The Romanian language

Romanian Language (Româna)

Classification and Family

Romanian is a member of the Indo-European language family, within the Italic branch (specifically the Romance subgroup).  More precisely, Romanian belongs to the Eastern Romance (also called Balkan Romance) subgroup of Romance languages.

The broader context: the Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, etc.) all descend from Vulgar Latin, which itself comes out of Classical Latin of the Roman Empire. Romanian is the easternmost major Romance language.

Beyond its immediate family, Romanian has undergone substantial contact with languages of other families—most notably Slavic, Hungarian, Turkish, Greek—which has shaped its lexicon, phonology and morphology.

Origins and Early History

The origins of the Romanian language lie in the Roman colonisation of the region north of the Danube (the province of Dacia) and along the lower Danube and in the Balkans. Once the Romans established control (early 2nd century AD under Emperor Trajan), Latin became the dominant administrative and military language among Roman settlers, veterans, and local populations.

After the withdrawal of Roman administration (in Dacia around 271 AD) and especially in the centuries following, the Latin-derived speech of the region continued evolving. Linguists often use the term Common Romanian (or Proto-Romanian) to denote the ancestor of the modern Romanian (and other Eastern Romance) varieties.

From the 6th century onwards significant Slavic migrations into the Balkan region and north of the Danube resulted in strong Slavic influence on the emerging Romanian language: in vocabulary, phonology, and syntax (as part of the Balkan Sprachbund).

The first attested written text in Romanian is a letter from the year 1521 (in the Wallachian region) though texts in Romanian-slavonic translation appear earlier (mid 16th century).

Originally Romanian was written using a variant of the Cyrillic script (because of Orthodox liturgical tradition and administrative usage) but during the 19th century the Latin alphabet was adopted officially (in Romania, the Latin script replaced Cyrillic circa 1862) .

Development through the Centuries

In the medieval period the Romanian-speaking territories (for example the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia) developed local vernaculars. If we summarise:

• Early/Middle Romanian (roughly 10th-15th centuries): the spoken Romance idiom north and south of the Danube gradually diverged. Around this time (by 9th-10th centuries) scholars suggest the split between the northern variant (Daco-Romanian) and southern ones (Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian) had begun.

• Early Modern Romanian (16th-18th centuries): Wallachian and Moldavian varieties start to be used in liturgical, legal and administrative texts, however heavily influenced by Church Slavonic and other regional linguae. The principle of standardisation emerges in the 17th/18th centuries, especially through religious writers.

• Modern Romanian (19th-21st centuries): With national movements in the 19th century, Romanian underwent a conscious “re-Romanisation” (borrowing many Latin and Western European words, especially French) and standardisation around the Bucharest (Wallachian) norm. The Latin script becomes established, and education/literature proliferate.

Because Romanian remained relatively isolated from the other Romance-speaking areas and was surrounded by Slavic, Hungarian, Turkish, Albanian influences, it preserved some archaic Latin features (especially in grammar) and developed unique ones (for instance enclitic definite articles).

Dialects and Sub-Branches

Within the Eastern Romance branch, one can identify four principal varieties (often called “dialects” though sometimes raised to the status of distinct languages). According to major sources:

1. Daco‑Romanian (spoken in Romania and the Republic of Moldova) – this is the basis of the standard language.

2. Aromanian (or Macedo-Romanian) – spoken among scattered communities in Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia .

3. Megleno‑Romanian – nearly extinct variety in northern Greece / border areas.

4. Istro‑Romanian – also nearly extinct, spoken in Istria (Croatia) with very few speakers.

Within Daco-Romanian itself further dialectal groups are recognised: for example the Moldavian group (northern Romania, Moldova region), the Muntenian/Wallachian group (south of the Carpathians), Banat, Crişana, Maramureş dialects.

For example, the so-called Moldavian dialect (not to be confused with “Moldovan language” political term) is a recognised regional variety of standard Romanian, sharing all major features but having phonetic, lexical and prosodic particularities.

Thus one may view the sub-branches as:

• The large Daco-Romanian spoken variety which splits into regional dialects (Moldavian, Muntenian, Banat, etc.)

• The southern varieties Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian, which diverged earlier and developed under different substrate and contact influences.

Mutual intelligibility between Daco-Romanian and the southern varieties is limited; some linguists refer to Aromanian, Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian as separate languages.

Relationship with Latin Languages: Similarities and Differences

Since Romanian is a Romance language, it shares substantial features with other Latin-derived languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese). But it also has notable differences. Below is a comparison table of key lexical and grammatical features of Romanian vs “typical Western Romance languages”.

In summary: Romanian is firmly a Romance language, sharing a large proportion of its vocabulary and grammar with its Romance sisters; but because of its geographical, historical and contact-background (isolation, Slavic and Balkan influences), it retains more archaic features and some unique ones not common in western Romance languages.

Romanian vs “Moldovan”: Are they the Same Language?

The question of the relationship between Moldovan and Romanian is largely a political, historical and linguistic one.

Linguistic perspective: Most linguists agree that “Moldovan” as used in the Republic of Moldova is essentially identical to standard Romanian (Daco-Romanian) in terms of grammar, vocabulary and mutual intelligibility. The differences that exist are comparable to regional variants or dialectal differences within Romania itself.

Historical & political perspective:

• During the Soviet era the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic adopted Moldovan as the name of its state language, wrote it in the Cyrillic alphabet (while Romania had moved to Latin script) and emphasised a separate identity.

• After independence (1991) the Republic of Moldova declared the language of the country as “Romanian” in its Declaration of Independence; however in 1994 the constitution reverted to calling it “Moldovan”.

• In December 2013 the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the Declaration of Independence (which used “Romanian”) took precedence, and since then the state language is understood in many contexts to be Romanian.

On dialectal/regional variation: The “Moldavian dialect” (a regional variant of Romanian) is distinct from the “Moldovan language” question: the former is a recognised dialect of Daco-Romanian; the latter concerns naming and identity.

From a purely linguistic viewpoint, “Moldovan” and “Romanian” are the same language (or two names for the same standard idiom). The differences, if any, are akin to regional accents or slight lexical/regional variants. However, politically and socially there remains some debate and identity-based claims.