Romanian language

Romanian (limba român? IPA {{IPA|/'limba ro'm?n?/}}), the official language of Romania, is an Eastern Romance language. It is spoken natively by about 27 million people, most of them in Romania, Moldova and Vojvodina. While the official form of Moldovan is nearly identical to the official form of Romanian, the colloquial speech of Chi?inau and its suburbs has more differences. Two out of three Moldovans consider themselves to be speakers of Romanian rather than Moldovan.

History

The Romanian territory was inhabited in ancient times by the Dacians, an Indo-European people. They were defeated by the Roman Empire in 106 and part of Dacia (Oltenia, Banat and Transylvania) became a Roman province. For the next 165 years, there is evidence of considerable Roman colonization in the area, the region being in close communication with the rest of the Roman empire. Vulgar Latin became the language of the administration and commerce.

Related Topics:
Dacia - Roman Empire - 106 - Oltenia - Banat - Transylvania - Vulgar Latin

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Under the pressure of the Free Dacians and of the Goths, the Roman administration and legions were withdrawn from Dacia between 271-275. Whether the Romanians are the descendants of these people that abandoned the area and settled south of Danube or of the people that remained in Dacia is a matter of debate. For further discussion, see Origin of Romanians.

Related Topics:
Free Dacians - Goths - 271 - 275 - Origin of Romanians

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Due to its geographical isolation, Romanian was probably the first language that split and until the modern age was not influenced by other Romance languages. It is is more conservative than other Romance languages in nominal morphology. Romanian has preserved declension, collapsing Latin's six cases into three, the nominative/accusative, the genitive/dative, and the vocative, and retains the neuter gender as well. However, the verbal morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compound perfect and future tense as the other Romance languages.

Related Topics:
Nominal - Declension - Nominative - Accusative - Genitive - Dative - Vocative - Gender - Verb - Perfect - Future tense

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All the dialects of Romanian are believed to have been unified in a Common Romanian language until sometime between the 7th and the 10th century when the area was influenced by the Byzantine Empire and Romanian became influenced by the Slavonic languages. Aromanian language has very few Slavonic words. Also, the variations in the Daco-Romanian dialect (spoken throughout Romania and Moldova) are very small, which is quite remarkable. The use of this uniform Daco-Romanian dialect extends well beyond the borders of the Romanian state: a Romanian-speaker from Moldova speaks the same language as a Romanian-speaker from the Serbian Banat.

Related Topics:
Common Romanian - 7th - 10th century - Slavonic languages - Aromanian language - Banat

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It is also noteworthy that Romanian was the only Romance language that was not under the cultural influence of the Roman Catholic Church, instead being influenced by the Orthodox Church, Slavonic, Greek and Turkish cultures.

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