Romanian language

Romanian—rarely written Rumanian, Roumanian—(in its own language: româna, limba română [roˈmɨna, ˈlimba roˈmɨnə]) is a Romance language spoken mainly in Romania, in Moldova and in scattered little areas across southeastern Europe (mostly in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, the Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria and Ukraine).

It is the official state language of Romania and Moldova. In Moldova, it is officially called Moldovan or more rarely Moldavian (in Romanian: limba moldovenească). In spite of this naming discrepancy, both countries have nearly exactly the same standard language (the possible spelling differences are insignificant compared with those of British English and American English).

The main dialects are classified in Daco-Romanian, a core group comprising the vast majority of the dialects and being the basis of Standard Romanian, and three other dialects scattered in remote patches across the Balkans: Aromanian (southern Balkans), Megleno-Romanian (southern Balkans) and Istro-Romanian (Istria, Croatia). In those Balkanic enclaves, Romanian may be called Vlach, especially by surrounding populations (for instance, βλάχικα, vlachika in Greek).

Romanian is the only Romance language of central Europe. Therefore, in some aspects, it is slightly original compared with the rest of the Romance languages since it does not have any territorial contiguity with them. Nevertheless its structures are deeply Romance and very conservative compared with their Latin origins. For example, Romanian resembles more Latin than French does.

Writing system

Romanian is written with an adapted version of the Latin alphabet which contains 31 letters:

A Ă Â B C D E F G H I Î J K L M N O P Q R S Ș T Ț U V W X Y Z

It includes the following modified letters with diacritics: ă, â, î, ș, ț (in an accurate typography, ș and ț are best written with a comma below, nevertheless, because of computing input problems, this comma is often replaced by a cedilla, that produces ş and ţ). The letters q, w and y only occur in foreign words.

The pronunciation rules of Romanian are quite easy to learn and have only a few exceptions. The main difficulty is the place of the stress, which is not written and has to be learned with each word. The stress can fall on the last, on the second-to-last or on the third-to-last syllable. Each grapheme has a quite easily predictable pronunciation.

Grapheme Pronunciation (IPA) a [a] ă [ə] â [ɨ] b [b] c — [k] — [tʃ] before e, i cea [tʃa] ch [k] (only occurs before e, i) d [d] e — [e], [e̯] — sometimes [je] at word beginning ea [e̯a] f [f] g — [g] — [dʒ] before e, i gea [dʒa] gh [g] (only occurs before e, i) h [h] i — [i], [j] — [i] (weak i) when final and unstressed î [ɨ]

Grapheme Pronunciation (IPA) j [ʒ] k [k] l [l] m [m] n [n] o [o], [o̯] oa [o̯a] p [p] q [k] r [r] s [s] ș [ʃ] t [t] ț [ts] u [u], [w] v [v] w [v], [w] x [ks] y [i], [j] z [z]

For a long time, Romanian used to be written with the Cyrillic alphabet, since Romanian people belong to the cultural sphere of the Eastern Orthodox Church which favoured Greek or Greek-derived writing systems (as it is the case of the Cyrillic script). Nevertheless, several people intented to use the Latin alphabet, especially in the 18th century. The global shift toward the Latin alphabet occurred around 1860 as a unified Romanian state had emerged in 1859, as Romanian was beginning to be codified and as Romanians were experiencing the romantic nationalism of the 19th century, voluntarily bringing their language to its Latin origins and to other Romance languages. In the Soviet Union, however, Romanian-speaking communities were forced to use a new, russified Cyrillic script between 1938 and 1989, especially in Moldova, that had been annexed to the USSR in 1940 (simultaneously, the Soviet power considered "Moldovan" as a distinct language from Romanian). Moldova has restored the common Latin alphabet since 1989, thanks to the Perestroyka (but the separatist, pro-Russian power of Transnistria, established in 1990, goes on imposing the Soviet Cyrillic script to its Romanian-speaking community).