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.

Writing system

The first written record of a Romanic language spoken in the Middle Ages in the Balkans was written by the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes Confessor in the 6th century about a military expedition against the Avars from 587, when a Vlach muleteer accompanying the Byzantine army noticed that the load was falling from one of the animals and shouted to a companion "Torna, torna fratre" (meaning "Return, return brother!").

Related Topics:
Theophanes Confessor - 6th century - Avars - 587

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The oldest written text in Romanian is a letter from 1521, in which Neac?u of Câmpulung wrote to the mayor of Bra?ov about an imminent attack of the Turks. It was written using the Cyrillic alphabet, like most early Romanian writings. The earliest writing in Latin script was a late 16th century Transylvanian text which was written with the Hungarian alphabet conventions.

Related Topics:
Câmpulung - Bra?ov - Cyrillic alphabet - 16th century - Transylvania - Hungarian alphabet

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In the late 1700s, Transylvanian scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted the Italian alphabet to the Romanian language. The Cyrillic alphabet remained in (gradually decreasing) use until 1860, when Romanian writing was first officially regulated.

Related Topics:
Transylvania - Italian alphabet

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In the Soviet Republic of Moldova, a special version of the Cyrillic alphabet derived from the Russian version was used, until 1989, when it returned to the Romanian Latin alphabet.

Related Topics:
Soviet Republic of Moldova - 1989

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Romanian alphabet

Main article: Romanian alphabet

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The Romanian alphabet is as follows:

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A, a (a); ?, ? (?); Â, â (â din a); B, b (be), C, c (ce); D, d (de), E, e (e); F, f (fe / ef); G, g (ghe / ge); H, h (ha / ha?); I, i (i); Î, î (î din i); J, j (je), K, k (ka de la kilogram), L, l (le / el); M, m (me / em); N, n (ne / en); O, o (o); P, p (pe); R, r, (re / er); S, s (se / es); {{polytonic|Ș}} {{polytonic|ș}} ({{polytonic|ș}}e); T, t (te); {{polytonic|Ț}} {{polytonic|ț}} ({{polytonic|ț}}e); U, u (u); V, v (ve); X, x (ics); Z, z (ze / zet).

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The Romanian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and has five additional letters (these are not diacriticals, but letters in their own right). Initially, there were as many as 12 additional letters, but some of them disappeared in subsequent reforms. Also, until the early 20th century, a short vowel marker was used.

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Today, the Romanian alphabet is largely phonetic. However, the "â" (used inside the words) and "î" (used at the beginning or the end) both represent the same close central unrounded vowel {{IPA|/?/}}, which is a slack sound somewhere between "i" in English "bit" and "oo" in English "food". Until 1904 there were four letters representing this sound: â, ê, î and û. During Communist rule in Romania (more precisely between 1953 and 1993) only the letter î was used to transcribe this sound (with a few accepted exceptions). According to the current usage accepted by the Romanian Academy, {{IPA|/ɨ/}} is transcribed as either î when used as the first or last letter of words, or â when it occurs in the middle of the word. In practice, either usage is acceptable and some publications still retain the Communist-era orthography.

Related Topics:
Close central unrounded vowel - Communist - 1953 - 1993 - Romanian Academy

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Another exception from a completely phonetic writing system is the fact that vowels and their respective semivowels are not distinguished in writing. In dictionaries the distinction is marked by separating the entry word into syllables for the words containing a hiatus that might be mispronounced as a diphthong or a triphthong.

Related Topics:
Vowel - Semivowel - Syllable - Diphthong - Triphthong

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Stressed vowels also are not marked in writing, except very rarely in cases where by misplacing the stress a word might change its meaning. For example "trei copíi" means three children while "trei cópii" means three copies.

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Q, W and Y are not part of the core Romanian alphabet; they are used mainly to write imported words, such as quasar, watt, and yoga.

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Writing the letters Ș ({{IPA|/ʃ/}}) and Ț ({{IPA|/ʦ/}}) with a cedilla instead of a comma (i.e., ?, ?) is incorrect but rather widespread, especially in computer environments.

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Reading rules

Reading Romanian involves learning a few rules, quite similar to reading Italian.

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• The letters c and g represent the affricates {{IPA|/ʧ/}} and {{IPA|/ʤ/}} before i and e, and {{IPA|/k/}} and {{IPA|/g/}} before a, o, u, ?, and â/î. The digraphs ch and gh before front vowels represent slightly palatalized {{IPA|/k/}} and {{IPA|/g/}}.
• h represents {{IPA|/h/}}
• j represents {{IPA|/ʒ/}}
• The letter with comma below, {{polytonic|Ș}} and {{polytonic|Ț}} represent {{IPA|/ʃ/}} and {{IPA|/ʦ/}}, though the allographs with cedilla, ? and ? became widespread when pre-Unicode and early Unicode character sets did not include the standard form.
• A final orthographical i after a consonant represents palatalization of the consonant (e. g. lup {{IPA|/lup/}} "wolf" vs. lupi {{IPA|/lupʲ/}} "wolves").
• ? represents the schwa, {{IPA|/?/}}.

Group of letters

Letters c and g have special pronunciation when used in these groups of characters, which are the same as in Italian

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Punctuation and Capitalization

The only particularities Romanian has relative to other languages using the Latin alphabet are:

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• The quotation marks use the German format;
• Dialogues are identified with quotation dashes;
• Proper quotations which span multiple paragraphs don't start each paragraph with the quotation marks; one single pair of quotation marks is always used, regardless of how many paragraphs are quoted;
• The Oxford comma before "and" is considered incorrect ("red, yellow and blue" is the proper format);
• Punctuation signs which follow a text in parentheses always follow the final bracket;
• In titles, only the first letter of the first word is capitalized, the rest of the title using sentence capitalization (with all its rules: proper names are capitalized as usual, etc.).

Exceptions and trends

Dialogues are identified with quotation dashes in everyday use, although the specific character is typically replaced with an ordinary dash ("-") in informal electronic communication.

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Usage of German quotation marks has decreased considerably in favor of the much more convenient English-language format, at least in informal messages. Even in writing, because of the awkwardness of properly drawing German dashes (reversing the direction of writing upwards for the final quotation symbol), the proper format is rarely used, typically using the Polish format instead, if any attempt at proper formatting is done. In practice, only the most formal documents, such as literary works or very formal letters, use what are formally considered the proper form of quotation marks.

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