for 0.5% of the world's population, and 4% of the Romance-speaking population of the world.\nRomanian 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/gagauzia) and [Transnistria](https://bliptext.com/articles/transnistria).\nRomanian is also an official language of the [Autonomous Province of Vojvodina](https://bliptext.com/articles/vojvodina) in Serbia along with five other languages.\nRomanian minorities are encountered in Serbia ([Timok Valley](https://bliptext.com/articles/timok-valley)), Ukraine ([Chernivtsi](https://bliptext.com/articles/chernivtsi-oblast) and [Odesa](https://bliptext.com/articles/odesa-oblast) [oblasts](https://bliptext.com/articles/oblast)), and Hungary ([Gyula](https://bliptext.com/articles/gyula-hungary)).\nLarge immigrant communities are found in Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal.\nIn 1995, the largest Romanian-speaking community in the Middle East was found in Israel, where Romanian was spoken by 5% of the population.\nRomanian is also spoken as a second language by people from Arabic-speaking countries who have studied in Romania.\nIt is estimated that almost half a million Middle Eastern Arabs studied in Romania during the 1980s.\nSmall Romanian-speaking communities are to be found in Kazakhstan and Russia.\nRomanian 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.\n\n## Legal status\n\n### In Romania\nAccording to the [Constitution of Romania](https://bliptext.com/articles/constitution-of-romania) of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic.\nRomania mandates the use of Romanian in official government publications, public education and legal contracts.\nAdvertisements as well as other public messages must bear a translation of foreign words, while trade signs and logos shall be written predominantly in Romanian.\nThe 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.\nSince 2013, the [Romanian Language Day](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-language-day) is celebrated on every [31 August](https://bliptext.com/articles/31-august).\n\n### In Moldova\nRomanian is the official language of the Republic of Moldova.\nThe 1991 [Declaration of Independence](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-declaration-of-independence) named the official language Romanian, and the [Constitution of Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/constitution-of-moldova) as originally adopted in 1994 named the state language of the country [Moldovan](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-language).\nIn December 2013, a decision of the [Constitutional Court of Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/constitutional-court-of-moldova) ruled that the Declaration of Independence took precedence over the Constitution and the state language should be called Romanian.\nIn 2023, the Moldovan parliament passed a law officially adopting the designation \"Romanian\" in all legal instruments, implementing the 2013 court decision.\nScholars agree that Moldovan and Romanian are the same language, with the [glottonym](https://bliptext.com/articles/onym) \"Moldovan\" used in certain political contexts.\nIt has been the sole official language since the adoption of the Law on State Language of the [Moldavian SSR](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldavian-ssr) in 1989.\nThis 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\".\nIt is also used in schools, mass media, education and in the colloquial speech and writing.\nOutside the political arena the language is most often called \"Romanian\".\nIn the breakaway territory of Transnistria, it is co-official with [Ukrainian](https://bliptext.com/articles/ukrainian-language) and Russian.\nIn the [2014 census](https://bliptext.com/articles/2014-moldovan-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.\nWhile in the urban centers speakers are split evenly between the two names (with the capital [Chișinău](https://bliptext.com/articles/chi-in-u) 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.\nUnofficial 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.\n\n### In Serbia\n\n#### Vojvodina\nRomanian and Vlach language in Serbia.png), census 2002 The [Constitution of the Republic of Serbia](https://bliptext.com/articles/constitution-of-the-republic-of-serbia) determines that in the regions of the Republic of Serbia inhabited by national minorities, their own languages and scripts shall be officially used as well, in the manner established by law.\nThe Statute of the Autonomous Province of [Vojvodina](https://bliptext.com/articles/vojvodina) determines that, together with the [Serbian language](https://bliptext.com/articles/serbian-language) and the Cyrillic script, and the Latin script as stipulated by the law, the [Croat](https://bliptext.com/articles/croatian-language), [Hungarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/hungarian-language), [Slovak](https://bliptext.com/articles/slovak-language), Romanian and [Rusyn languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/rusyn-language) 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/vojvodina), in the manner established by the law.\nThe bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are: the Assembly, the Executive Council and the provincial administrative bodies.\nThe Romanian language and script are officially used in eight municipalities: [Alibunar](https://bliptext.com/articles/alibunar), [Bela Crkva](https://bliptext.com/articles/bela-crkva-banat) (Biserica Albă), [Žitište](https://bliptext.com/articles/iti-te) (Sângeorgiu de Bega), [Zrenjanin](https://bliptext.com/articles/zrenjanin) (Becicherecu Mare), [Kovačica](https://bliptext.com/articles/kova-ica) (Covăcița), [Kovin](https://bliptext.com/articles/kovin) (Cuvin), [Plandište](https://bliptext.com/articles/plandi-te) (Plandiște) and [Sečanj](https://bliptext.com/articles/se-anj) (Seceani).\nIn the municipality of [Vršac](https://bliptext.com/articles/vr-ac) (Vârșeț), Romanian is official only in the villages of [Vojvodinci](https://bliptext.com/articles/vojvodinci) (Voivodinț), [Markovac](https://bliptext.com/articles/markovac-vr-ac) (Marcovăț), [Straža](https://bliptext.com/articles/stra-a-vr-ac) (Straja), [Mali Žam](https://bliptext.com/articles/mali-am) (Jamu Mic), [Malo Središte](https://bliptext.com/articles/malo-sredi-te) (Srediștea Mică), [Mesić](https://bliptext.com/articles/mesi-vr-ac) (Mesici), [Jablanka](https://bliptext.com/articles/jablanka) (Iablanca), [Sočica](https://bliptext.com/articles/so-ica) (Sălcița), [Ritiševo](https://bliptext.com/articles/riti-evo) (Râtișor), [Orešac](https://bliptext.com/articles/ore-ac-vr-ac) (Oreșaț) and [Kuštilj](https://bliptext.com/articles/ku-tilj) (Coștei).\nIn the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1.5% of Vojvodinians stated Romanian as their native language.\n# [Official usage of Romanian language in Vojvodina, Serbia | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Vojvodina///romanian///map.png]\n\n#### Timok Valley\nThe [Vlachs of Serbia](https://bliptext.com/articles/vlachs-of-serbia) are considered to speak Romanian as well.\n\n### Regional language status in Ukraine\nIn parts of Ukraine where [Romanians](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanians-in-ukraine) constitute a significant share of the local population (districts in [Chernivtsi](https://bliptext.com/articles/chernivtsi-oblast), [Odesa](https://bliptext.com/articles/odesa-oblast) and [Zakarpattia](https://bliptext.com/articles/zakarpattia-oblast) [oblasts](https://bliptext.com/articles/oblast)) Romanian is taught in schools as a primary language and there are Romanian-language newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting.\nThe [University of Chernivtsi](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-chernivtsi) in western Ukraine trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics.\nIn [Hertsa Raion](https://bliptext.com/articles/hertsa-raion) of Ukraine as well as in other villages of [Chernivtsi Oblast](https://bliptext.com/articles/chernivtsi-oblast) and [Zakarpattia Oblast](https://bliptext.com/articles/zakarpattia-oblast), Romanian has been declared a \"regional language\" alongside Ukrainian as per the 2012 [legislation on languages in Ukraine](https://bliptext.com/articles/legislation-on-languages-in-ukraine).\n\n### In other countries and organizations\nRomanian is an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations, such as the [Latin Union](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-union) and the [European Union](https://bliptext.com/articles/european-union).\nRomanian is also one of the five languages in which religious services are performed in the autonomous monastic state of [Mount Athos](https://bliptext.com/articles/mount-athos), spoken in the monastic communities of [Prodromos](https://bliptext.com/articles/prodromos-mount-athos) and [Lakkoskiti](https://bliptext.com/articles/lakkoskiti).\nIn the unrecognised state of [Transnistria](https://bliptext.com/articles/transnistria), Moldovan is one of the official languages.\nHowever, unlike all other dialects of Romanian, [this variety of Moldovan is written in Cyrillic script](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-cyrillic-alphabet).\n# [Distribution of first-language native Romanian speakers by country. Voivodina is an autonomous province of northern Serbia bordering Romania, while Altele means \"Other\" | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Diagram%C4%83LimbaRom%C3%A2n%C4%83.png]\n\n## As a second and foreign language\nRomanian is taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such as [Vojvodina](https://bliptext.com/articles/vojvodina) in Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary.\nThe [Romanian Cultural Institute](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-cultural-institute) (ICR) has since 1992 organised summer courses in Romanian for language teachers.\nThere are also non-Romanians who study Romanian as a foreign language, for example the Nicolae Bălcescu High-school in [Gyula](https://bliptext.com/articles/gyula-hungary), Hungary.\nRomanian is taught as a [foreign language](https://bliptext.com/articles/foreign-language) in tertiary institutions, mostly in European countries such as Germany, France and Italy, and the Netherlands, as well as in the United States.\nOverall, it is taught as a foreign language in 43 countries around the world.\n# [Romanian as secondary or foreign language in Central and Eastern Europe\n{{legend|#00005B|Native}} {{legend|#1111FF|Above 3%}} {{legend|#6C6CFF|1–3%}} {{legend|#B0B0FF|Under 1%}} {{legend|#CDC3CC|N/A}} | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Knowledge///Romanian///Eastern///EU.png]\n\n## Popular culture\nRomanian has become popular in other countries through movies and songs performed in the Romanian language.\nExamples of Romanian acts that had a great success in non-Romanophone countries are the bands [O-Zone](https://bliptext.com/articles/o-zone) (with their No. 1 single [Dragostea Din Tei](https://bliptext.com/articles/dragostea-din-tei), also known as [Numa Numa](https://bliptext.com/articles/numa-numa-video), across the world in 2003–2004), [Akcent](https://bliptext.com/articles/akcent) (popular in the Netherlands, Poland and other European countries), [Activ](https://bliptext.com/articles/activ-band) (successful in some Eastern European countries), [DJ Project](https://bliptext.com/articles/dj-project) (popular as clubbing music) [SunStroke Project](https://bliptext.com/articles/sunstroke-project) (known by viral video \"[Epic Sax Guy](https://bliptext.com/articles/run-away-sunstroke-project-and-olia-tira-song)\") and [Alexandra Stan](https://bliptext.com/articles/alexandra-stan) (worldwide no.1 hit with \"[Mr. Saxobeat](https://bliptext.com/articles/mr-saxobeat)\") and [Inna](https://bliptext.com/articles/inna-singer) as well as high-rated movies like [4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days](https://bliptext.com/articles/4-months-3-weeks-and-2-days), [The Death of Mr. Lazarescu](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-death-of-mr-lazarescu), [12:08 East of Bucharest](https://bliptext.com/articles/12-08-east-of-bucharest) or [California Dreamin'](https://bliptext.com/articles/california-dreamin-film) (all of them with awards at the [Cannes Film Festival](https://bliptext.com/articles/cannes-film-festival)).\nAlso some artists wrote songs dedicated to the Romanian language.\nThe multi-platinum pop trio [O-Zone](https://bliptext.com/articles/o-zone) (originally from Moldova) released a song called \"Nu mă las de limba noastră\" (\"I won't forsake our language\").\nThe 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\".\nAlso, the Moldovan musicians [Doina and Ion Aldea Teodorovici](https://bliptext.com/articles/doina-and-ion-aldea-teodorovici) performed a song called \"The Romanian language\".\n\n## Dialects\nRomanian is also called Daco-Romanian in comparative linguistics to distinguish from the other dialects of [Common Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/common-romanian): [Aromanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/aromanian-language), [Megleno-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/megleno-romanian-language), and [Istro-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/istro-romanian-language).\nThe origin of the term \"Daco-Romanian\" can be traced back to the first printed book of Romanian grammar in 1780, by [Samuil Micu](https://bliptext.com/articles/samuil-micu) and [Gheorghe Șincai](https://bliptext.com/articles/gheorghe-incai).\nThere, the [Roman](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-rome)ian dialect spoken north of the [Danube](https://bliptext.com/articles/danube) is called lingua Daco-[Roman](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-rome)a to emphasize its origin and its area of use, which includes the former [Roman](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-rome) province of [Dacia](https://bliptext.com/articles/dacia), although it is spoken also south of the [Danube](https://bliptext.com/articles/danube), in [Dobruja](https://bliptext.com/articles/dobruja), the [Timok Valley](https://bliptext.com/articles/timok-valley) and northern Bulgaria.\nThis article deals with the Romanian (i.e. Daco-Romanian) language, and thus only its dialectal variations are discussed here.\nThe differences between the regional varieties are small, limited to regular phonetic changes, few grammar aspects, and lexical particularities.\nThere is a single written and spoken standard (literary) Romanian language used by all speakers, regardless of region.\nLike most natural languages, Romanian dialects are part of a [dialect continuum](https://bliptext.com/articles/dialect-continuum).\nThe dialects of Romanian are also referred to as 'sub-dialects' and are distinguished primarily by phonetic differences.\nRomanians themselves speak of the differences as 'accents' or 'speeches' (in Romanian: accent or grai).\nDepending 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.\nThese are grouped into two main types, southern and northern, further divided as follows:\nOver the last century, however, regional accents have been weakened due to mass communication and greater mobility.\nSome [argots](https://bliptext.com/articles/argot) and speech forms have also arisen from the Romanian language.\nExamples are the [Gumuțeasca](https://bliptext.com/articles/gumu-easca), spoken in [Mărgău](https://bliptext.com/articles/m-rg-u), and the [Totoiana](https://bliptext.com/articles/totoiana), an inverted \"version\" of Romanian spoken in [Totoi](https://bliptext.com/articles/totoi).\n\n# Classification\n\n## Romance language\nRomanian is a Romance language, belonging to the [Italic branch](https://bliptext.com/articles/italic-languages) of the [Indo-European language family](https://bliptext.com/articles/indo-european-languages), having much in common with languages such as Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese.\nCompared with the other Romance languages, the closest relative of Romanian is Italian.\nRomanian has had a greater share of foreign influence than some other Romance languages such as Italian in terms of vocabulary and other aspects.\nA study conducted by [Mario Pei](https://bliptext.com/articles/mario-pei) in 1949 which analyzed the degree of differentiation of languages from their parental language (in the case of [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) to [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) comparing [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology), [inflection](https://bliptext.com/articles/inflection), [discourse](https://bliptext.com/articles/discourse), [syntax](https://bliptext.com/articles/syntax), [vocabulary](https://bliptext.com/articles/vocabulary), and [intonation](https://bliptext.com/articles/intonation-linguistics)) produced the following percentages (the higher the percentage, the greater the distance from [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin)):\nThe [lexical similarity](https://bliptext.com/articles/lexical-similarity) of Romanian with Italian has been estimated at 77%, followed by French at 75%, Sardinian 74%, Catalan 73%, Portuguese and [Rhaeto-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/rhaeto-romance-languages) 72%, Spanish 71%.\nThe Romanian vocabulary became predominantly influenced by French and, to a lesser extent, Italian in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.\n# [Romanian language, as part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, alongside and related to Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. All of these Eastern Romance languages are spoken in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Romance///languages///diagram///en.svg]\n\n## Balkan language area\nWhile most of Romanian grammar and morphology are based on Latin, there are some features that are shared only with other languages of the [Balkans](https://bliptext.com/articles/balkans) and not found in other Romance languages.\nThe shared features of Romanian and the other languages of the [Balkan language area](https://bliptext.com/articles/balkan-sprachbund) ([Bulgarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulgarian-language), [Macedonian](https://bliptext.com/articles/macedonian-language), [Albanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/albanian-language), Greek, and [Serbo-Croatian](https://bliptext.com/articles/serbo-croatian)) include a suffixed [definite article](https://bliptext.com/articles/article-grammar), the [syncretism](https://bliptext.com/articles/syncretism-linguistics) of genitive and dative case and the formation of the future and the alternation of infinitive with subjunctive constructions.\nAccording 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 to [language shift](https://bliptext.com/articles/language-shift).\n\n## Slavic influence\nSlavic influence on Romanian is especially noticeable in its vocabulary, with words of Slavic origin constituting about 10–15% of modern Romanian lexicon, and with further influences in its phonetics, morphology and syntax.\nThe greater part of its Slavic vocabulary comes from [Old Church Slavonic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-church-slavonic), which was the official written language of [Wallachia](https://bliptext.com/articles/wallachia) and [Moldavia](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldavia) from the 14th to the 18th century (although not understood by most people), as well as the [liturgical language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sacred-language) of the [Romanian Orthodox Church](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-orthodox-church).\nAs a result, much Romanian vocabulary dealing with religion, ritual, and hierarchy is Slavic.\nThe number of high-frequency Slavic-derived words is also believed to indicate contact or cohabitation with [South Slavic](https://bliptext.com/articles/south-slavs) tribes from around the 6th century, though it is disputed where this took place (see [Origin of the Romanians](https://bliptext.com/articles/origin-of-the-romanians)).\nWords borrowed in this way tend to be more vernacular (compare [sfârși](https://bliptext.com/articles/sf-r-i), \"to end\", with [săvârși](https://bliptext.com/articles/s-v-r-i), \"to commit\").\nIt has also been argued that Slavic borrowing was a key factor in the development of (î and â) as a separate [phoneme](https://bliptext.com/articles/phoneme).\n\n## Other influences\nEven before the 19th century, Romanian came in contact with several other languages.\nNotable examples of lexical borrowings include:\nFurthermore, during the [Habsburg](https://bliptext.com/articles/habsburg-monarchy) and, later on, [Austrian](https://bliptext.com/articles/austrian-empire) rule of [Banat](https://bliptext.com/articles/banat), [Transylvania](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvania), and [Bukovina](https://bliptext.com/articles/bukovina), a large number of words were borrowed from [Austrian](https://bliptext.com/articles/austrian-empire) High German, in particular in fields such as the military, administration, social welfare, economy, etc. 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\";\n\n## French, Italian, and English loanwords\nSince 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\").\nIt 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.\nThe 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.\nAs second or third languages, French and Italian themselves are better known in Romania than in Romania's neighbors.\nAlong 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.\nIn the process of lexical modernization, much of the native Latin stock have acquired doublets from other [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), thus forming a further and more modern and literary lexical layer.\nTypically, the native word is a noun and the learned loan is an adjective.\nSome examples of doublets:\nIn 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; chec < cake; veceu < WC; tramvai < tramway).\nThese words are assigned grammatical gender in Romanian and handled according to Romanian rules; thus \"the manager\" is managerul.\nSome borrowings, for example in the computer field, appear to have awkward (perhaps contrived and ludicrous) 'Romanisation,' such as cookie-uri which is the plural of the Internet term cookie.\n\n## Lexis\nA 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.\nThis statistic gives the percentages below:\nIf 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.\nAlthough they are rarely used nowadays, the [Romanian calendar](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-calendar) used to have the traditional Romanian month names, unique to the language.\nThe [longest word in Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/longest-word-in-romanian) is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniconioză, with 44 letters, but the longest one admitted by the [Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române](https://bliptext.com/articles/dic-ionarul-explicativ-al-limbii-rom-ne) (\"Explanatory Dictionary of the Romanian Language\", DEX) is electroglotospectrografie, with 25 letters.\n# [Romanian's core lexicon (2,581 words); Marius Sala, VRLR (1988) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/CuvinteleLimbiiRomane.svg]\n\n# Grammar\nRomanian nouns are characterized by gender (feminine, masculine, and neuter), and [declined](https://bliptext.com/articles/declension) by number (singular and plural) and case ([nominative](https://bliptext.com/articles/nominative-case)/[accusative](https://bliptext.com/articles/accusative-case), [dative](https://bliptext.com/articles/dative-case)/[genitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/genitive-case) and [vocative](https://bliptext.com/articles/vocative-case)).\nThe articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns, [agree](https://bliptext.com/articles/agreement-linguistics) in gender, number and case with the noun they modify.\nRomanian is the only major Romance language where [definite articles](https://bliptext.com/articles/article-grammar) are [enclitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/enclitic): that is, attached to the end of the noun (as in [The Scandinavian Languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/north-germanic-languages), [Bulgarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulgarian-language) and [Albanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/albanian-language)), instead of in front ([proclitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proclitic)).\nThey were formed, as in other Romance languages, from the Latin demonstrative pronouns.\nAs in all Romance languages, [Romanian verbs](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-verbs) are highly inflected for person, number, tense, mood, and voice.\nThe usual word order in sentences is [subject–verb–object](https://bliptext.com/articles/subject-verb-object) (SVO).\nRomanian has four verbal [conjugations](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-conjugation) which further split into ten conjugation patterns.\nRomanian verbs are conjugated for five [moods](https://bliptext.com/articles/mood-linguistics) ([indicative](https://bliptext.com/articles/indicative-mood), [conditional](https://bliptext.com/articles/conditional-mood)/[optative](https://bliptext.com/articles/optative-mood), [imperative](https://bliptext.com/articles/imperative-mood), [subjunctive](https://bliptext.com/articles/subjunctive-mood), and [presumptive](https://bliptext.com/articles/presumptive-mood)) and four non-finite forms ([infinitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/infinitive), [gerund](https://bliptext.com/articles/gerund), [supine](https://bliptext.com/articles/supine), and [participle](https://bliptext.com/articles/participle)).\n\n# Phonology\nRomanian has seven [vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel):, , , , , and.\nAdditionally, and may appear in some [borrowed words](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanword).\nArguably, the diphthongs and are also part of the phoneme set.\nThere are twenty-two consonants.\nThe two [approximants](https://bliptext.com/articles/approximant-consonant) and can appear before or after any vowel, creating a large number of glide-vowel sequences which are, strictly speaking, not [diphthongs](https://bliptext.com/articles/diphthong).\nIn final positions after consonants, a short can be deleted, surfacing only as the [palatalization](https://bliptext.com/articles/palatalization-phonetics) of the preceding consonant (e.g., ).\nSimilarly, a deleted may prompt [labialization](https://bliptext.com/articles/labialization) of a preceding consonant, though this has ceased to carry any morphological meaning.\n\n## Phonetic changes\nOwing 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 → (Lat. **cl**arus → Rom. ****chi**à**r, Ital. **chi**aro, Lat. **cl**amare → Rom. **che**mare, Ital. **chi**amare) and → (Lat. *******gl******acia (******gl******acies) → Rom. **ghé**ață, Ital. ********ghi********accia, ********ghi********accio, Lat. *un******gl******a (ungula) → Rom. un********ghi********e, Ital. un********ghi********a), although this did not go as far as it did in Italian with other similar **cl**usters (Rom. **plà**ce, Ital. **pi**ace).\nAnother similarity with Italian is the chan**********ge********** from or to or (Lat. pax, pa************ce************m → Rom. and Ital. pa************ce************, Lat. dul************ce************m → Rom. dul************ce************, Ital. dol************ce************, Lat. ****ci****rcus → Rom. ************ce************rc, Ital. ****ci****rco) and or to or (Lat. **********ge**********lu → Rom. ****gè****r, Ital. **********ge**********lo, Lat. mar****gi****nem → Rom. and Ital. mar****gi****ne, Lat. **********ge**********mere → Rom. ****gè****m (**********ge**********mere), Ital. **********ge**********mere).\nThere are also a few changes shared with [Dalmatian](https://bliptext.com/articles/dalmatian-language), such as (probably phonetically ) → (Lat. co**gn**atus → Rom. cu****mn****at, Dalm. co****mn****ut) and → in some situations (Lat. coxa → Rom. có****ps****ă, Dalm. co****ps****a).\nAmong the notable phonetic changes are:\nRomanian has entirely lost Latin (********qu********), turning it either into (Lat. ********qu********attuor → Rom. pàtru, \"four\"; cf. It. ********qu********attro) or (Lat. ********qu********ando → Rom. când, \"when\"; Lat. ********qu********ale → Rom. càre, \"which\").\n\n# Writing system\nThe first written record about a [Romance language](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-language) spoken in the Middle Ages in the Balkans is from 587.\nA 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!\").\n[Theophanes Confessor](https://bliptext.com/articles/theophanes-confessor) recorded it as part of a 6th-century military expedition by [Comentiolus](https://bliptext.com/articles/comentiolus) and [Priscus](https://bliptext.com/articles/priscus) against the Avars and Slovenes.\nThe oldest surviving written text in Romanian is a letter from late June 1521, in which Neacșu of [Câmpulung](https://bliptext.com/articles/c-mpulung) wrote to the mayor of [Brașov](https://bliptext.com/articles/bra-ov) about an imminent attack of the Turks.\nIt was written using the [Cyrillic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-cyrillic-alphabet), like most early Romanian writings.\nThe earliest surviving writing in Latin script was a late 16th-century [Transylvanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvania) text which was written with the [Hungarian alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/hungarian-alphabet) conventions.\nIn the 18th century, [Transylvanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvania) scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted the [Latin alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-alphabet) to the Romanian language, using some orthographic rules from [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-alphabet), recognized as Romanian's closest relative.\nThe Cyrillic alphabet remained in (gradually decreasing) use until 1860, when Romanian writing was first officially regulated.\nIn the [Soviet Republic of Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldavian-ssr), the Russian-derived [Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-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.\n# [Hurmuzaki Psalter, written around 1500 | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Psaltire///Hurmuzaki1.JPG]\n\n## Romanian alphabet\nThe Romanian alphabet is as follows:\n!colspan=\"31\"| [Capital letters](https://bliptext.com/articles/capital-letters)\n!colspan=\"31\"| [Lower case letters](https://bliptext.com/articles/lower-case)\n!colspan=\"31\"| Phonemes\n,\nmute\n,\n,\nK, Q, W and Y, not part of the native alphabet; they were officially introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982 and are mostly used to write loanwords like kilogram, quasar, watt, and yoga.\nThe Romanian alphabet is based on the [Latin script](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-script) with five additional letters Ă, Â, Î, Ș, Ț.\nFormerly, there were as many as 12 additional letters, but some of them were abolished in subsequent reforms.\nAlso, until the early 20th century, a breve marker was used, which survives only in ă.\nToday the Romanian alphabet is largely [phonemic](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonemic-orthography).\nHowever, the letters â and î both represent the same [close central unrounded vowel](https://bliptext.com/articles/close-central-unrounded-vowel).\nÂ 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.\nAnother exception from a completely phonetic writing system is the fact that [vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel) and their respective semi[vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel) are not distinguished in writing.\nIn dictionaries the distinction is marked by separating the entry word into [syllables](https://bliptext.com/articles/syllable) for words containing a [hiatus](https://bliptext.com/articles/hiatus-linguistics).\nStressed 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.\nFor example, trei copíi means \"three children\" while trei cópii means \"three copies\".\n\n## Pronunciation\n# [A close shot of some keys with Romanian characters on the keyboard of a laptop | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Romanian///keyboard///letters.jpg]\n\n## Punctuation and capitalization\nUses of punctuation peculiar to Romanian are:\n\n## Academy spelling recommendations\nIn 1993, new spelling rules were proposed by the [Romanian Academy](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-academy).\nIn 2000, the Moldovan Academy recommended adopting the same spelling rules, 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.\nOn 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.\nThus the spelling used by institutions under Moldova's ministry of education has been brought in line with the Romanian Academy's 1993 recommendation.\nThis 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).\n\n## Examples of Romanian text\nThe sentence in contemporary Romanian.\nWords inherited directly from Latin are highlighted:\nThe same sentence, with French and Italian [loanwords](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanwords) highlighted instead:\nThe sentence rewritten to exclude French and Italian loanwords.\nSlavic loanwords are highlighted:\nThe sentence rewritten to exclude all loanwords.\nThe meaning is unchanged:","current_revision":null,"created_by":"kACnuQmH5k9Nr5VNVEpVeg7XpvUmMctD","created_at":"2025-01-25T17:23:05.482Z","updated_at":"2025-01-25T17:23:05.482Z","search_vector":"'languag':2 'romanian':1","search_content":" \n**Name:** Romanian \n**Altname:** Daco-Romanian \n**Nativename:** limba română, românește, română \n**States:** [Romania](https://bliptext.com/articles/romania), [Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldova) \n**Region:** [Central Europe](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-europe), [Southeastern Europe](https://bliptext.com/articles/southeast-europe), and [Eastern Europe](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-europe) \n**Ethnicity:** Romanians · (including Moldovans) \n**Speakers:** million \n**Date:** 2020 \n**Ref:** e27 \n**Familycolor:** Indo-European \n**Fam 2:** [Italic](https://bliptext.com/articles/italic-languages) \n**Fam 3:** [Latino-Faliscan](https://bliptext.com/articles/latino-faliscan-languages) \n**Fam 4:** [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) \n**Fam 5:** [Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) \n**Fam 6:** [Eastern](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-romance-languages) \n**Fam 7:** [Northern Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-romance-languages)? \n**Fam 8:** [Eastern Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-romance-languages)? \n**Dia 1:** [Transylvanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvanian-varieties-of-romanian) \n**Dia 2:** [Crișana](https://bliptext.com/articles/cri-ana-dialect) \n**Dia 3:** [Moldavian](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldavian-dialect) \n**Dia 4:** [Banat](https://bliptext.com/articles/banat-romanian-dialect) \n**Dia 5:** [Wallachian](https://bliptext.com/articles/wallachian-dialect) \n**Dia 6:** [Maramureș](https://bliptext.com/articles/maramure-dialect) \n**Dia 7:** [Bukovinian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bukovinian-romanian-dialect) \n**Dia 8:** [Oltenian](https://bliptext.com/articles/oltenian-dialect) \n**Ancestor:** [Proto-Indo-European](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-indo-european-language) \n**Ancestor 2:** [Proto-Italic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-italic-language) \n**Ancestor 3:** [Old Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-latin) \n**Ancestor 4:** [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) \n**Ancestor 5:** [Proto-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-romance-language) \n**Ancestor 6:** [Common Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/common-romanian) \n**Script:** [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-script) ([Romanian alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-alphabet)) · [Cyrillic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script) · Moldovan [Cyrillic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script) alphabet ([Transnistria](https://bliptext.com/articles/transnistria) only) · Romanian [Cyrillic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script) alphabet (historical) · [Romanian Braille](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-braille) \n**Nation:** 🇷🇴 Romania · 🇲🇩 Moldova · Transnistria (as \"Moldovan\") · Vojvodina (Serbia) · 🇪🇺 European Union \n**Minority:** 🇭🇺 Hungary · 🇷🇸 Serbia (both as Romanian and \"Vlach\") · 🇺🇦 Ukraine \n**Agency:** [Romanian Academy](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-academy) \n**Iso 1:** ro \n**Iso 2b:** rum \n**Iso 2t:** ron \n**Iso 3:** ron \n**Lingua:** 51-AAD-c (varieties: 51-AAD-ca to -ck) \n**Map:** Map Roumanophone World.png \n**Mapcaption:** Blue: region where Romanian is the dominant language. Cyan: areas with a notable minority of Romanian speakers. \n**Map 2:** Idioma rumano.PNG \n**Mapcaption 2:** Distribution of the Romanian language in Romania, Moldova and surroundings \n**Notice:** IPA \n**Glotto:** roma1327 \n**Glottorefname:** Romanian \n \n\n# \n**[Romania](https://bliptext.com/articles/romania)n** (obsolete spelling: **Roumanian**;, or românește , lit. 'in **[Romania](https://bliptext.com/articles/romania)n**') is the official and main language of [Romania](https://bliptext.com/articles/romania) and [Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldova).\nRomanian is part of the [Eastern Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-romance-languages) sub-branch of [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) which separated from the Western [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries.\nTo distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called [Daco-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/) as opposed to its closest relatives, [Aromanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/aromanian-language), [Megleno-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/megleno-romanian-language), and [Istro-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/istro-romanian-language).\nIt is also spoken as a [minority language](https://bliptext.com/articles/minority-language) by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania ([Bulgaria](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanians-in-bulgaria), [Hungary](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanians-in-hungary), [Serbia](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanians-in-serbia) and [Ukraine](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanians-in-ukraine)), and by the large [Romanian diaspora](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-diaspora).\nIn total, it is spoken by 25 million people as a [first language](https://bliptext.com/articles/first-language).\nRomanian was also known as [Moldovan](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-language) in Moldova, although the [Constitutional Court of Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/constitutional-court-of-moldova) ruled in 2013 that \"the official language of Moldova is Romanian\".\nOn 16 March 2023, the [Moldovan Parliament](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-parliament) approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution.\nOn 22 March, the president of Moldova, [Maia Sandu](https://bliptext.com/articles/maia-sandu), promulgated the law.\n\n# Overview\nThe history of the Romanian language started in the [Roman provinces](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-province) north of the [Jireček Line](https://bliptext.com/articles/jire-ek-line) in [Classical antiquity](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-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.\nBetween 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 from [native dialects](https://bliptext.com/articles/substrate-in-romanian), and in the context of a lessened power of the Roman central authority the language evolved into [Common Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/common-romanian).\nThis [proto-language](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-language) then came into close contact with the [Slavic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/slavic-migrations-to-southeastern-europe) and subsequently divided into [Aromanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/aromanian-language), [Megleno-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/megleno-romanian-language), [Istro-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/istro-romanian-language), and Daco-Romanian.\nDue 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.\nFrom the 12th or 13th century, official documents and religious texts were written in [Old Church Slavonic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-church-slavonic), a language that had a similar role to [Medieval Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/medieval-latin) in Western Europe.\nThe oldest dated text in Romanian is [a letter](https://bliptext.com/articles/neac-u-s-letter) written in 1521 with [Cyrillic letters](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script), and until late 18th century, including during the development of printing, the same alphabet was used.\nThe period after 1780, starting with the writing of its first grammar books, represents the modern age of the language, during which time the [Latin alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-script) became official, the literary language was standardized, and a large number of words from [Modern Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/neo-latin) and other [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) entered the lexis.\nIn the process of language evolution from fewer than 2500 attested words from [Late Antiquity](https://bliptext.com/articles/late-antiquity) to a [lexicon](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-lexis) of over 150,000 words in its contemporary form, Romanian showed a high degree of lexical permeability, reflecting contact with [Thraco-Dacian](https://bliptext.com/articles/thraco-dacian), [Slavic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/slavic-languages) (including [Old Slavic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-church-slavonic), [Serbian](https://bliptext.com/articles/serbian-language), [Bulgarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulgarian-language), [Ukrainian](https://bliptext.com/articles/ukrainian-language), and [Russian](https://bliptext.com/articles/russian-language)), [Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/greek-language), [Hungarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/hungarian-language), [German](https://bliptext.com/articles/german-language), [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language), and to languages that served as cultural models during and after the [Age of Enlightenment](https://bliptext.com/articles/age-of-enlightenment), in particular [French](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-language).\nThis lexical permeability is continuing today with the introduction of [English](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-language) words.\nYet 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 core [vocabulary](https://bliptext.com/articles/vocabulary) used in everyday conversation—remains governed by inherited elements from the [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) spoken in the [Roman](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-empire) provinces bordering [Danube](https://bliptext.com/articles/danube), without which no coherent sentence can be made.\n\n# History\n\n## Common Romanian\nRomanian descended from the [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) spoken in the [Roman provinces](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-province) of [Southeastern Europe](https://bliptext.com/articles/southeastern-europe) north of the [Jireček Line](https://bliptext.com/articles/jire-ek-line) (a hypothetical boundary between the dominance of Latin and Greek influences).\nMost scholars agree that two major dialects developed from Common Romanian by the 10th century.\nDaco-Romanian (the official language of Romania and Moldova) and [Istro-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/istro-romanian-language) (a language spoken by no more than 2,000 people in [Istria](https://bliptext.com/articles/istria)) descended from the northern dialect.\nTwo other languages, [Aromanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/aromanian-language) and [Megleno-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/megleno-romanian-language), developed from the southern version of Common Romanian.\nThese two languages are now spoken in lands to the south of the [Jireček Line](https://bliptext.com/articles/jire-ek-line).\nOf the features that individualize Common Romanian, inherited from Latin or subsequently developed, of particular importance are:\n\n## Old Romanian\nThe use of the denomination Romanian (română) for the language and use of the demonym Romanians (Români) for speakers of this language predates the foundation of the modern Romanian state.\nRomanians always used the general term rumân/român or regional terms like ardeleni (or ungureni), moldoveni or munteni to designate themselves.\nBoth the name of rumână or rumâniască for the Romanian language and the self-designation rumân/român are attested as early as the 16th century, by various foreign travelers into the Carpathian Romance-speaking space, as well as in other historical documents written in Romanian at that time such as Letopisețul Țării Moldovei (The Chronicles of the land of Moldova) by [Grigore Ureche](https://bliptext.com/articles/grigore-ureche).\nThe 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.\nThe oldest extant document in Romanian precisely dated is [Neacșu's letter](https://bliptext.com/articles/neac-u-s-letter) (1521) and was written using the [Romanian Cyrillic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-cyrillic-alphabet), which was used until the late 19th century.\nThe letter is the oldest testimony of Romanian epistolary style and uses a prevalent lexis of Latin origin.\nHowever, dating by [watermarks](https://bliptext.com/articles/watermark) has shown the [Hurmuzaki Psalter](https://bliptext.com/articles/hurmuzaki-psalter) is a copy from around the turn of the 16th century.\nThe 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.\nThe oldest Romanian texts of a literary nature are religious manuscripts (Codicele Voronețean, Psaltirea Scheiană), translations of essential Christian texts.\nThese are considered either propagandistic results of confessional rivalries, for instance between [Lutheranism](https://bliptext.com/articles/lutheranism) and [Calvinism](https://bliptext.com/articles/calvinism), or as initiatives by Romanian monks stationed at [Peri Monastery](https://bliptext.com/articles/s-p-n-a) in [Maramureș](https://bliptext.com/articles/maramure) to distance themselves from the influence of the [Mukacheve](https://bliptext.com/articles/mukacheve) eparchy in Ukraine.\nThe language spoken during this period had a phonological system of seven vowels and twenty-nine consonants.\nParticular to [Old Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-romanian) are the distribution of /z/, as the allophone of /dz/ from [Common Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/common-romanian), in the Wallachian and south-east Transylvanian varieties, the presence of palatal sonorants /ʎ/ and /ɲ/, nowadays preserved only regionally in [Banat](https://bliptext.com/articles/banat) and [Oltenia](https://bliptext.com/articles/oltenia), and the beginning of devoicing of asyllabic [u] after consonants.\nText analysis revealed words that are now lost from modern vocabulary or used only in local varieties.\nThese 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).\n# [Neacșu's letter is the oldest surviving document written in Old Romanian that can be precisely dated | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Neac%C5%9Fu%27s///letter.jpg]\n\n## Modern Romanian\nThe modern age of Romanian starts in 1780 with the printing in Vienna of a very important grammar book titled [Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae](https://bliptext.com/articles/elementa-linguae-daco-romanae-sive-valachicae).\nThe author of the book, [Samuil Micu-Klein](https://bliptext.com/articles/samuil-micu-klein), and the revisor, [Gheorghe Șincai](https://bliptext.com/articles/gheorghe-incai), both members of the [Transylvanian School](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvanian-school), chose to use [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) as the language of the text and presented the [phonetical](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-phonology) and [grammatical](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-grammar) features of Romanian in comparison to its ancestor.\nThe 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.\n# [Samuil Micu-Klein | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Samuil///Micu.jpg]\n\n### Pre-modern period\nBeginning with the printing in 1780 of Elementa 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 of [re-latinization](https://bliptext.com/articles/re-latinization-of-romanian) of the language.\nNotable contributions, besides that of the [Transylvanian School](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvanian-school), are the activities of [Gheorghe Lazăr](https://bliptext.com/articles/gheorghe-laz-r), founder of the first Romanian school, and [Ion Heliade Rădulescu](https://bliptext.com/articles/ion-heliade-r-dulescu).\nThe end of this period is marked by the first printing of magazines and newspapers in Romanian, in particular [Curierul Românesc](https://bliptext.com/articles/curierul-rom-nesc) and [Albina Românească](https://bliptext.com/articles/albina-rom-neasc).\n# [Lithograph of a group portrait by Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, showing Paris-based revolutionaries during the early 1840s. From left: Rosenthal (wearing a Phrygian cap), C. A. Rosetti, anonymous Wallachian | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Rosenthal///Rosetti///Phrygian.jpeg]\n\n### Modern period\nStarting from 1831 and lasting until 1880 the modern phase is characterized by the development of literary styles: scientific, administrative, and [belletristic](https://bliptext.com/articles/belletristic).\nIt quickly reached a high point with the printing of [Dacia Literară](https://bliptext.com/articles/dacia-literar), a journal founded by [Mihail Kogălniceanu](https://bliptext.com/articles/mihail-kog-lniceanu) and representing a literary society, which together with other publications like Propășirea and Gazeta de Transilvania spread the ideas of [Romantic nationalism](https://bliptext.com/articles/romantic-nationalism) and later contributed to the formation of other societies that took part in the [Revolutions of 1848](https://bliptext.com/articles/revolutions-of-1848).\nTheir 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 as [Vasile Alecsandri](https://bliptext.com/articles/vasile-alecsandri), [Grigore Alexandrescu](https://bliptext.com/articles/grigore-alexandrescu), [Nicolae Bălcescu](https://bliptext.com/articles/nicolae-b-lcescu), [Timotei Cipariu](https://bliptext.com/articles/timotei-cipariu).\nBetween 1830 and 1860 \"transitional alphabets\" were used, adding Latin letters to the [Romanian Cyrillic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-cyrillic-alphabet).\nThe Latin alphabet became official at different dates in Wallachia and Transylvania - 1860, and Moldova -1862.\nFollowing the [unification of Moldavia and Wallachia](https://bliptext.com/articles/unification-of-moldavia-and-wallachia) further studies on the language were made, culminating with the founding of Societatea Literară Română on 1 April 1866 on the initiative of [C. A. Rosetti](https://bliptext.com/articles/c-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.\nThis institution later became the [Romanian Academy](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-academy).\n# [Ion Creangă | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Ion///Creanga-Foto03.jpg]\n\n### Contemporary period\nThe 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.\nIt is distinguished by the activity of Romanian literature classics in its early decades: [Mihai Eminescu](https://bliptext.com/articles/mihai-eminescu), [Ion Luca Caragiale](https://bliptext.com/articles/ion-luca-caragiale), [Ion Creangă](https://bliptext.com/articles/ion-creang-writer), [Ioan Slavici](https://bliptext.com/articles/ioan-slavici).\nThe 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.\n\n### Modern history of Romanian in Bessarabia\nThe first [Romanian grammar](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-grammar) was published in Vienna in 1780.\nFollowing the [annexation of [Bessarabia](https://bliptext.com/articles/bessarabia) by Russia](https://bliptext.com/articles/treaty-of-bucharest-1812) in 1812, Moldavian was established as an official language in the governmental institutions of [Bessarabia](https://bliptext.com/articles/bessarabia), used along with Russian,\nThe publishing works established by Archbishop [Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni](https://bliptext.com/articles/gavril-b-nulescu-bodoni) were able to produce books and liturgical works in Moldavian between 1815 and 1820.\nBessarabia during the 1812–1918 era witnessed the gradual development of [bilingualism](https://bliptext.com/articles/bilingualism).\nRussian continued to develop as the official language of privilege, whereas Romanian remained the principal vernacular.\nThe period from 1905 to 1917 was one of increasing linguistic conflict spurred by an increase in Romanian nationalism.\nIn 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)\".\nAt the same time, Romanian-language newspapers and journals began to appear, such as Basarabia (1906), Viața Basarabiei (1907), Moldovanul (1907), Luminătorul (1908), Cuvînt moldovenesc (1913), Glasul Basarabiei (1913).\nFrom 1913, the synod permitted that \"the churches in [Bessarabia](https://bliptext.com/articles/bessarabia) use the Romanian language\".\nRomanian finally became the official language with the [Constitution of 1923](https://bliptext.com/articles/1923-constitution-of-romania).\n\n## Historical grammar\nRomanian has preserved a part of the [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) [declension](https://bliptext.com/articles/declension), but whereas [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) had six [cases](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-case), from a morphological viewpoint, Romanian has only three: the [nominative](https://bliptext.com/articles/nominative)/[accusative](https://bliptext.com/articles/accusative), [genitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/genitive)/[dative](https://bliptext.com/articles/dative-case), and marginally the [vocative](https://bliptext.com/articles/vocative).\nRomanian nouns also preserve the neuter [gender](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-gender), although instead of functioning as a separate [gender](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-gender) with its own forms in adjectives, the Romanian neuter became a mixture of masculine and feminine.\nThe [verb](https://bliptext.com/articles/verb) morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compound [perfect](https://bliptext.com/articles/perfect-grammar) and [future tense](https://bliptext.com/articles/future-tense) as the other Romance languages.\nCompared with the other [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), during its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin [tense](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-tense) system.\n\n# Geographic distribution\nRomanian is spoken mostly in [Central](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-europe), [South-Eastern](https://bliptext.com/articles/southeast-europe), and [Eastern Europe](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\nRomanian speakers account for 0.5% of the world's population, and 4% of the Romance-speaking population of the world.\nRomanian 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/gagauzia) and [Transnistria](https://bliptext.com/articles/transnistria).\nRomanian is also an official language of the [Autonomous Province of Vojvodina](https://bliptext.com/articles/vojvodina) in Serbia along with five other languages.\nRomanian minorities are encountered in Serbia ([Timok Valley](https://bliptext.com/articles/timok-valley)), Ukraine ([Chernivtsi](https://bliptext.com/articles/chernivtsi-oblast) and [Odesa](https://bliptext.com/articles/odesa-oblast) [oblasts](https://bliptext.com/articles/oblast)), and Hungary ([Gyula](https://bliptext.com/articles/gyula-hungary)).\nLarge immigrant communities are found in Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal.\nIn 1995, the largest Romanian-speaking community in the Middle East was found in Israel, where Romanian was spoken by 5% of the population.\nRomanian is also spoken as a second language by people from Arabic-speaking countries who have studied in Romania.\nIt is estimated that almost half a million Middle Eastern Arabs studied in Romania during the 1980s.\nSmall Romanian-speaking communities are to be found in Kazakhstan and Russia.\nRomanian 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.\n\n## Legal status\n\n### In Romania\nAccording to the [Constitution of Romania](https://bliptext.com/articles/constitution-of-romania) of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic.\nRomania mandates the use of Romanian in official government publications, public education and legal contracts.\nAdvertisements as well as other public messages must bear a translation of foreign words, while trade signs and logos shall be written predominantly in Romanian.\nThe 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.\nSince 2013, the [Romanian Language Day](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-language-day) is celebrated on every [31 August](https://bliptext.com/articles/31-august).\n\n### In Moldova\nRomanian is the official language of the Republic of Moldova.\nThe 1991 [Declaration of Independence](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-declaration-of-independence) named the official language Romanian, and the [Constitution of Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/constitution-of-moldova) as originally adopted in 1994 named the state language of the country [Moldovan](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-language).\nIn December 2013, a decision of the [Constitutional Court of Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/constitutional-court-of-moldova) ruled that the Declaration of Independence took precedence over the Constitution and the state language should be called Romanian.\nIn 2023, the Moldovan parliament passed a law officially adopting the designation \"Romanian\" in all legal instruments, implementing the 2013 court decision.\nScholars agree that Moldovan and Romanian are the same language, with the [glottonym](https://bliptext.com/articles/onym) \"Moldovan\" used in certain political contexts.\nIt has been the sole official language since the adoption of the Law on State Language of the [Moldavian SSR](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldavian-ssr) in 1989.\nThis 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\".\nIt is also used in schools, mass media, education and in the colloquial speech and writing.\nOutside the political arena the language is most often called \"Romanian\".\nIn the breakaway territory of Transnistria, it is co-official with [Ukrainian](https://bliptext.com/articles/ukrainian-language) and Russian.\nIn the [2014 census](https://bliptext.com/articles/2014-moldovan-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.\nWhile in the urban centers speakers are split evenly between the two names (with the capital [Chișinău](https://bliptext.com/articles/chi-in-u) 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.\nUnofficial 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.\n\n### In Serbia\n\n#### Vojvodina\nRomanian and Vlach language in Serbia.png), census 2002 The [Constitution of the Republic of Serbia](https://bliptext.com/articles/constitution-of-the-republic-of-serbia) determines that in the regions of the Republic of Serbia inhabited by national minorities, their own languages and scripts shall be officially used as well, in the manner established by law.\nThe Statute of the Autonomous Province of [Vojvodina](https://bliptext.com/articles/vojvodina) determines that, together with the [Serbian language](https://bliptext.com/articles/serbian-language) and the Cyrillic script, and the Latin script as stipulated by the law, the [Croat](https://bliptext.com/articles/croatian-language), [Hungarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/hungarian-language), [Slovak](https://bliptext.com/articles/slovak-language), Romanian and [Rusyn languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/rusyn-language) 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/vojvodina), in the manner established by the law.\nThe bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are: the Assembly, the Executive Council and the provincial administrative bodies.\nThe Romanian language and script are officially used in eight municipalities: [Alibunar](https://bliptext.com/articles/alibunar), [Bela Crkva](https://bliptext.com/articles/bela-crkva-banat) (Biserica Albă), [Žitište](https://bliptext.com/articles/iti-te) (Sângeorgiu de Bega), [Zrenjanin](https://bliptext.com/articles/zrenjanin) (Becicherecu Mare), [Kovačica](https://bliptext.com/articles/kova-ica) (Covăcița), [Kovin](https://bliptext.com/articles/kovin) (Cuvin), [Plandište](https://bliptext.com/articles/plandi-te) (Plandiște) and [Sečanj](https://bliptext.com/articles/se-anj) (Seceani).\nIn the municipality of [Vršac](https://bliptext.com/articles/vr-ac) (Vârșeț), Romanian is official only in the villages of [Vojvodinci](https://bliptext.com/articles/vojvodinci) (Voivodinț), [Markovac](https://bliptext.com/articles/markovac-vr-ac) (Marcovăț), [Straža](https://bliptext.com/articles/stra-a-vr-ac) (Straja), [Mali Žam](https://bliptext.com/articles/mali-am) (Jamu Mic), [Malo Središte](https://bliptext.com/articles/malo-sredi-te) (Srediștea Mică), [Mesić](https://bliptext.com/articles/mesi-vr-ac) (Mesici), [Jablanka](https://bliptext.com/articles/jablanka) (Iablanca), [Sočica](https://bliptext.com/articles/so-ica) (Sălcița), [Ritiševo](https://bliptext.com/articles/riti-evo) (Râtișor), [Orešac](https://bliptext.com/articles/ore-ac-vr-ac) (Oreșaț) and [Kuštilj](https://bliptext.com/articles/ku-tilj) (Coștei).\nIn the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1.5% of Vojvodinians stated Romanian as their native language.\n# [Official usage of Romanian language in Vojvodina, Serbia | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Vojvodina///romanian///map.png]\n\n#### Timok Valley\nThe [Vlachs of Serbia](https://bliptext.com/articles/vlachs-of-serbia) are considered to speak Romanian as well.\n\n### Regional language status in Ukraine\nIn parts of Ukraine where [Romanians](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanians-in-ukraine) constitute a significant share of the local population (districts in [Chernivtsi](https://bliptext.com/articles/chernivtsi-oblast), [Odesa](https://bliptext.com/articles/odesa-oblast) and [Zakarpattia](https://bliptext.com/articles/zakarpattia-oblast) [oblasts](https://bliptext.com/articles/oblast)) Romanian is taught in schools as a primary language and there are Romanian-language newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting.\nThe [University of Chernivtsi](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-chernivtsi) in western Ukraine trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics.\nIn [Hertsa Raion](https://bliptext.com/articles/hertsa-raion) of Ukraine as well as in other villages of [Chernivtsi Oblast](https://bliptext.com/articles/chernivtsi-oblast) and [Zakarpattia Oblast](https://bliptext.com/articles/zakarpattia-oblast), Romanian has been declared a \"regional language\" alongside Ukrainian as per the 2012 [legislation on languages in Ukraine](https://bliptext.com/articles/legislation-on-languages-in-ukraine).\n\n### In other countries and organizations\nRomanian is an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations, such as the [Latin Union](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-union) and the [European Union](https://bliptext.com/articles/european-union).\nRomanian is also one of the five languages in which religious services are performed in the autonomous monastic state of [Mount Athos](https://bliptext.com/articles/mount-athos), spoken in the monastic communities of [Prodromos](https://bliptext.com/articles/prodromos-mount-athos) and [Lakkoskiti](https://bliptext.com/articles/lakkoskiti).\nIn the unrecognised state of [Transnistria](https://bliptext.com/articles/transnistria), Moldovan is one of the official languages.\nHowever, unlike all other dialects of Romanian, [this variety of Moldovan is written in Cyrillic script](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-cyrillic-alphabet).\n# [Distribution of first-language native Romanian speakers by country. Voivodina is an autonomous province of northern Serbia bordering Romania, while Altele means \"Other\" | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Diagram%C4%83LimbaRom%C3%A2n%C4%83.png]\n\n## As a second and foreign language\nRomanian is taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such as [Vojvodina](https://bliptext.com/articles/vojvodina) in Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary.\nThe [Romanian Cultural Institute](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-cultural-institute) (ICR) has since 1992 organised summer courses in Romanian for language teachers.\nThere are also non-Romanians who study Romanian as a foreign language, for example the Nicolae Bălcescu High-school in [Gyula](https://bliptext.com/articles/gyula-hungary), Hungary.\nRomanian is taught as a [foreign language](https://bliptext.com/articles/foreign-language) in tertiary institutions, mostly in European countries such as Germany, France and Italy, and the Netherlands, as well as in the United States.\nOverall, it is taught as a foreign language in 43 countries around the world.\n# [Romanian as secondary or foreign language in Central and Eastern Europe\n{{legend|#00005B|Native}} {{legend|#1111FF|Above 3%}} {{legend|#6C6CFF|1–3%}} {{legend|#B0B0FF|Under 1%}} {{legend|#CDC3CC|N/A}} | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Knowledge///Romanian///Eastern///EU.png]\n\n## Popular culture\nRomanian has become popular in other countries through movies and songs performed in the Romanian language.\nExamples of Romanian acts that had a great success in non-Romanophone countries are the bands [O-Zone](https://bliptext.com/articles/o-zone) (with their No. 1 single [Dragostea Din Tei](https://bliptext.com/articles/dragostea-din-tei), also known as [Numa Numa](https://bliptext.com/articles/numa-numa-video), across the world in 2003–2004), [Akcent](https://bliptext.com/articles/akcent) (popular in the Netherlands, Poland and other European countries), [Activ](https://bliptext.com/articles/activ-band) (successful in some Eastern European countries), [DJ Project](https://bliptext.com/articles/dj-project) (popular as clubbing music) [SunStroke Project](https://bliptext.com/articles/sunstroke-project) (known by viral video \"[Epic Sax Guy](https://bliptext.com/articles/run-away-sunstroke-project-and-olia-tira-song)\") and [Alexandra Stan](https://bliptext.com/articles/alexandra-stan) (worldwide no.1 hit with \"[Mr. Saxobeat](https://bliptext.com/articles/mr-saxobeat)\") and [Inna](https://bliptext.com/articles/inna-singer) as well as high-rated movies like [4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days](https://bliptext.com/articles/4-months-3-weeks-and-2-days), [The Death of Mr. Lazarescu](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-death-of-mr-lazarescu), [12:08 East of Bucharest](https://bliptext.com/articles/12-08-east-of-bucharest) or [California Dreamin'](https://bliptext.com/articles/california-dreamin-film) (all of them with awards at the [Cannes Film Festival](https://bliptext.com/articles/cannes-film-festival)).\nAlso some artists wrote songs dedicated to the Romanian language.\nThe multi-platinum pop trio [O-Zone](https://bliptext.com/articles/o-zone) (originally from Moldova) released a song called \"Nu mă las de limba noastră\" (\"I won't forsake our language\").\nThe 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\".\nAlso, the Moldovan musicians [Doina and Ion Aldea Teodorovici](https://bliptext.com/articles/doina-and-ion-aldea-teodorovici) performed a song called \"The Romanian language\".\n\n## Dialects\nRomanian is also called Daco-Romanian in comparative linguistics to distinguish from the other dialects of [Common Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/common-romanian): [Aromanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/aromanian-language), [Megleno-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/megleno-romanian-language), and [Istro-Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/istro-romanian-language).\nThe origin of the term \"Daco-Romanian\" can be traced back to the first printed book of Romanian grammar in 1780, by [Samuil Micu](https://bliptext.com/articles/samuil-micu) and [Gheorghe Șincai](https://bliptext.com/articles/gheorghe-incai).\nThere, the [Roman](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-rome)ian dialect spoken north of the [Danube](https://bliptext.com/articles/danube) is called lingua Daco-[Roman](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-rome)a to emphasize its origin and its area of use, which includes the former [Roman](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-rome) province of [Dacia](https://bliptext.com/articles/dacia), although it is spoken also south of the [Danube](https://bliptext.com/articles/danube), in [Dobruja](https://bliptext.com/articles/dobruja), the [Timok Valley](https://bliptext.com/articles/timok-valley) and northern Bulgaria.\nThis article deals with the Romanian (i.e. Daco-Romanian) language, and thus only its dialectal variations are discussed here.\nThe differences between the regional varieties are small, limited to regular phonetic changes, few grammar aspects, and lexical particularities.\nThere is a single written and spoken standard (literary) Romanian language used by all speakers, regardless of region.\nLike most natural languages, Romanian dialects are part of a [dialect continuum](https://bliptext.com/articles/dialect-continuum).\nThe dialects of Romanian are also referred to as 'sub-dialects' and are distinguished primarily by phonetic differences.\nRomanians themselves speak of the differences as 'accents' or 'speeches' (in Romanian: accent or grai).\nDepending 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.\nThese are grouped into two main types, southern and northern, further divided as follows:\nOver the last century, however, regional accents have been weakened due to mass communication and greater mobility.\nSome [argots](https://bliptext.com/articles/argot) and speech forms have also arisen from the Romanian language.\nExamples are the [Gumuțeasca](https://bliptext.com/articles/gumu-easca), spoken in [Mărgău](https://bliptext.com/articles/m-rg-u), and the [[Totoi](https://bliptext.com/articles/totoi)ana](https://bliptext.com/articles/totoiana), an inverted \"version\" of Romanian spoken in [Totoi](https://bliptext.com/articles/totoi).\n\n# Classification\n\n## Romance language\nRomanian is a Romance language, belonging to the [Italic branch](https://bliptext.com/articles/italic-languages) of the [Indo-European language family](https://bliptext.com/articles/indo-european-languages), having much in common with languages such as Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese.\nCompared with the other Romance languages, the closest relative of Romanian is Italian.\nRomanian has had a greater share of foreign influence than some other Romance languages such as Italian in terms of vocabulary and other aspects.\nA study conducted by [Mario Pei](https://bliptext.com/articles/mario-pei) in 1949 which analyzed the degree of differentiation of languages from their parental language (in the case of [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) to [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) comparing [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology), [inflection](https://bliptext.com/articles/inflection), [discourse](https://bliptext.com/articles/discourse), [syntax](https://bliptext.com/articles/syntax), [vocabulary](https://bliptext.com/articles/vocabulary), and [intonation](https://bliptext.com/articles/intonation-linguistics)) produced the following percentages (the higher the percentage, the greater the distance from [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin)):\nThe [lexical similarity](https://bliptext.com/articles/lexical-similarity) of Romanian with Italian has been estimated at 77%, followed by French at 75%, Sardinian 74%, Catalan 73%, Portuguese and [Rhaeto-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/rhaeto-romance-languages) 72%, Spanish 71%.\nThe Romanian vocabulary became predominantly influenced by French and, to a lesser extent, Italian in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.\n# [Romanian language, as part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, alongside and related to Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. All of these Eastern Romance languages are spoken in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Romance///languages///diagram///en.svg]\n\n## Balkan language area\nWhile most of Romanian grammar and morphology are based on Latin, there are some features that are shared only with other languages of the [Balkans](https://bliptext.com/articles/balkans) and not found in other Romance languages.\nThe shared features of Romanian and the other languages of the [Balkan language area](https://bliptext.com/articles/balkan-sprachbund) ([Bulgarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulgarian-language), [Macedonian](https://bliptext.com/articles/macedonian-language), [Albanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/albanian-language), Greek, and [Serbo-Croatian](https://bliptext.com/articles/serbo-croatian)) include a suffixed [definite article](https://bliptext.com/articles/article-grammar), the [syncretism](https://bliptext.com/articles/syncretism-linguistics) of genitive and dative case and the formation of the future and the alternation of infinitive with subjunctive constructions.\nAccording 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 to [language shift](https://bliptext.com/articles/language-shift).\n\n## Slavic influence\nSlavic influence on Romanian is especially noticeable in its vocabulary, with words of Slavic origin constituting about 10–15% of modern Romanian lexicon, and with further influences in its phonetics, morphology and syntax.\nThe greater part of its Slavic vocabulary comes from [Old Church Slavonic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-church-slavonic), which was the official written language of [Wallachia](https://bliptext.com/articles/wallachia) and [Moldavia](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldavia) from the 14th to the 18th century (although not understood by most people), as well as the [liturgical language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sacred-language) of the [Romanian Orthodox Church](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-orthodox-church).\nAs a result, much Romanian vocabulary dealing with religion, ritual, and hierarchy is Slavic.\nThe number of high-frequency Slavic-derived words is also believed to indicate contact or cohabitation with [South Slavic](https://bliptext.com/articles/south-slavs) tribes from around the 6th century, though it is disputed where this took place (see [Origin of the Romanians](https://bliptext.com/articles/origin-of-the-romanians)).\nWords borrowed in this way tend to be more vernacular (compare [sfârși](https://bliptext.com/articles/sf-r-i), \"to end\", with [săvârși](https://bliptext.com/articles/s-v-r-i), \"to commit\").\nIt has also been argued that Slavic borrowing was a key factor in the development of (î and â) as a separate [phoneme](https://bliptext.com/articles/phoneme).\n\n## Other influences\nEven before the 19th century, Romanian came in contact with several other languages.\nNotable examples of lexical borrowings include:\nFurthermore, during the [Habsburg](https://bliptext.com/articles/habsburg-monarchy) and, later on, [Austrian](https://bliptext.com/articles/austrian-empire) rule of [Banat](https://bliptext.com/articles/banat), [Transylvania](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvania), and [Bukovina](https://bliptext.com/articles/bukovina), a large number of words were borrowed from [Austrian](https://bliptext.com/articles/austrian-empire) High German, in particular in fields such as the military, administration, social welfare, economy, etc. 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\";\n\n## French, Italian, and English loanwords\nSince 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\").\nIt 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.\nThe 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.\nAs second or third languages, French and Italian themselves are better known in Romania than in Romania's neighbors.\nAlong 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.\nIn the process of lexical modernization, much of the native Latin stock have acquired doublets from other [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), thus forming a further and more modern and literary lexical layer.\nTypically, the native word is a noun and the learned loan is an adjective.\nSome examples of doublets:\nIn 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; chec < cake; veceu < WC; tramvai < tramway).\nThese words are assigned grammatical gender in Romanian and handled according to Romanian rules; thus \"the manager\" is managerul.\nSome borrowings, for example in the computer field, appear to have awkward (perhaps contrived and ludicrous) 'Romanisation,' such as cookie-uri which is the plural of the Internet term cookie.\n\n## Lexis\nA 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.\nThis statistic gives the percentages below:\nIf 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.\nAlthough they are rarely used nowadays, the [Romanian calendar](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-calendar) used to have the traditional Romanian month names, unique to the language.\nThe [longest word in Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/longest-word-in-romanian) is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniconioză, with 44 letters, but the longest one admitted by the [Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române](https://bliptext.com/articles/dic-ionarul-explicativ-al-limbii-rom-ne) (\"Explanatory Dictionary of the Romanian Language\", DEX) is electroglotospectrografie, with 25 letters.\n# [Romanian's core lexicon (2,581 words); Marius Sala, VRLR (1988) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/CuvinteleLimbiiRomane.svg]\n\n# Grammar\nRomanian nouns are characterized by gender (feminine, masculine, and neuter), and [declined](https://bliptext.com/articles/declension) by number (singular and plural) and case ([nominative](https://bliptext.com/articles/nominative-case)/[accusative](https://bliptext.com/articles/accusative-case), [dative](https://bliptext.com/articles/dative-case)/[genitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/genitive-case) and [vocative](https://bliptext.com/articles/vocative-case)).\nThe articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns, [agree](https://bliptext.com/articles/agreement-linguistics) in gender, number and case with the noun they modify.\nRomanian is the only major Romance language where [definite articles](https://bliptext.com/articles/article-grammar) are [enclitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/enclitic): that is, attached to the end of the noun (as in [The Scandinavian Languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/north-germanic-languages), [Bulgarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulgarian-language) and [Albanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/albanian-language)), instead of in front ([proclitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proclitic)).\nThey were formed, as in other Romance languages, from the Latin demonstrative pronouns.\nAs in all Romance languages, [Romanian verbs](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-verbs) are highly inflected for person, number, tense, mood, and voice.\nThe usual word order in sentences is [subject–verb–object](https://bliptext.com/articles/subject-verb-object) (SVO).\nRomanian has four verbal [conjugations](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-conjugation) which further split into ten conjugation patterns.\nRomanian verbs are conjugated for five [moods](https://bliptext.com/articles/mood-linguistics) ([indicative](https://bliptext.com/articles/indicative-mood), [conditional](https://bliptext.com/articles/conditional-mood)/[optative](https://bliptext.com/articles/optative-mood), [imperative](https://bliptext.com/articles/imperative-mood), [subjunctive](https://bliptext.com/articles/subjunctive-mood), and [presumptive](https://bliptext.com/articles/presumptive-mood)) and four non-finite forms ([infinitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/infinitive), [gerund](https://bliptext.com/articles/gerund), [supine](https://bliptext.com/articles/supine), and [participle](https://bliptext.com/articles/participle)).\n\n# Phonology\nRomanian has seven [vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel):, , , , , and.\nAdditionally, and may appear in some [borrowed words](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanword).\nArguably, the diphthongs and are also part of the phoneme set.\nThere are twenty-two consonants.\nThe two [approximants](https://bliptext.com/articles/approximant-consonant) and can appear before or after any vowel, creating a large number of glide-vowel sequences which are, strictly speaking, not [diphthongs](https://bliptext.com/articles/diphthong).\nIn final positions after consonants, a short can be deleted, surfacing only as the [palatalization](https://bliptext.com/articles/palatalization-phonetics) of the preceding consonant (e.g., ).\nSimilarly, a deleted may prompt [labialization](https://bliptext.com/articles/labialization) of a preceding consonant, though this has ceased to carry any morphological meaning.\n\n## Phonetic changes\nOwing 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 → (Lat. **cl**arus → Rom. ****chi**à**r, Ital. **chi**aro, Lat. **cl**amare → Rom. **che**mare, Ital. **chi**amare) and → (Lat. *******gl******acia (******gl******acies) → Rom. **ghé**ață, Ital. ********ghi********accia, ********ghi********accio, Lat. *un******gl******a (ungula) → Rom. un********ghi********e, Ital. un********ghi********a), although this did not go as far as it did in Italian with other similar **cl**usters (Rom. **plà**ce, Ital. **pi**ace).\nAnother similarity with Italian is the chan**********ge********** from or to or (Lat. pax, pa************ce************m → Rom. and Ital. pa************ce************, Lat. dul************ce************m → Rom. dul************ce************, Ital. dol************ce************, Lat. ****ci****rcus → Rom. ************ce************rc, Ital. ****ci****rco) and or to or (Lat. **********ge**********lu → Rom. ****gè****r, Ital. **********ge**********lo, Lat. mar****gi****nem → Rom. and Ital. mar****gi****ne, Lat. **********ge**********mere → Rom. ****gè****m (**********ge**********mere), Ital. **********ge**********mere).\nThere are also a few changes shared with [Dalmatian](https://bliptext.com/articles/dalmatian-language), such as (probably phonetically ) → (Lat. co**gn**atus → Rom. cu****mn****at, Dalm. co****mn****ut) and → in some situations (Lat. coxa → Rom. có****ps****ă, Dalm. co****ps****a).\nAmong the notable phonetic changes are:\nRomanian has entirely lost Latin (********qu********), turning it either into (Lat. ********qu********attuor → Rom. pàtru, \"four\"; cf. It. ********qu********attro) or (Lat. ********qu********ando → Rom. când, \"when\"; Lat. ********qu********ale → Rom. càre, \"which\").\n\n# Writing system\nThe first written record about a [Romance language](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-language) spoken in the Middle Ages in the Balkans is from 587.\nA 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!\").\n[Theophanes Confessor](https://bliptext.com/articles/theophanes-confessor) recorded it as part of a 6th-century military expedition by [Comentiolus](https://bliptext.com/articles/comentiolus) and [Priscus](https://bliptext.com/articles/priscus) against the Avars and Slovenes.\nThe oldest surviving written text in Romanian is a letter from late June 1521, in which Neacșu of [Câmpulung](https://bliptext.com/articles/c-mpulung) wrote to the mayor of [Brașov](https://bliptext.com/articles/bra-ov) about an imminent attack of the Turks.\nIt was written using the [Cyrillic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-cyrillic-alphabet), like most early Romanian writings.\nThe earliest surviving writing in Latin script was a late 16th-century [Transylvanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvania) text which was written with the [Hungarian alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/hungarian-alphabet) conventions.\nIn the 18th century, [Transylvanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/transylvania) scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted the [Latin alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-alphabet) to the Romanian language, using some orthographic rules from [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-alphabet), recognized as Romanian's closest relative.\nThe Cyrillic alphabet remained in (gradually decreasing) use until 1860, when Romanian writing was first officially regulated.\nIn the [Soviet Republic of Moldova](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldavian-ssr), the Russian-derived [Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/moldovan-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.\n# [Hurmuzaki Psalter, written around 1500 | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Psaltire///Hurmuzaki1.JPG]\n\n## Romanian alphabet\nThe Romanian alphabet is as follows:\n!colspan=\"31\"| [Capital letters](https://bliptext.com/articles/capital-letters)\n!colspan=\"31\"| [Lower case letters](https://bliptext.com/articles/lower-case)\n!colspan=\"31\"| Phonemes\n,\nmute\n,\n,\nK, Q, W and Y, not part of the native alphabet; they were officially introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982 and are mostly used to write loanwords like kilogram, quasar, watt, and yoga.\nThe Romanian alphabet is based on the [Latin script](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-script) with five additional letters Ă, Â, Î, Ș, Ț.\nFormerly, there were as many as 12 additional letters, but some of them were abolished in subsequent reforms.\nAlso, until the early 20th century, a breve marker was used, which survives only in ă.\nToday the Romanian alphabet is largely [phonemic](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonemic-orthography).\nHowever, the letters â and î both represent the same [close central unrounded vowel](https://bliptext.com/articles/close-central-unrounded-vowel).\nÂ 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.\nAnother exception from a completely phonetic writing system is the fact that [vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel) and their respective semi[vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel) are not distinguished in writing.\nIn dictionaries the distinction is marked by separating the entry word into [syllables](https://bliptext.com/articles/syllable) for words containing a [hiatus](https://bliptext.com/articles/hiatus-linguistics).\nStressed 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.\nFor example, trei copíi means \"three children\" while trei cópii means \"three copies\".\n\n## Pronunciation\n# [A close shot of some keys with Romanian characters on the keyboard of a laptop | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Romanian///keyboard///letters.jpg]\n\n## Punctuation and capitalization\nUses of punctuation peculiar to Romanian are:\n\n## Academy spelling recommendations\nIn 1993, new spelling rules were proposed by the [Romanian Academy](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanian-academy).\nIn 2000, the Moldovan Academy recommended adopting the same spelling rules, 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.\nOn 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.\nThus the spelling used by institutions under Moldova's ministry of education has been brought in line with the Romanian Academy's 1993 recommendation.\nThis 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).\n\n## Examples of Romanian text\nThe sentence in contemporary Romanian.\nWords inherited directly from Latin are highlighted:\nThe same sentence, with French and Italian [loanwords](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanwords) highlighted instead:\nThe sentence rewritten to exclude French and Italian loanwords.\nSlavic loanwords are highlighted:\nThe sentence rewritten to exclude all loanwords.\nThe meaning is unchanged:","revisionCount":0},"hasMore":false,"nextCursor":null}