Romanian (obsolete spelling: Roumanian; , or , ) is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova. Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Western Romance languages in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries."Istoria limbii române" ("History of the Romanian Language"), II, Academia Română, Bucharest, 1969 To distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. It is also spoken as a minority language by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania (Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Ukraine), and by the large Romanian diaspora. In total, it is spoken by 22 million people as a first language.
Romanian was also known as Moldovan in Moldova, although the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled in 2013 that "the official language of Moldova is Romanian". On 16 March 2023, the Moldovan Parliament approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution. On 22 March, the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, promulgated the law.
Overview The history of the Romanian language started in the Roman provinces north of the Jireček Line in Classical antiquity but there are three 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. Between 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, and in the context of a lessened power of the Roman central authority the language evolved into Common Romanian. This proto-language then came into close contact with the Slavic languages and subsequently divided into Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian, and Daco-Romanian. Due 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.Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela, The Grammar of Romanian, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-964492-6, pages 3 and 4
From the 12th or 13th century, official documents and religious texts were written in Old Church Slavonic, a language that had a similar role to Medieval Latin in Western Europe. The oldest dated text in Romanian is a letter written in 1521 using Cyrillic letters, the same alphabet that was used during the development of printing. The 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 started to gradually become official, the literary language was standardized, and a large number of words from Modern Latin and other Romance languages entered the lexis.
In the process of language evolution from fewer than 2500 attested words from Late Antiquity to a lexicon of over 150,000 words in its contemporary form, Romanian showed a high degree of lexical permeability, reflecting contact with Thraco-Dacian, Slavic languages (including Old Slavic, Serbian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, and Russian), Greek, Hungarian, German, Turkish, and to languages that served as cultural models during and after the Age of Enlightenment, in particular French. This lexical permeability is continuing today with the introduction of English words.Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela, The Grammar of Romanian, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-964492-6, page 5
Yet 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 used in everyday conversation—remains governed by inherited elements from the Latin spoken in the Roman provinces bordering Danube, which form the indispensable structural base of coherent expression.
History
Common Romanian
Romanian descended from the Latin spoken in the Roman provinces of Southeastern Europe north of the Jireček Line (a hypothetical boundary between the dominance of Latin and Greek influences). The exact geographic origin and continuity (especially after Roman withdrawal from Dacia in the 3rd century) is still debated among historians.
Most scholars agree that two major dialects had developed from Common Romanian by the 10th century. Daco-Romanian (the official language of Romania and Moldova) and Istro-Romanian (a language spoken today by no more than 2,000 people in Istria) descended from the northern dialect. Two other languages, Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian, developed from the southern version of Common Romanian. These two languages are now spoken in lands to the south of the Jireček Line.
Of the features that individualize Common Romanian, inherited from Latin or subsequently developed, of particular importance are:Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela, The Grammar of Romanian, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-964492-6, page 4 appearance of schwa (written as ă in Romanian) vowel; growth of the plural inflectional ending -uri for the neuter gender; analytic present conditional (ex: Daco-Romanian ); analytic future with an auxiliary derived from Latin volo (ex: Aromanian ); enclisis of the definite article (ex. Istro-Romanian – ); nominal declension with two case forms in the singular feminine.
Old Romanian
The use of the denomination Romanian () for the language and use of the demonym Romanians () for speakers of this language predate the foundation of the modern Romanian state. Romanians always used the general term / or regional terms such as (or ), or to designate themselves. Both the name of or for the Romanian language and the self-designation are attested as early as the 16th century, by various foreign travelers into the Carpathian Romance-speaking space,Ștefan Pascu, Documente străine despre români, ed. Arhivelor statului, București 1992, as well as in other historical documents written in Romanian at that time such as (The Chronicles of the land of Moldova) by Grigore Ureche.
The 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.
The Hurmuzaki Psalter (Psaltirea Hurmuzaki) is the oldest writing in Romanian, dated on the basis of watermarks between 1491–1504. It is a copy of an older, fifteenth-century translation of the Psalter, which was bilingual (written in Church Slavonic, with Romanian translation after each verse). The oldest Romanian document precisely dated is Neacșu's letter (1521) and was written using the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, which was used until the late 19th century. The letter is the oldest testimony of Romanian epistolary style and uses a prevalent lexis of Latin origin. The 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. The oldest Romanian texts of a literary nature are liturgical texts of the Eastern Orthodox Church: Psalter (Hurmuzaki Psalter, Scheian Psalter, Psalter of Voroneț) and Apostolos lectionary (Bratu's Codex, Codex of Voroneț). Their origins go back to the 15th century. The fact that they are bilingual writings or descend from bilingual writings shows that the initiative to translate them was prompted by the need to facilitate access to the Church Slavonic liturgical text.
The language spoken during this period had a phonological system of seven vowels and twenty-nine consonants. Particular to Old Romanian are the distribution of /z/, as the allophone of /dz/ from Common Romanian, in the Wallachian and south-east Transylvanian varieties, the presence of palatal sonorants /ʎ/ and /ɲ/, nowadays preserved only regionally in Banat and Oltenia, and the beginning of devoicing of asyllabic [u] after consonants. Text analysis revealed words that are now lost from modern vocabulary or used only in local varieties. These 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).
Modern Romanian
The 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. The author of the book, Samuil Micu-Klein, and the revisor, Gheorghe Șincai, both members of the Transylvanian School, chose to use Latin as the language of the text and presented the phonological and grammatical features of Romanian in comparison to its ancestor. The 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.
Pre-modern period Beginning 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 of the language. Notable contributions, besides that of the Transylvanian School, are the activities of Gheorghe Lazăr, founder of the first Romanian school, and Ion Heliade Rădulescu. The end of this period is marked by the first printing of magazines and newspapers in Romanian, in particular Curierul Românesc and Albina Românească.
Modern period Starting from 1831 and lasting until 1880 the modern phase is characterized by the development of literary styles: scientific, administrative, and belletristic. It quickly reached a high point with the printing of Dacia Literară, a journal founded by Mihail Kogălniceanu and representing a literary society, which together with other publications like and spread the ideas of Romantic nationalism and later contributed to the formation of other societies that took part in the Revolutions of 1848. Their members and those that shared their views are collectively known in Romania as "of '48"(), a name that was extended to the literature and writers around this time such as Vasile Alecsandri, Grigore Alexandrescu, Nicolae Bălcescu, Timotei Cipariu.
Between 1830 and 1860 "transitional alphabets" were used, adding Latin letters to the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet. The Latin alphabet became official at different dates in Wallachia and Transylvania1860, and Moldova1862.
Following the unification of Moldavia and Wallachia further studies on the language were made, culminating with the founding of on 1 April 1866 on the initiative of 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. This institution later became the Romanian Academy.
Contemporary period