Romanian

Romanian is one of the Romance languages, which descend from Latin, specifically the popular Latin spoken in southeastern Europe. It is the official language of Romania and is also an official language of Moldova (sometimes called "Moldovan" for political reasons).

Romanian is the only Romance language still widely spoken in eastern Europe, surrounded by Slavic languages such as Bulgarian, Serbian, and Ukrainian, and Hungarian, which belongs to a completely different language family. This geographic situation has influenced vocabulary and some grammatical features.

History and Origins

Romanian is based on Latin brought when the Roman Empire occupied the region of Dacia. After Roman rule ended, the language continued to evolve in isolation from other Romance languages to the west. Scholars debate the exact course of its development and the locations where it took place—a question known as the "origin of Romanian"—on which no single view has been agreed.

Linguistic Features

Romanian retains some Latin features that other Romance languages have lost, such as a case system (nominative and accusative) governing nouns and pronouns. Another notable feature is that the definite article ("the") attaches to the end of the word rather than preceding it—for example, noun plus article suffix. This feature is shared with other Balkan languages, suggesting long-standing linguistic contact in the region.

Vocabulary is predominantly Latin in origin, but there are substantial borrowings from Slavic languages, as well as from Turkish, Greek, and Hungarian. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a process known as "re-Latinization" took place, in which new words were drawn from French and Italian to reinforce the Romance character of the language.

Writing and Usage

Today Romanian is written in the Latin alphabet with added diacritical marks to distinguish sounds. Historically, the Cyrillic script was used for a long period, especially in Orthodox religious texts; the shift to Latin script was completed in the nineteenth century. During the Soviet period, Moldova was written in Cyrillic, but this was later changed back to Latin.