Romanian Language

The Romanian language is the only Romance language spoken in Eastern Europe. The language developed through outside influences such as Latin and Slavic dialects, although there is trace evidence of Gothic language. Later borrowings came from French, Turkish, Hungarian, Albanian, German, and American English.

For many centuries, Romanian was a spoken language only, while the official language of administration and the church was Slavonic or Latin. The earliest written Romanian text dates to 1521 CE. The Reformation in the sixteenth century led to the translation of religious texts, with the Bible being translated and published in Romanian in 1688. The Cyrillic alphabet was used in most early Romanian writings. The Latin alphabet was introduced along with Christianity but only officially replaced Cyrillic in 1860 when Romanian writing was regulated. Spelling regulations followed in 1881. The Romanian alphabet has thirty-one letters and is similar to the English alphabet with the addition of five letters. A phonetic language, Romanian words are pronounced the way they are spelled.

History and Classification

Romania, located in southeastern Europe between the Danube River and the Carpathian Mountains, was originally known as Dacia, a onetime province of Rome. Dacians spoke a Thracian, or Indo-European, tongue and were an agricultural society with skilled artisans, beekeepers, and wine makers. Emperor Trajan's Roman forces conquered the region in 106 CE, and Dacia was one of the last territories incorporated into the Roman Empire. Many Dacian men had served in the Roman Legion, bringing home the Latin language and other aspects of Roman life. Trajan imported colonists from several other provinces to settle in mineral-rich Dacia, leading to intermarriage and the establishment of Roman culture. Historians theorize that the Dacians willingly accepted civilization because despite the short length of time that the Romans were in control, the Dacians retained the Latin language and Christian religion. The Roman Empire abandoned Dacia after only 165 years of rule, leaving the territory open for Goths and Slavs. Vulgar Latin mingled with the Dacian language during the early centuries, marking the first stage of Romanian as a Romance language.

Proto-Romanian evolved between the third and tenth centuries. Migratory Slavic peoples who settled in Wallachia, Moldova, and Transylvania influenced this language. At this junction, Romanian was a uniform language with no dialects. The Slavs especially influenced vocabulary and pronunciation, and the region returned to an agrarian lifestyle secluded from Western Europe. Latin was used for church services, and Christian missionaries continued to spread the language along with their religion.

By the eleventh century, Transylvania had been annexed, although left autonomous, into the kingdom of Hungary. Although the Slavs were equally influenced by Latin, they chose to retain many of their own language concepts, making Romanian a Romance language that essentially has no Latin-based emotional words. For example, the Slavic dragoste(love) replaced the Roman amor. Proto-Romanian evolved into four principal dialects: Daco-Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian.

Daco-Romanian is the basis of the standard language and has several subsequent regional dialects throughout Romania and Moldova. Aromanian is also known as Macedo-Romanian and is spoken in regions of Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, and Serbia. Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian are both nearly extinct dialects that are only spoken in very specific areas. Megleno-Romanian is from northern Greece, while Istro-Romanian is from the Istrian peninsula of Croatia.

Romania has endured centuries of domination and power struggles at the hands of its more aggressive neighbors: the Russians, the Ottoman Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Romanian language was influenced by all of these foreign tongues but maintained its own linguistic identity as well.

Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage

More than twenty-six million people worldwide speak Romanian. It is the official language of Romania and Moldova. Outside of Romania, it is recognized as the official language of Vivodina in Serbia and Mount Athos in Greece. It is also a recognized minority language in both Hungary and Serbia. Romanian speakers have been widely dispersed, and the language is spoken in many countries. The Romani, nomadic gypsy tribes, have the Vlax dialect, a form of the Romani language that was heavily influenced by Romanian and developed when many of the Romani were kept in slavery in Wallachia and Transylvania until the nineteenth century.

Historically, Romanian has been influenced by a variety of languages but in the twenty-first century, English, particularly from America, has played a key role in its evolution. Speaking and reading English has become the key to success in Romanian society, and fluency in English is quickly becoming necessary for those in the public or business sector. Romania was not widely exposed to Western countries and culture until the revolution of 1989 loosened the grip of the Soviet Union. The rapid globalization of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries spread technology such as the Internet that allowed Romanians to improve communications with the West and exchange information, goods, and culture.

The infusion of English into Romanian culture was so rapid that scholars and traditionalists feared for the future of the Romanian language. Romanian Parliament adopted the Language Protection Law in 2004, which stated that any text for public consumption that was written or spoken in foreign languages should contain Romanian translation.

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