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Romanian language

  (Redirected from Romanian Language)
limba română
лимба ромынэ
Pronunciation [roˈmɨnə]
Native to Romania, Moldova, Transnistria (disputed region); minority in Israel, Serbia, Ukraine, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria; diaspora in Italy, Spain, Germany and other parts of Western Europe
Native speakers
24 million (2004–2012)[1]
Second language: 4 million[2]
Early form
Latin (Romanian alphabet)
Cyrillic (Transnistria only)
Romanian Braille
Official status
Official language in
Republic of Moldova[nb 1]
European Union
(See List.)
Recognised minority
language in
Regulated by Academia Română
Academy of Sciences of Moldova
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ro
ISO 639-2 rum (B)
ron (T)
ISO 639-3 ron
Glottolog roma1327[4]
Linguasphere 51-AAD-c (varieties: 51-AAD-ca to -ck)
Map Roumanophone World.png
Blue: region where Romanian is the dominant language. Green: areas with a notable minority of Romanian speakers.
Idioma rumano.PNG
Distribution of the Romanian language in Romania, Moldova and surroundings.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Romanian (obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; autonym: limba română, or лимба ромынэ in Moldovan Cyrillic, [ˈlimba roˈmɨnə], "the Romanian language", or românește, lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 million people as a native language, primarily in Romania and Moldova, and by another 4 million people as a second language.[5][6] It has official status in Romania and the Republic of Moldova. It is one of the official languages of the European Union and the Latin Union.

Romanian is a part of the Balkan-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin separated from the Western Romance during the 5th–8th centuries.[7] To distinguish it within that group in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian.

During Soviet times—and to some extent even today—Romanian was called Moldovan in the Republic of Moldova, although the Constitutional Court ruled in 2013 that "the official language of the republic is Romanian".[nb 1]

Romanian speakers are scattered across many other countries, notably Australia, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Bulgaria, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Cyprus, France and Germany.

Eastern Romance languages, like the other branches of Romance languages, descend from Vulgar Latin, adopted in Dacia by a process of Romanization during early centuries AD.[8][9]

The influence of the military in Dacia is due to the distribution of the military units in this bridgehead of the Roman Empire's defense (two legiones, 12 alae, 41 cohortes and 13 numeri), contrary, e.g., to that of the Rhenish army, which was concentrated at the Germanic limes and so left little influence on the local spoken Gallo-Latin. The identification of numerous words of military (Dacian-)Roman usage – 52 semantic specific changes and inherited military Latin words with their classical meanings – is at the heart of the hypothesis that the Romanian language is the continuation of the military Latin spoken in the north-eastern frontier region of the Roman Empire. These vestiges of military usage are unique to Romanian in its language family. Thus, Romanian is scientifically very interesting from a linguistic and historical viewpoint, since Romance languages did not prevail in the other frontier regions of the Roman Empire in Europe, Asia and Africa, although Africa's falling under Arab sway surely played a role in the ultimate demise of any Romance dialect. Also, the conservation in Romanian of these numerous vestiges of Latin military slang (sermo castrensis) – such as a (se)aține ("to waylay"), coif ("helmet"), împărat ("emperor"), a împresura ("to encircle with pressure"), a (se) (în)cumeta ("to venture"), a înțina ("to make thin a tree for its collapse on the invaders"), aținat ("made thin a tree"), mire "fiancé" (< Lat. miles "soldiers", metonymy), a purcede ("to advance"), a răpune ("to kill"), rost "sense" a.s.o. (< Lat. rostrum "beak at prow of Roman warship"), (f)sat "village" (< Lat. fossatum "trench for defence", metonymy), șes "plain" (< Lat. sessus "plain place for camping", metonymy), a supune ("to subject"), tindă "veranda" (< Lat. tenda sub vallo "tent out of agglomerated fortress", metonymy), țară "homeland" (< Lat. terra "earth" ˃ Arom. țară "earth") a.s.o. and their absence in Aromanian (Balkan Romanian dialect spoken in peaceful area) – indicates the continuity of the Latinophones in the northern Danubian region, this despite dire and constant defensive wars with Germanic, "Turanian"[vague] (Turkic peoples and Magyars) and Slavic populations who entered and eventually settled there. This linguistic evidence challenges the Roeslerian theory. The vestiges from sermo castrensis particularize the Romanian language in the neolatin area, together with its isolated history.[10] According to Cristian Mihail, the Roslerian theory is annihilated because of the fact that the Romanian words in common with the Albanian words not preserve the sound „l” between vowels – in accordance, i.e. with Rom. "māgurā" and Alb. "magulë" etc. – likewise with Romanian words from Latin linguistic stratum (Rom. "scara" < Lat. "scala" etc.) unlike the words from Slavic later stratum, which preserve the sound „l” intervowels (cf. Rom. "mila", no "*mira" < Sl. "mila") would prove that the Romanian words in common with the Albanian words proceed of a latter stratum in Balkan region, near the Albanians, as supporting also by linguistics the continuity of the Latinophons (Romanians) in the Nordic-Danubian region.[11]

The Roman Empire withdrew from Dacia in 271–272 AD, leaving it to the Goths.[12][13]

The history of Eastern Romance between the 3rd century and the development of Proto-Romanian by the 10th century, when the area came under the influence of the Byzantine Empire, is unknown. It is a matter of debate whether Proto-Romanian developed among Romanized people who were left behind in Dacia by the Roman withdrawal or among Latin-speakers in the Balkans south of the Danube.

During the Middle Ages, Romanian became influenced by the Slavic languages[14] and to some degree by Greek. Romanian remains unattested throughout the Middle Ages, and only enters the historical record in the early 16th century.

Early historyEdit

The use of the denomination Romanian (română) for our beautiful language (limba noastră cea frumoasă[15]) and use of the demonym Romanians (Români) for speakers of this language predates the foundation of the modern Romanian state. Although the followers of the former Romanian voievodships used to designate themselves as "Ardeleni" (or "Ungureni"), "Moldoveni" or "Munteni", the name of "rumână" or "rumâniască" for the Romanian language itself is attested earlier, during the 16th century, by various foreign travellers into the Carpathian Romance-speaking space,[16] as well as in other historical documents written in Romanian at that time such as Cronicile Țării Moldovei (The Chronicles of the land of Moldova) by Grigore Ureche.

In 1534, Tranquillo Andronico notes: "Valachi nunc se Romanos vocant" (are calling themselves Romans).[17] Francesco della Valle writes in 1532 that Romanians are calling themselves Romans in their own language, and he subsequently quotes the expression: "Știi Românește?" (Do you know Romanian?).[18]

After travelling through Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania Ferrante Capecci accounts in 1575 that the indigenous population of these regions call themselves "românești" ("romanesci").[19]

Pierre Lescalopier writes in 1574 that those who live in Moldavia, Wallachia and the vast part of Transylvania, "se consideră adevărați urmași ai romanilor și-și numesc limba "românește", adică romana" (they consider themselves as the descendants of the Romans and they name their language Romanian).[20]

The Transylvanian Saxon Johann Lebel writes in 1542 that "Vlachi" se numeau între ei "Romuini"[21] and the Polish chronicler Stanislaw Orzechowski (Orichovius) notes in 1554 that în limba lor "walachii" se numesc "romini " (In their language the Wallachians call themselves Romini).[22]

The Croatian prelate and diplomat Antun Vrančić recorded in 1570 that "Vlachs in Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia designate themselves as "Romans"[23] and the Transylvanian Hungarian Martin Szentiványi in 1699 quotes the following: «Si noi sentem Rumeni» ("Și noi suntem români" – "We are Romans as well) and «Noi sentem di sange Rumena» ("Noi suntem de sânge român" – We are of Roman blood).[24]

In Palia de la Orăștie (1581) stands written «.[...] că văzum cum toate limbile au și înfluresc întru cuvintele slăvite a lui Dumnezeu numai noi românii pre limbă nu avem. Pentru aceia cu mare muncă scoasem de limba jidovească si grecească si srâbească pre limba românească 5 cărți ale lui Moisi prorocul si patru cărți și le dăruim voo frați rumâni și le-au scris în cheltuială multă... și le-au dăruit voo fraților români,... și le-au scris voo fraților români"[25] and in Letopisețul Țării Moldovei written by the Moldavian chronicler Grigore Ureche we can read: «În Țara Ardialului nu lăcuiesc numai unguri, ce și sași peste seamă de mulți și români peste tot locul...».[26]

Nevertheless, the oldest extant document written in Romanian remains Neacșu's letter (1521) and was written using Cyrillic letters (which remained in use up until the late 19th century). There are no records of any other documents written in Romanian from before 1521.

Miron Costin, in his De neamul moldovenilor (1687), while noting that Moldavians, Wallachians, and the Romanians living in the Hungarian Country have the same origin, says that although people of Moldavia call themselves Moldavians, they name their language Romanian (românește) instead of Moldavian (moldovenește).[27]

Dimitrie Cantemir, in his Descriptio Moldaviae (Berlin, 1714), points out that the inhabitants of Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania spoke the same language. He notes, however, some differences in accent and vocabulary.[28] Cantemir's work provides one of the earliest histories of the language, in which he notes, like Ureche before him, the evolution from Latin and notices the Greek and Polish borrowings. Additionally, he introduces the idea that some words must have had Dacian roots. Cantemir also notes that while the idea of a Latin origin of the language was prevalent in his time, other scholars considered it to have derived from Italian.

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 religious manuscripts (Codicele Voroneţean, Psaltirea Scheiană), translations of essential Christian texts. These are considered either propagandistic results of confessional rivalries, for instance between Lutheranism and Calvinism, or as initiatives by Romanian monks stationed at Peri Monastery in Maramureş to distance themselves from the influence of the Mukacheve eparchy in Ukraine.[29]

The language remains poorly attested during the Early Modern period.

Modern historyEdit

The first Romanian grammar was published in Vienna in 1780.[30] Following the annexation of Bessarabia by Russia (after 1812), Moldavian was established as an official language in the governmental institutions of Bessarabia, used along with Russian,[31] The publishing works established by Archbishop Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni were able to produce books and liturgical works in Moldavian between 1815–1820.[32]

The linguistic situation in Bessarabia from 1812 to 1918 was the gradual development of bilingualism. Russian continued to develop as the official language of privilege, whereas Romanian remained the principal vernacular.

The period from 1905 to 1917 was one of increasing linguistic conflict, with the re-awakening of Romanian national consciousness. In 1905 and 1906, the Bessarabian zemstva asked for the re-introduction of Romanian in schools as a "compulsory language", and the "liberty to teach in the mother language (Romanian language)". At the same time, Romanian-language newspapers and journals began to appear, such as Basarabia (1906), Viața Basarabiei (1907), Moldovanul (1907), Luminătorul (1908), Cuvînt moldovenesc (1913), Glasul Basarabiei (1913). From 1913, the synod permitted that "the churches in Bessarabia use the Romanian language". Romanian finally became the official language with the Constitution of 1923.

Historical grammarEdit

Romanian has preserved a part of the Latin declension, but whereas Latin had six cases, from a morphological viewpoint, Romanian has only five: the nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and marginally the vocative. Romanian nouns also preserve the neuter gender, although instead of functioning as a separate gender with its own forms in adjectives, the Romanian neuter became a mixture of masculine and feminine. The verb morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compound perfect and future tense as the other Romance languages. Compared with the other Romance languages, during its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin tense system in extreme ways,[33][unreliable source?] in particular the absence of sequence of tenses.[34]

Geographic distributionEdit

Geographic distribution of Romanian
Country Speakers
Country Population
World 0.33% 23,623,890 7,035,000,000
Countries where Romanian is an official language
Romania 90.65% 17,263,561[35] 19,043,767
Moldova 2 76.4% 2,588,355 3,388,071
Transnistria (Eastern Moldova) 3 31.9% 177,050 555,500
Vojvodina (Serbia) 1.32% 29,512 1,931,809
minority regional co-official language:
Ukraine 5 0.8% 327,703 48,457,000
not official:
Other neighboring European states (except for CIS where Romanian is not official)
Hungary 0.14% 13,886[36] 9,937,628
Central Serbia 0.4% 35,330 7,186,862
Bulgaria 0.06% 4,575[37] 7,364,570
Other countries in Europe (except for CIS)
Italy 1.86% 1,131,839[38] 60,795,612
Spain 1.7% 798,104[39] 46,661,950
Germany 0.2% 300,000[40] 81,799,600
United Kingdom 0.115% 67,586[41] 58,789,194
Portugal 0.50% 52,898[42] 10,561,614
France 0.07% 50,000[43] 65,350,000
Belgium 0.45% 45,877[44] 10,296,350
Austria 0.45% 36,000[45] 8,032,926
Greece 0.36% 35,295[46] 9,903,268
Cyprus 2.91% 24,376[47] 838,897
Ireland 0.45% 20,625[48] 4,588,252
Rest of Europe 0.07% 75,000[49] 114,050,000
not official:
Russia 1 0.12% 159,601[50] 142,856,536
Kazakhstan 1 0.1% 14,666 14,953,126
Israel 2.86% 208,400 7,412,200
UAE 0.1% 5,000 4,106,427
Singapore 0.02% 1,400 5,535,000
Japan 0.002% 2,185 126,659,683
South Korea 0.0006% 300 50,004,441
China 0.0008% 12,000 1,376,049,000
The Americas
not official:
United States 0.10% 340,000 315,091,138
Canada 0.34% 110,000 32,207,113
Argentina 0.03% 13,000 40,117,096
Venezuela 0.036% 10,000 27,150,095
Brazil 0.002% 4,000 190,732,694
not official:
Australia 0.09% 10,897[51] 21,507,717
New Zealand 0.08% 3,100 4,027,947
not official:
South Africa 0.007% 3,000 44,819,778

1 Many are Moldavian who were deported
2 Data only for the districts on the right bank of Dniester (without Transnistria and the city of Tighina). In Moldova, it is sometimes referred to as the "Moldovan language"
3 In Transnistria, it is officially called "Moldovan language" and is written in Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet.
4 Officially divided into Vlachs and Romanians
5 Most in Northern Bukovina and Southern Bessarabia; according to a Moldova Noastră study (based on the latest Ukrainian census).[52]

Romanian is spoken mostly in Central and the Balkan region of Southern Europe, although speakers of the language can be found all over the world, mostly due to emigration of Romanian nationals and the return of immigrants to Romania back to their original countries. Romanian speakers account for 0.5% of the world's population,[53] and 4% of the Romance-speaking population of the world.[54]

Romanian is the single official and national language in Romania and Moldova, although it shares the official status at regional level with other languages in the Moldovan autonomies of Gagauzia and Transnistria. Romanian is also an official language of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia along with five other languages. Romanian minorities are encountered in Serbia (Timok Valley), Ukraine (Chernivtsi and Odessa oblasts), and Hungary (Gyula). Large immigrant communities are found in Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal.

In 1995, the largest Romanian-speaking community in the Middle East was found in Israel, where Romanian was spoken by 5% of the population.[55][56] Romanian is also spoken as a second language by people from Arabic-speaking countries who have studied in Romania. It is estimated that almost half a million Middle Eastern Arabs studied in Romania during the 1980s.[57] Small Romanian-speaking communities are to be found in Kazakhstan and Russia. Romanian is also spoken within communities of Romanian and Moldovan immigrants in the United States, Canada and Australia, although they do not make up a large homogeneous community statewide.

Legal statusEdit

In RomaniaEdit

According to the Constitution of Romania of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic.[58]

Romania mandates the use of Romanian in official government publications, public education and legal contracts. Advertisements as well as other public messages must bear a translation of foreign words,[59] while trade signs and logos shall be written predominantly in Romanian.[60]

The Romanian Language Institute (Institutul Limbii Române), established by the Ministry of Education of Romania, promotes Romanian and supports people willing to study the language, working together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Department for Romanians Abroad.[61]

In MoldovaEdit

Romanian is the official language of the Republic of Moldova. The 1991 Declaration of Independence names the official language Romanian.[62][63] The Constitution of Moldova names the state language of the country Moldovan. In December 2013, a decision of the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the Declaration of Independence takes precedence over the Constitution and the state language should be called Romanian.[64]

Scholars agree that Moldovan and Romanian are the same language, with the glottonym "Moldovan" used in certain political contexts.[65] It has been the sole official language since the adoption of the Law on State Language of the Moldavian SSR in 1989.[66] This law mandates the use of Moldovan in all the political, economical, cultural and social spheres, as well as asserting the existence of a "linguistic Moldo-Romanian identity".[67] It is also used in schools, mass media, education and in the colloquial speech and writing. Outside the political arena the language is most often called "Romanian". In the breakaway territory of Transnistria, it is co-official with Ukrainian and Russian.

In the 2004 census, out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova, 16.5% (558,508) stated Romanian as their native language, whereas 60% stated Moldovan. While 40% of all urban Romanian/Moldovan speakers identified their native tongue as Romanian, in the countryside under 12% of Romanian/Moldovan speakers indicated Romanian as their native language.[68] However, the group of experts from the international census observation Mission to the Republic of Moldova concluded that the items in the questionnaire dealing with nationality and language proved to be the most sensitive ones, particularly with reference to the recording of responses to these questions as being "Moldovan" or "Romanian", and therefore it concluded that special care would need to be taken in interpreting them.[69]

In Vojvodina, SerbiaEdit

Official usage of Romanian language in Vojvodina, Serbia
Romanian language in entire Serbia (see also Romanians of Serbia), census 2002
  over 35%

The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia determines that in the regions of the Republic of Serbia inhabited by national minorities, their own languages and scripts shall be officially used as well, in the manner established by law.[70]

The Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina determines that, together with the Serbo-Croat language and the Cyrillic script, and the Latin script as stipulated by the law, the Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian and Rusyn languages and their scripts, as well as languages and scripts of other nationalities, shall simultaneously be officially used in the work of the bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in the manner established by the law.[71] The bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are: the Assembly, the Executive Council and the Provincial administrative bodies.[72]

The Romanian language and script are officially used in eight municipalities: Alibunar, Biserica Albă (Serbian: Bela Crkva), Zitiște (Žitište), Zrenianin (Zrenjanin), Kovăcița (Kovačica), Cuvin (Kovin), Plandiște (Plandište) and Sečanj. In the municipality of Vârșeț (Vršac), Romanian is official only in the villages of Voivodinț (Vojvodinci), Marcovăț (Markovac), Straja (Straža), Jamu Mic (Mali Žam), Srediștea Mică (Malo Središte), Mesici (Mesić), Jablanka, Sălcița (Salčica), Râtișor (Ritiševo), Oreșaț (Orašac) and Coștei (Kuštilj).[73]

In the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1.5% of Vojvodinians stated Romanian as their native language.

Regional language status in UkraineEdit

In parts of Ukraine where Romanians constitute a significant share of the local population (districts in Chernivtsi, Odessa and Zakarpattia oblasts) Romanian is taught in schools as a primary language and there are Romanian-language newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting.[74][75] The University of Chernivtsi in western Ukraine trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics.[76]

In Hertsa Raion of Ukraine as well as in other villages of Chernivtsi Oblast and Zakarpattia Oblast, Romanian has been declared a "regional language" alongside Ukrainian as per the 2012 legislation on languages in Ukraine.

In other countries and organizationsEdit

Romanian is an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations, such as the Latin Union and the European Union. Romanian is also one of the five languages in which religious services are performed in the autonomous monastic state of Mount Athos, spoken in the monk communities of Prodromos and Lacu.

Distribution of first-language native Romanian speakers by country—Voivodina is an autonomous province of northern Serbia bordering Romania, while Altele means "Other"

As a second and foreign languageEdit

Romanian is taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such as Vojvodina in Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary. The Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) has since 1992 organised summer courses in Romanian for language teachers.[77] There are also non-Romanians who study Romanian as a foreign language, for example the Nicolae Bălcescu High-school in Gyula, Hungary.

Romanian is taught as a foreign language in tertiary institutions, mostly in European countries such as Germany, France and Italy, and the Netherlands, as well as in the United States. Overall, it is taught as a foreign language in 43 countries around the world.[78]

Romanian as second and/or foreign language in Eastern Europe
native above 3% between 1–3% under 1% n/a

Popular cultureEdit

Romanian has become popular in other countries through movies and songs performed in the Romanian language. Examples of Romanian acts that had a great success in non-Romanophone countries are the bands O-Zone (with their No. 1 single Dragostea Din Tei/Numa Numa across the world in 2003–2004), Akcent (popular in the Netherlands, Poland and other European countries), Activ (successful in some Eastern European countries), DJ Project (popular as clubbing music) SunStroke Project (known by viral video "Epic sax guy") and Alexandra Stan (worldwide no.1 hit with "Mr. Saxobeat)" and Inna as well as high-rated movies like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, 12:08 East of Bucharest or California Dreamin' (all of them with awards at the Cannes Film Festival).

Also some artists wrote songs dedicated to the Romanian language. The multiplatinum pop trio O-Zone (originally from Moldova) released a song called "Nu mă las de limba noastră" ("I won't forsake our language"). The final verse of this song, Eu nu mă las de limba noastră, de limba noastră cea română is translated in English as "I won't forsake our language, our Romanian language". Also, the Moldovan musicians Doina and Ion Aldea Teodorovici performed a song called "The Romanian language".

The term "Romanian" is sometimes[79] used also in a more general sense, encompassing four varieties: (Daco-)Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. The four languages, whose mutual intelligibility is low, are the offspring of the Romance varieties spoken both to the north and to south of the Danube, before the settlement of the Slavonian tribes south of the river: Daco-Romanian in the north, Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian in the south, whereas Istro-Romanian is thought to be the offspring of an 11th-century migration from Romania. These four are also known as the Eastern Romance languages. When the term "Romanian" is used in this larger sense, the term "Daco-Romanian" is used for Romanian proper. The origin of the term "Daco-Romanian" can be traced back to the first printed book of Romanian grammar in 1780,[30] by Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Șincai. There, the Romanian dialect spoken north of the Danube is called lingua Daco-Romana to emphasize its origin and its area of use, which includes the former Roman province of Dacia, although it is spoken also south of the Danube, in Dobrudja, Central Serbia and northern Bulgaria.

This article deals with the Romanian (i.e. Daco-Romanian) language, and thus only its dialectal variations are discussed here. The differences between the regional varieties are small, limited to regular phonetic changes, few grammar aspects, and lexical particularities. There is a single written standard (literary) Romanian language used by all speakers, regardless of region. Like most natural languages, Romanian dialects are part of a dialect continuum. The dialects of Romanian are also referred to as subdialects (see reasons for this terminology) and are distinguished primarily by phonetic differences. Romanians themselves speak of the differences as accents or speeches (in Romanian: accent or grai).

Depending on the criteria used for classifying these dialects, fewer or more are found, ranging from 2 to 20, although the most widespread approaches give a number of five dialects. These are grouped into two main types, southern and northern, further divided as follows:

Over the last century, however, regional accents have been weakened due to mass communication and greater mobility.

Romanian language in the Romance language family

Romanian is a Romance language, belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family, having much in common with languages such as French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.[80]

However, the languages closest to Romanian are the other Eastern Romance languages, spoken south of the Danube: Aromanian/Macedo-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian, which are frequently classified as dialects of Romanian. An alternative name for Romanian used by linguists to disambiguate with the other Eastern Romance languages is "Daco-Romanian", referring to the area where it is spoken (which corresponds roughly to the onetime Roman province of Dacia).

Compared with the other Romance languages, the closest relative of Romanian is Italian;[80] the two languages show a limited degree of asymmetrical mutual intelligibility, especially in their cultivated forms: speakers of Romanian seem to understand Italian more easily than the other way around.[citation needed] Romanian has obvious grammatical and lexical similarities with French, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese, with a high phonological similarity with Portuguese in particular; however, it is not mutually intelligible with them to any practical extent[citation needed]. Romanian speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary before being able to understand more than individual words and simple sentences[citation needed]. The same is true for speakers of these languages trying to understand Romanian[citation needed]. Because of its separation from the other Romance languages, it has diverged from them and is an outlier in various ways, somewhat like English in regards to the other Germanic languages.

Romanian has had a greater share of foreign influence than some other Romance languages such as Italian in terms of vocabulary and other aspects. One such study was done by Italian-American linguist Mario Pei in 1949, which analyzed the differentiation degree of languages in comparison to their inheritance language (in the case of Romance languages to Latin comparing phonology, inflection, discourse, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation) revealed the following percentages (the higher the percentage, the greater the distance from Latin):[81]

  • Sardinian: 8%;
  • Italian: 12%;
  • Spanish: 20%;
  • Romanian: 23.5%;
  • Occitan: 25%;
  • Portuguese: 31%;
  • French: 44%.

The lexical similarity of Romanian with Italian has been estimated at 77%, followed by French at 75%, Sardinian 74%, Catalan 73%, Portuguese and Rhaeto-Romance 72%, Spanish 71%.[82]

In modern times Romanian vocabulary has been strongly influenced by French and, to a lesser extent, Italian and other languages.

Dacian languageEdit

The Dacian language was an Indo-European language spoken by the ancient Dacians, mostly north of the Danube river but also in Moesia and other regions south of the Danube. It may have been the first language to influence the Latin spoken in Dacia, but little is known about it. Dacian is usually considered to have been a northern branch of the Thracian language, and, like Thracian, Dacian was a satem language. About 300 words found only in Romanian or with a cognate in the Albanian language may be inherited from Dacian (for example: barză "stork", balaur "dragon", mal "shore", brânză "cheese").[citation needed] Some of these possibly Dacian words are related to pastoral life (for example, brânză "cheese"). Some linguists and historians have asserted that Albanians are Dacians who were not Romanized and migrated southward.[83]

A different view is that these non-Latin words with Albanian cognates are not necessarily Dacian, but rather were brought into the territory that is modern Romania by Romance-speaking shepherds migrating north from Albania, Serbia, and northern Greece who became the Romanian people.[84]

Balkan language areaEdit

While most of Romanian grammar and morphology are based on Latin, there are some features that are shared only with other languages of the Balkans and not found in other Romance languages. The shared features of Romanian and the other languages of the Balkan language area (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian, Greek, and Serbian) include a suffixed definite article, the syncretism of genitive and dative case and the formation of the future and the alternation of infinitive with subjunctive constructions.[85][86] According to a well-established scholarly theory, most Balkanisms could be traced back to the development of the Balkan Romance languages; these features were adopted by other languages due to language shift.[87]

Slavic languagesEdit

The Slavic influences on Romanian are especially noticeable and can be observed at all linguistic levels: lexis, phonetics, morphology and syntax.[citation needed] About 20% of modern Romanian words are of Slavic origin.[citation needed] This is due to the migration of Slavic tribes who traversed the territory of present-day Romania during the early evolution of the language and the continuing use of Church Slavonic as the liturgical language of the Romanian Orthodox Church. This process of the introduction of Slavic in Dacia was similar to the appearance of various Germanic dialects in the Western Roman Empire, where Gallic Latin, Iberian Latin, and Northern Italian dialects became strongly Germanized.[citation needed] However, due to the lower Romance-speaking populace in the East, Slavic remained spoken for much longer and did not die out immediately.

Other influencesEdit

Even before the 19th century, Romanian came in contact with several other languages. Some notable examples include:

  • Greek: folos < ófelos "use", buzunar < buzunára "pocket", proaspăt < prósfatos "fresh", cutie < cution "box", portocale < portokalia "oranges". While Latin borrowed words of Greek origin, Romanian obtained Greek loanwords on its own. Greek entered Romanian through the apoikiai (colonies) and emporia (trade stations) founded in and around Dobruja, through the presence of Byzantine Empire in north of the Danube, through Bulgarian during Bulgarian Empires that converted Romanians to Orthodox Christianity, and after the Greek Civil War, when thousands of Greeks fled Greece.
  • Hungarian: a cheltui < költeni "to spend", a făgădui < fogadni "to promise", a mântui < menteni "to save", oraș < város "city";
  • Turkish: papuc < pabuç "slipper", ciorbă < çorba "wholemeal soup, sour soup", bacșiș < bahşiş "tip" (ultimately from Persian baksheesh);
  • German: cartof < Kartoffel "potato", bere < Bier "beer", șurub < Schraube "screw", turn < Turm "tower", ramă < Rahmen "frame", muștiuc < Mundstück "mouth piece", bormașină < Bohrmaschine "drilling machine", cremșnit < Kremschnitte "cream slice", șvaițer < Schweizer "Swiss cheese", șlep < Schleppkahn "barge", șpriț < Spritzer "wine with soda water", abțibild < Abziehbild "decal picture", șnițel < Schnitzel "cutlet", șuncă < dialectal Schunke (Schinken) "ham", punct < Punkt "point", maistru < Meister "master", rundă < Runde "round". During the Austrian administration in Banat, Transylvania, and Bukovina, a large number of words were borrowed from Austrian German, in particular in fields such as the military, administration, social welfare, economy, etc.[88] Later on German terms have been taken out of science and technics, like: șină < Schiene "rail", știft < Stift "peg", liță < Litze "braid", șindrilă < Schindel "shingle", ștanță < Stanze "punch", șaibă < Scheibe "washer", ștangă < Stange "crossbar", țiglă < Ziegel "tile", șmirghel < Schmirgelpapier "emery paper";
  • The Romani language has provided a series of words to Romanian, especially slang terms: mișto "good, beautiful, cool" < mišto,[89] gagică "girlie, girlfriend" < gadji, a hali "to devour" < halo, mandea "yours truly" < mande, a mangli "to pilfer" < manglo.

In addition, many more words were borrowed from Classical Latin through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Roman Catholic Church, as Latin did hold an important position in Transylvania after the 11th century as it was part of Kingdom of Hungary, a Roman Catholic country, until it was occupied by Romanians after World War I[citation needed]. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, most literate Romanian speakers, including Roman Catholics and Orthodox, were also literate in Latin; and thus they easily adopted Latin words, along with Hungarian, into their writing—and eventually speech—in Romanian. This caused Romanian to easily reduce some of its Slavic loanwords.

French, Italian and English wordsEdit

Since the 19th century, many literary or learned words were borrowed from the other Romance languages, especially from French and Italian (for example: birou "desk, office", avion "airplane", exploata "exploit"). It was estimated that about 38% of words in Romanian are of French and/or Italian origin (in many cases both languages); and adding this to Romanian's native stock, about 75%–85% of Romanian words can be traced to Latin. The use of these Romanianized French and Italian learned loans has tended to increase at the expense of Slavic loanwords, many of which have become rare or fallen out of use. As second or third languages, French and Italian themselves are better known in Romania than in Romania's neighbors. Along with the switch to the Latin alphabet in Moldova, the re-latinization of the vocabulary has tended to reinforce the Latin character of the language.

In the process of lexical modernization, much of the native Latin stock have acquired doublets from other Romance languages, thus forming a further and more modern and literary lexical layer. Typically, the native word is a noun and the learned loan is an adjective. Some examples of doublets:

Latin Native stock Learned loan
agilis 'quick’ ager 'astute’ agil 'agile' (< French, Italian agile)
aqua apă 'water’ acvatic 'aquatic' (< Fr aquatique)
dens, dentem dinte 'tooth’ dentist 'dentist' (< Fr dentiste, It Dentista)
directus drept 'straight; right’ direct 'direct' (< Fr direct)
frigidus 'cold' (adj.) frig 'cold' (noun) frigid 'frigid' (< Fr frigide)
rapidus repede 'quick’ rapid 'quick' (< Fr rapide, It rapido)

In the 20th century, an increasing number of English words have been borrowed (such as: gem < jam; interviu < interview; meci < match; manager < manager; fotbal < football; sandviș < sandwich; bișniță < business; chec < cake). These words are assigned grammatical gender in Romanian and handled according to Romanian rules; thus "the manager" is managerul. Some borrowings, for example in the computer field, appear to have awkward (perhaps contrived and ludicrous) 'Romanisation,' such as cookie-uri which is the plural of the Internet term cookie.

A statistical analysis sorting Romanian words by etymological source carried out by Macrea (1961)[90] based on the DLRM[91] (49,649 words) showed the following makeup:[92]

  • 43% recent Romance loans (mainly French: 38.42%)
  • 20% inherited Latin
  • 11.5% Slavic, including Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, and Russian
  • 4% Turkish
  • 2.40% Modern Greek
  • 2.17% Hungarian
  • 2% German

If the analysis is restricted to a core vocabulary of 2,500 frequent, semantically rich and productive words, then the Latin inheritance comes first, followed by Romance and classical Latin neologisms, whereas the Slavic borrowings come third. The Romanian lexicon is similar by 77% with Italian, 75% with French, 74% with Sardinian, 73% with Catalan, 72% with Portuguese and Rheto-Romance, 71% with Spanish.[93]

Romanian's core lexicon (2,581 words); Marius Sala, VRLR (1988)
Romanian according to word origin[94][95]
Germanic (German-based influence, English loanwords)

Romanian nouns are characterized by gender (feminine, masculine, and neuter), and declined by number (singular and plural) and case (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive and vocative). The articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns, agree in gender, number and case with the noun they reference.

Romanian is the only Romance language where definite articles are enclitic: that is, attached to the end of the noun (as in Scandinavian, and Bulgarian), instead of in front (proclitic). They were formed, as in other Romance languages, from the Latin demonstrative pronouns.

As in all Romance languages, Romanian verbs are highly inflected for person, number, tense, mood, and voice. The usual word order in sentences is subject–verb–object (SVO). Romanian has four verbal conjugations which further split into ten conjugation patterns. Verbs can be put in five moods that are inflected for the person (indicative, conditional/optative, imperative, subjunctive, and presumptive) and four impersonal moods (infinitive, gerund, supine, and participle).

Romanian has seven vowels: /i/, /ɨ/, /u/, /e/, /ə/, /o/ and /a/. Additionally, /ø/ and /y/ may appear in some borrowed words. Arguably, the diphthongs /e̯a/ and /o̯a/ are also part of the phoneme set. There are twenty-two consonants. The two approximants /j/ and /w/ can appear before or after any vowel, creating a large number of glide-vowel sequences which are, strictly speaking, not diphthongs.

In final positions after consonants, a short /i/ can be deleted, surfacing only as the palatalization of the preceding consonant (e.g., [mʲ]). Similarly, a deleted /u/ may prompt labialization of a preceding consonant, though this has ceased to carry any morphological meaning.

Phonetic changesEdit

Owing to its isolation from the other Romance languages, the phonetic evolution of Romanian was quite different, but the language does share a few changes with Italian, such as [kl][kj] (Lat. clarus → Rom. chiar, Ital. chiaro, Lat. clamare → Rom. chemare, Ital. chiamare) and [ɡl][ɡj] (Lat. *glacia (glacies) → Rom. gheață, Ital. ghiaccia, ghiaccio, Lat. *ungla (ungula) → Rom. unghie, Ital. unghia), although this did not go as far as it did in Italian with other similar clusters (Rom. place, Ital. piace); another similarity with Italian is the change from [ke] or [ki] to [tʃe] or [tʃi] (Lat. pax, pacem → Rom. and Ital. pace, Lat. dulcem → Rom. dulce, Ital. dolce, Lat. circus → Rom. cerc, Ital. circo) and [ɡe] or [ɡi] to [dʒe] or [dʒi] (Lat. gelu → Rom. ger, Ital. gelo, Lat. marginem → Rom. and Ital. margine, Lat. gemere → Rom. geme (gemere), Ital. gemere). There are also a few changes shared with Dalmatian, such as /ɡn/ (probably phonetically [ŋn]) → [mn] (Lat. cognatus → Rom. cumnat, Dalm. comnut) and /ks/[ps] in some situations (Lat. coxa → Rom. coapsă, Dalm. copsa).

Among the notable phonetic changes are:

  • diphthongization of e and o → ea and oa, before ă (or e as well, in the case of o) in the next syllable:
  • Lat. cera → Rom. ceară (wax)
  • Lat. sole → Rom. soare (sun)
  • iotation [e][ie] in the beginning of the word
  • Lat. herba → Rom. iarbă (grass, herb)
  • velar [k ɡ] → labial [p b m] before alveolar consonants and [w] (e.g. ngumb):
  • Lat. octo → Rom. opt (eight)
  • Lat. lingua → Rom. limbă (tongue, language)
  • Lat. signum → Rom. semn (sign)
  • Lat. coxa → Rom. coapsă (thigh)
  • Lat. caelum → Rom. cer (sky)
  • Alveolars [d t] palatalized to [(d)z] [ts] when before short [e] or long [iː]
  • Lat. deus → Rom. zeu (god)
  • Lat. tenem → Rom. ține (hold)

On the other hand, it (along with French) has lost /kw/ (qu) sound before /a/ from original Latin, turning it either into /p/ (Lat. quattuor → Rom.patru, "four"; cf. It. quattro) or /k/ (Lat. quando → Rom.când, "when"; Lat. quale →, "which").

Writing systemEdit

Neacșu's letter is the oldest surviving document written in Romanian

The first written record about a Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages in the Balkans is from 587. 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 frate (meaning "Return, return brother!"), and, "sculca" (out of bed) . Theophanes Confessor recorded it as part of a 6th-century military expedition by Commentiolus and Priscus against the Avars and Slovenes.[96]

"Libri III de moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum" by Dudo of Saint-Quentin states that Richard I of Normandy was sent by his father William I Longsword to learn the Dacian language with Bothon because the inhabitants of Bayeux spoke more Dacian than Roman.[97]

The oldest surviving written text in Romanian is a letter from late June 1521,[98] in which Neacșu of Câmpulung wrote to the mayor of Brașov about an imminent attack of the Turks. It was written using the Cyrillic alphabet, like most early Romanian writings. The earliest surviving writing in Latin script was a late 16th-century Transylvanian text which was written with the Hungarian alphabet conventions.

A sample of Romanian written in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, which was still in use in the early 19th century

In the late 18th century, Transylvanian scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted the Latin alphabet to the Romanian language, using some orthographic rules from Italian, recognized as Romanian's closest relative. The Cyrillic alphabet remained in (gradually decreasing) use until 1860, when Romanian writing was first officially regulated.

In the Soviet Republic of Moldova, a special version of the Cyrillic alphabet derived from the Russian version was used until 1989, when Romanian language spoken there officially returned to the Romanian Latin alphabet, although in the breakaway territory of Transnistria the Cyrillic alphabet is used to this day.

Romanian alphabetEdit

The Romanian alphabet is as follows:

Uppercase letters
Lowercase 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
/a/ /ə/ /ɨ/ /b/ /k/,
/d/ /e/,
/f/ /ɡ/,
/ɨ/ /ʒ/ /k/ /l/ /m/ /n/ /o/,
/p/ /k/ /r/ /s/ /ʃ/ /t/ /t͡s/ /u/,
/v/ /v/,

K, Q, W and Y, not part of the native alphabet, were officially introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982 and are mostly used to write loanwords like kilogram, quasar, watt, and yoga.

The Romanian alphabet is based on the Latin script with five additional letters Ă, Â, Î, Ș, Ț. Formerly, there were as many as 12 additional letters, but some of them were abolished in subsequent reforms. Also, until the early 20th century, a short vowel marker was used.

Today the Romanian alphabet is largely phonemic. However, the letters â and î both represent the same close central unrounded vowel /ɨ/. Â is used only inside words; î is used at the beginning or the end of single words and in the middle of compound words. 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 words containing a hiatus.

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

A close shot of some keys with Romanian characters on the keyboard of a laptop
  • h is not silent like in other Romance languages such as Spanish and French, but represents the phoneme /h/, except in the digraphs ch /k/ and gh /g/ (see below)
  • j represents /ʒ/, as in French, Catalan or Portuguese (the sound spelled with s in the English words "vision, pleasure, treasure").
  • There are two letters with a comma below, Ș and Ț, which represent the sounds /ʃ/ and /t͡s/. However, the allographs with a cedilla instead of a comma, Ş and Ţ, became widespread when pre-Unicode and early Unicode character sets did not include the standard form.
  • A final orthographical i after a consonant often represents the palatalization of the consonant (e.g., lup /lup/ "wolf" vs. lupi /lupʲ/ "wolves") – it is not pronounced like Italian lupi (which also means "wolves"), and is indeed an example of the Slavic influence on Romanian.
  • ă represents the schwa, /ə/.
  • î and â both represent the sound /ɨ/. In rapid speech (for example in the name of the country) the â sound may sound similar to a casual listener to the short schwa sound ă (in fact, Aromanian does merge the two, writing them ã) but careful speakers will distinguish the sound. The nearest equivalent is the vowel in the last syllable of the word roses for some English speakers. It is also roughly equivalent to European Portuguese /ɐ/.
  • The letter e generally represents the mid front unrounded vowel [e], somewhat like in the English word set. However, the letter e is pronounced as [je] ([j] sounds like 'y' in 'you') when it is the first letter of any form of the verb a fi "to be", or of a personal pronoun, for instance este /jeste/ "is" and el /jel/ "he".[99][100] This addition of the semivowel /j/ does not occur in more recent loans and their derivatives, such as eră "era", electric "electric" etc. Some words (such as iepure "hare", formerly spelled epure) are now written with the initial i to indicate the semivowel.
  • x represents either the phoneme sequence /ks/ as in expresie = expression, or /ɡz/ as in exemplu = example, as in English.
  • As in Italian, the letters c and g represent the affricates /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ before i and e, and /k/ and /ɡ/ elsewhere. When /k/ and /ɡ/ are followed by vowels /e/ and /i/ (or their corresponding semivowels or the final /ʲ/) the digraphs ch and gh are used instead of c and g, as shown in the table below. Unlike Italian, however, Romanian uses ce- and ge- to write /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ before a back vowel instead of ci- and gi-.
Group Phoneme Pronunciation Examples
ce, ci /tʃ/ ch in chest, cheek cerc (circle), ceașcă (cup), cercel (earring), cină (dinner), ciocan (hammer)
che, chi /k/ k in kettle, kiss cheie (key), chelner (waiter), chioșc (kiosk), chitară (guitar), ureche (ear)
ge, gi /dʒ/ j in jelly, jigsaw ger (frost), gimnast (gymnast), gem (jam), girafă (giraffe), geantă (bag)
ghe, ghi /ɡ/ g in get, give ghețar (glacier), ghid (guide), ghindă (acorn), ghidon (handle bar), stingher (lonely)

Punctuation and capitalizationEdit

Uses of punctuation peculiar to Romanian are:

  • The quotation marks use the Polish format in the format "quote "inside" quote", that is, ". . ." for a normal quotation, and double angle symbols for a quotation inside a quotation.
  • Proper quotations which span multiple paragraphs do not start each paragraph with the quotation marks; one single pair of quotation marks is always used, regardless of how many paragraphs are quoted.
  • Dialogues are identified with quotation dashes.
  • 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.).
  • Names of months and days are not capitalized (ianuarie "January", joi "Thursday").
  • Adjectives derived from proper names are not capitalized (Germania "Germany", but german "German").

Spelling issues between Romania and MoldovaEdit

Prior to 2010, there existed a minor spelling difference between standard forms of Romanian language used in Romania and the variant (also called Moldovan) used in the Republic of Moldova—the Academy of Sciences of Moldova did not switch to the new spelling rules introduced by the Romanian Academy in 1993. In 2000, the Moldovan Academy recommended adopting the spelling rules used in Romania,[101] and in 2010 the Academy launched a schedule for the transition to the new rules that was completed in 2011 (regarding publications) and is currently under implementation in the educational system (due to be completed within two school years). However, as of 2015 most Moldovan commercial websites maintain the 'old' spelling.[102]

Sample textEdit

English text:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Romanian – highlighted words were directly derived from Latin:

Toate ființele umane se nasc libere și egale în demnitate și în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu rațiune și conștiință și trebuie se comporte unele față de altele în spiritul fraternității.

Contemporary Romanian – highlighted words are French or Italian loanwords:

Toate ființele umane se nasc libere și egale în demnitate și în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu rațiune și conștiință și trebuie să se comporte unele față de altele în spiritul fraternității.

Romanian, excluding French and Italian loanwords – highlighted words are Slavic loanwords:

Toate ființele omenești se nasc slobode și deopotrivă în destoinicie și în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu înțelegere și cuget și trebuie să se poarte unele față de altele în duh de frățietate.

Romanian, excluding loanwords and having almost the same meaning:

Toate ființele omenești se nasc nesupuse și asemenea în prețuire și în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu înțelegere și cuget și se cuvine să se poarte unele față de altele după firea frăției.

See alsoEdit

  1. ^ a b The constitution of the Republic of Moldova refers to the country's language as Moldovan, whilst the 1991 Declaration of Independence names the official language Romanian. In December 2013, a decision of the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the Declaration of Independence takes precedence over the Constitution and that the state language is therefore Romanian, not "Moldovan". "Moldovan court rules official language is 'Romanian,' replacing Soviet-flavored 'Moldovan'"

  1. ^ Romanian at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ^ Latin Union
  3. ^ "Law of Ukraine "On Principles of State Language Policy" (Current version – Revision from 01.02.2014)". Document 5029-17, Article 7: Regional or minority languages Ukraine, Paragraph 2. 1 February 2014. Retrieved 30 April 2014.
  4. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Romanian". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  5. ^ The Latin Union reports 28 million speakers for Romanian, out of whom 24 million are native speakers of the language: Latin Union – The odyssey of languages: ro, es, fr, it, pt; see also Ethnologue report for Romanian
  6. ^ Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People. Microsoft Encarta 2006.
  7. ^ "Istoria limbii române" ("History of the Romanian Language"), II, Academia Română, Bucharest, 1969
  8. ^ Matley, Ian (1970). Romania; a Profile. Praeger. p. 85.
  9. ^ Giurescu, Constantin C. (1972). The Making of the Romanian People and Language. Bucharest: Meridiane Publishing House. pp. 43, 98–101, 141.
  10. ^ Cristian Mihail, Military (Dacian-)Roman Jargon. Its Influence on Romanian Language and History, Editura militară, 2012, p. 154.
  11. ^ Cristian Mihail, idem, sec. ed. 2015, p.123
  12. ^ Eutropius; Justin, Cornelius Nepos (1886). Eutropius, Abridgment of Roman History. London: George Bell and Sons.
  13. ^ Watkins, Thayer. "The Economic History of the Western Roman Empire". The Emperor Aurelian recognized the realities of the military situation in Dacia and around AD 271 withdrew Roman troops from Dacia, leaving it to the Goths. The Danube once again became the northern frontier of the Roman Empire in eastern Europe
  14. ^ Graham Mallinson, "Rumanian", in "The Romance Languages", Taylor & Francis, 1997, p. 413: "Much more substantial than the Germanic adstrate in the Western Romance Languages is the Slavic adstrate in Balkan Romance."
  15. ^ "Limba noastră cea frumoasă" Republicii Moldova
  16. ^ Ștefan Pascu, Documente străine despre români, ed. Arhivelor statului, București 1992, ISBN 973-95711-2-3
  17. ^ Tranquillo Andronico în Endre Veress, Fontes rerum transylvanicarum: Erdélyi történelmi források, Történettudományi Intézet, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, Budapest, 1914, S. 204
  18. ^ " dimandano in lingua loro alcuno dimanda se sano parlare in la lingua valacca, dicono a questo in questo modo: Sti Rominest ? Che vol dire: Sai tu Romano ?..." în: Claudiu Isopescu, Notizie intorno ai romeni nella letteratura geografica italiana del Cinquecento, în Bulletin de la Section Historique, XVI, 1929, p. 1- 90
  19. ^ "Anzi essi si chiamano romanesci, e vogliono molti che erano mandati quì quei che erano dannati a cavar metalli..." în: Maria Holban, Călători străini despre Țările Române, București, Editura Stiințifică, 1970, vol. II, p.158 – 161
  20. ^ "Tout ce pays: la Wallachie, la Moldavie et la plus part de la Transylvanie, a esté peuplé des colonies romaines du temps de Trajan l’empereur… Ceux du pays se disent vrais successeurs des Romains et nomment leur parler romanechte, c'est-à-dire romain … " în Voyage fait par moy, Pierre Lescalopier l’an 1574 de Venise a Constantinople, în: Paul Cernovodeanu, Studii și materiale de istorie medievală, IV, 1960, p. 444
  21. ^ "Ex Vlachi Valachi, Romanenses Italiani,/Quorum reliquae Romanensi lingua utuntur.../Solo Romanos nomine, sine re, repraesentantes./Ideirco vulgariter Romuini sunt appelanti", Ioannes Lebelius, De opido Thalmus, Carmen Istoricum, Cibinii, 1779, p. 11 – 12
  22. ^ "qui eorum lingua Romini ab Romanis, nostra Walachi, ab Italis appellantur" St. Orichovius, Annales polonici ab excessu Sigismundi, in I. Dlugossus, Historiae polonicae libri XII, col 1555
  23. ^ "...Valacchi, qui se Romanos nominant..." "Gens quae ear terras (Transsylvaniam, Moldaviam et Transalpinam) nostra aetate incolit, Valacchi sunt, eaque a Romania ducit originem, tametsi nomine longe alieno..." De situ Transsylvaniae, Moldaviae et Transaplinae, in Monumenta Hungariae Historica, Scriptores; II, Pesta, 1857, p. 120
  24. ^ "Valachos...dicunt enim communi modo loquendi: Sie noi sentem Rumeni: etiam nos sumus Romani. Item: Noi sentem di sange Rumena: Nos sumus de sanguine Romano" Martinus Szent-Ivany, Dissertatio Paralimpomenica rerum memorabilium Hungariae, Tyrnaviae, 1699, p. 39
  25. ^ Palia de la Orăștie (1581–1582), Bucuresti, 1968
  26. ^ Grigore Ureche, Letopisețul Țării Moldovei, p. 133-134
  27. ^ Constantiniu, Florin, O istorie sinceră a poporului român (An honest history of the Romanian people), Univers Enciclopedic, București, 1997, ISBN 97-3924-307-X, p. 175
  28. ^ From Descriptio Moldaviae: "Valachiae et Transylvaniae incolis eadem est cum Moldavis lingua, pronunciatio tamen rudior, ut dziur, Vlachus proferet zur, jur, per z polonicum sive j gallicum; Dumnedzeu, Deus, val. Dumnezeu: akmu, nunc, val. akuma, aczela hic, val: ahela."
  29. ^ Eugen Munteanu. Dinamica istorică a cultivării instituţionalizate a limbii române, în "Revista română", Iaşi, anul IV, nr. 4 (34), decembrie 2003, p. 6 (I), nr. 1 (35), martie 2004, p. 7 (II); nr. 2, iunie 2004, p. 6 (III); nr. 3, octombrie 2004, p. 6 (IV); nr. 4 (38), decembrie 2004, p. 6 (V). Retrieved 11 May 2016 from .
  30. ^ a b Samuil Micu, Gheorghe Șincai, Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae, Vienna, 1780.
  31. ^ (Russian)Charter for the organization of the Bessarabian Oblast, 29 April 1818, in "Печатается по изданию: Полное собрание законов Российской империи. Собрание первое.", Vol 35. 1818, Sankt Petersburg, 1830, pg. 222–227. Available online at
  32. ^ King, Charles, The Moldovans, Hoover Press, 2000, ISBN 08-1799-792-X, pg. 21–22
  33. ^ Yves D'hulst, Martine Coene, Larisa Avram, "Syncretic and analytic tenses in Romanian", in Balkan Syntax and Semantics, pag. 366: "In its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin tense system in extreme ways."
  34. ^ Yves D'hulst et al., "Syncretic and analytic tenses in Romanian", in Balkan Syntax and Semantics, p. 355: "general absence of consecutio temporum."
  35. ^ [1]
  36. ^ Hungarian Census 2011
  37. ^
  38. ^ Bilancio demografico nazionale
  39. ^ Instituto Nacional de Estadística – Population and Housing Censuses 2011. [2].
  40. ^ Auslaend Bevoelkerung Destatis. [3].
  41. ^ Office for National Statistics 2011 Census. [4].
  42. ^ Portugal foreigners. 2011.
  43. ^ Departamentul Romanilor de Pretutindeni – Franta. [5].
  44. ^ non-profit Data [6].
  45. ^ Departamentul Romanilor de Pretutindeni – Austria [7].
  46. ^ General Secretariat of National Statistical Service of Greece [8].
  47. ^ Cyprus 2011 census [9].
  48. ^ Irish 2011 census [10].
  49. ^ Departamentul Romanilor de Pretutindeni – Tarile Nordice
  50. ^ 2010 Russia Census Perepis 2010
  51. ^ Australian Census 2006
  52. ^ Archived 22 March 2008 on Wayback Machine.
  53. ^ "Latin Union – Languages and cultures online 2005". Retrieved 23 May 2010.
  54. ^ MSN Encarta – Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People Archived 29 October 2009 on Wayback Machine.
  55. ^ According to the 1993 Statistical Abstract of Israel there were 250,000 Romanian speakers in Israel, of a population of 5,548,523 in 1995 (census).
  56. ^ "Reports of about 300,000 Jews that left the country after WW2". Retrieved 23 May 2010.
  57. ^ "Evenimentul Zilei". Retrieved 23 May 2010.
  58. ^ "Constitution of Romania". Retrieved 23 May 2010.
  59. ^ Legea "Pruteanu": 500/2004 – Law on the Protection of the Romanian Language
  60. ^ Art. 27 (3), Legea nr. 26/1990 privind Registrul Comerțului
  61. ^ Ministry of Education of Romania
  62. ^ "Declarația de independența a Republicii Moldova, Moldova Suverană" (in Romanian). Retrieved 9 October 2013.
  63. ^ "A Field Guide to the Main Languages of Europe – Spot that language and how to tell them apart" (PDF). European Commission. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 February 2007. Retrieved 9 October 2013.
  64. ^ Moldovan court rules official language is 'Romanian,' replacing Soviet-flavored 'Moldovan' at
  65. ^ "Marian Lupu: Româna și moldoveneasca sunt aceeași limbă". Realitatea .NET. Retrieved 7 October 2009.
  66. ^ Dalby, Andrew (1998). Dictionary of Languages. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 518. ISBN 07-4753-117-X.
  67. ^ Legea cu privire la functionarea limbilor vorbite pe teritoriul RSS Moldovenesti Nr.3465-XI din 01.09.89 Vestile nr.9/217, 1989 (Law regarding the usage of languages spoken on the territory of the Republic of Moldova): "Moldavian RSS supports the desire of the Moldavian that live across the borders of the Republic, and – considering the existing Moldo-Romanian linguistic identity – of the Romanians that live on the territory of the USSR, of doing their studies and satisfying their cultural needs in their maternal language."
  68. ^ National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova: Census 2004
  69. ^ Experts Offering to Consult the National Statistics Bureau in Evaluation of the Census Data, Moldova Azi, 19 May 2005, story attributed to AP Flux. Retrieved 11 October 2005.
  70. ^ Official Gazette of Republic of Serbia, No. 1/90
  71. ^ Official Gazette of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina
  72. ^ "Official use of languages and scripts in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina" published by the Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities
  73. ^ Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities: "Official use of the Romanian language in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (APV)"
  74. ^ Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research: [11], [12]
  75. ^ Slovak Academy of Sciences in Kosice Archived 14 May 2009 on Wayback Machine.
  76. ^ Kramar Andriy. "University of Chernivtsi". Retrieved 23 May 2010.
  77. ^ "Cursuri de perfecționare", Ziua, 19 August 2005
  78. ^ "Data concerning the teaching of the Romanian language abroad", Romanian Language Institute.
  79. ^ "Romanian language", in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  80. ^ a b Stoica, Vasile (1919). The Roumanian Question: The Roumanians and their Lands. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Printing Company. p. 50.
  81. ^ Pei, Mario (1949). Story of Language. ISBN 03-9700-400-1.
  82. ^ Ethnologue, Romanian
  83. ^ Vladimir Georgiev (Gheorghiev), (Romanian) Raporturile dintre limbile dacă, tracă și frigiană, "Studii Clasice" Journal, II, 1960, 39–58
  84. ^ Schramm, Gottfried (1997). Ein Damn bricht. Die römische Donaugrenze und die Invasionen des 5–7. Jahrhunderts in Lichte der Namen und Wörter.
  85. ^ Mišeska Tomić, Olga (2006). Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features. Springer. p. 27. ISBN 978-1-4020-4487-8.
  86. ^ Schulte, Kim (2009). "Loanwords in Romanian". In Haspelmath, Martin; Tadmor, Uri. Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 230–259. ISBN 978-3-11-021843-5.
  87. ^ Lindstedt, J. (2000). "Linguistic Balkanization: Contact-induced change by mutual reinforcement". In D. G. Gilbers & al. (eds.). Languages in Contact ((Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics, 28.) ed.). Amsterdam & Atlanta, GA, 2000: Rodopi. p. 235. ISBN 90-4201-322-2.
  88. ^ Hans Dama, "Lexikale Einflüsse im Rumänischen aus dem österreichischen Deutsch" ("Lexical influences of 'Austrian'-German on the Romanian Language") (German)
  89. ^ (Romanian) Rodica Zafiu, "Mișto și legenda bastonului", România literară, No. 6, 2009 – "There is no doubt among linguists about the Romany etymology of the Romanian word mișto, but a fairly widespread folk etymology and urban legend maintains that the German phrase mit Stock 'with stick' would be its true origin."
  90. ^ Dimitrie Macrea, "Originea și structura limbii române", Probleme de lingvistică română (Bucharest: Editura Științifică, 1961), 7–45: p. 32.
  91. ^ Academia Română, Dictionarul limbii române moderne, ed. Dimitrie Macrea (Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1958).
  92. ^ Gabriela Pană Dindelegan, ed., The Grammar of Romanian, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 3, ISBN 978-0-19-964492-6
  93. ^ "Romanian". Ethnologue.
  94. ^ Marius Sala (coord), Mihaela Bîrlădeanu, Maria Iliescu, Liliana Macarie, Ioana Nichita, Mariana Ploae-Hanganu, Maria Theban, Ioana Vintilă-Rădulescu, Vocabularul reprezentativ al limbilor romanice (VRLR) (Bucharest: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, 1988).
  95. ^ Vocabularul reprezentativ diferă de vocabularul fundamental (VF) și de fondul principal lexical (FP). Cf. SCL (Studii și cercetări lingvistice), an XXVII (1976), nr. 1, p. 61-66 și SCL (1974) nr. 3, p. 247. Cf. Theodor Hristea, "Structura generală a lexicului românesc", Sinteze de limba română, eds., Theodor Hristea (coord.), Mioara Avram, Grigore Brâncuș, Gheorghe Bulgăr, Georgeta Ciompec, Ion Diaconescu, Rodica Bogza-Irimie & Flora Șuteu (Bucharest: 1984), 13.
  96. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica, "A dictionary of arts, sciences and general literature, Ninth Edition, Volume XXIV, page 269.
  97. ^ page 221
  98. ^ Romanian Grammar By Mika Sarlin, Google Books.
  99. ^ (Romanian) Several Romanian dictionaries specify the pronunciation [je] for word-initial letter e in some personal pronouns: el, ei, etc. and in some forms of the verb a fi (to be): este, eram, etc.
  100. ^ (Romanian) Mioara Avram, Ortografie pentru toți, Editura Litera, Chișinău, 1997, p. 29
  101. ^ The new edition of "Dicționarul ortografic al limbii române (ortoepic, morfologic, cu norme de punctuație)" – introduced by the Academy of Sciences of Moldova and recommended for publishing following a conference on 15 November 2000 – applies the decision of the General Meeting of the Romanian Academy from 17 February 1993, regarding the return to "â" and "sunt" in the orthography of the Romanian language. (Introduction, Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova)
  102. ^ "Gheorghe Duca: Trebuie schimbată atitudinea de sorginte proletară față de savanți și în genere față de intelectuali" (in Romanian). Allmoldova. 4 June 2010. Retrieved 3 January 2011.

  • Giurescu, Constantin, The Making of the Romanian People and Language, Bucharest, 1972.
  • Kahl, Thede (ed.), Das Rumänische und seine Nachbarn, Berlin, 2009.
  • Paliga, Sorin, The Earliest Slavic Borrowings in Romanian, Romanoslavica vol. XLVI, nr. 4, Editura Universității din București, Bucharest, 2010.
  • Rosetti, Alexandru, Istoria limbii române, 2 vols., Bucharest, 1965–1969.
  • Uwe, Hinrichs (ed.), Handbuch der Südosteuropa-Linguistik, Wiesbaden, 1999.

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Jurassic Park (novel)

novel by Michael Crichton

Jurassic Park (1990) by Michael Crichton

  • "I believe my life has value, and I don't want to waste it thinking about clothing. I don't want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports."
    • Ian Malcolm - Second Iteration "Malcolm"
  • "You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct"
    • Ian Malcolm (p. 189)
  • "There is a problem with that island. It is an accident waiting to happen."
    • Ian Malcolm - Second Iteration "Malcolm"
  • The reason I ask," Malcolm said, "is that I'm told large predators such as lions and tigers are not born man-eaters. Isn't that true? These animals must learn somewhere along the way that human beings are easy to kill. Only afterward do they become man-killers."
    • Third Iteration "The Tour"
  • But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is.
    • Third Iteration "Breeding Sites"
  • "Broadly speaking, the ability of the park is to control the spread of life forms. Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way." Malcolm shook his head. "I don't mean to be philosophical, but there it is."
    • Ian Malcolm - Third Iteration "Stegosaur"
  • "Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet - or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves."
    • Ian Malcolm - Seventh Iteration "Destroying the World"
  • Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.
    • p. 284
  • I hate being right.
    • Ian Malcolm

[Harding watches over Malcolm, delirious, weak, morphine-drugged and dying.]

Malcolm: [Weakly] Everything looks different ... on the other side.
Harding: On the other side?
Malcolm: When ... shifts.
Harding: Shifts?
Malcolm: paradigm.
Harding: Paradigm shifts?
Malcolm: No, not ... paradigm ... beyond.
Harding: Beyond paradigm?
Malcolm: Don't care about ... what ... anymore ...
Harding: What don't you care about?
Malcolm: Anything. Because ... everything looks different ... on the other side. [And he smiles]

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  1. (obsolete) simple past tense and past participle of snap
    • 1854, Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, Book V[1]:
      When the orders to embark for Sicily arrived, and the soldier was to exchange the luxurious ease of Campania for a third campaign certainly not inferior to those of Spain and Thessaly in point of hardship, the reins, which had been too long relaxed and were too suddenly tightened, snapt asunder.
    • 1861, Various, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861[2]:
      The magnetism of this marvellous interpreter had caught up himself, and me with him, into Dreamland, from which we gently descended at the end of Part VI., and "the spell was snapt."
    • 1897, Unknown, The Nursery Rhyme Book[3]:
      The king was in his counting-house Counting out his money; The queen was in the parlour Eating bread and honey; The maid was in the garden Hanging out the clothes, There came a little blackbird, And snapt off her nose. ]


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Tracked excavator

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Bicycle drivetrain systems

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
A shaft-drive with crankset and rear gear hub
A rear derailleur

Bicycle drivetrain systems are used to transmit power on bicycles, tricycles, quadracycles, unicycles, or other human-powered vehicles from the riders to the drive wheels. Most also include some type of a mechanism to convert speed and torque via gear ratios.

The history of bicycle drivetrain systems is closely linked to the history of the bicycle. Major changes in bicycle form have often been initiated or accompanied by advances in drivetrain systems. Several early drivetrains used straight-cut gears that meshed directly with each other outside of the hub.[1] Some bicycles have used a double-sided rear wheel, with different-sized sprockets on each side. To change gears, the rider would stop and dismount, remove the rear wheel and reinstall it in the reverse direction. Derailleur systems were first developed in the late 19th century, but the modern cable-operated parallelogram derailleur was invented in the 1950s.

Power collection[edit]

Bicycle drivetrain systems have been developed to collect power from riders by a variety of methods.

From legs[edit]

From arms[edit]

From whole body[edit]

From multiple riders[edit]

Power transmission[edit]

A wire rope and pulley drive on a Stringbike

Bicycle drivetrain systems have been developed to transmit power from riders to drive wheels by a variety of methods. Most bicycle drivetrain systems incorporate a freewheel to allow coasting, but direct drive and fixed-gear systems do not. The latter are sometimes also described as bicycle brake systems.

Some human powered vehicles, both historical and modern, employ direct drive. Examples include most Penny-farthings, unicycles, and children's tricycles.

Another interpretation of direct drive is that the rider pushes directly against the ground with a foot, as employed in balance bicycles and chukudus.

  • Hydraulic
  • Electric, in which turning the cranks generates electricity that then drives an electric motor in the rear wheel.[8][9]

Two-wheel drive[edit]

In 1991, a two-wheel drive bicycle was marketed under the Legacy name. It used a flexible shaft and two bevel gears to transmit torque from the rear wheel, driven by a conventional bicycle chain with derailleurs, to the front wheel.[10] In 1994, Steve Christini and Mike Dunn introduced a two-wheel drive option.[11] Their AWD system, aimed at mountain bikers, comprises an adapted differential that sends power to the front wheel once the rear begins to slip. In the late 1990s, 2WD 'Dual Power' mountain bikes were sold in Germany under the Subaru name. They used one belt to transfer power from the rear wheel to the head tube, a small gearbox to allow rotation of the front fork, and then a second belt to transfer power to the front wheel.[12]

Speed and torque conversion[edit]

1888 Geared Facile Bicycle in the Coventry Transport Museum
A chain-drive and rear gear hub
A bicycle gearbox with chain tensioner
A penny-farthing with direct drive

A cyclist's legs produce power optimally within a narrow pedalling speed range. Gearing is optimized to use this narrow range as best as possible. Bicycle drivetrain systems have been developed to convert speed and torque by a variety of methods.

Several technologies have been developed to alter gear ratios. They can be used individually, as an external derailleur or an internal hub gear, or in combinations such as the SRAM Dual Drive, which uses a standard 8 or 9-speed cassette mounted on a three-speed internally geared hub, offering a similar gear range as a bicycle with a cassette and triple chainrings.

While several combinations of power collection, transmission, and conversion exist, not all combinations are feasible. For example, a shaft-drive is usually accompanied by a hub gear, and derailleurs are usually implemented with chain drive.

See also[edit]

  1. ^ Frank Berto (2009). The Dancing Chain: History and Development of the Derailleur Bicycle (Third ed.). Cycle Publishing. pp. 23–28. ISBN 978-1-892495-59-4.
  2. ^ "3G Stepper Bike: A Fitness Monster that Beats Your Gym Membership". Popular Mechanics. October 1, 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-13.
  3. ^ "A Different Kind Of Bicycle". Gadgetopia. Retrieved 2010-05-26.
  4. ^ a b c Wallack, Roy M. (30 November 2009). "Going Beyond the Basic Bike". LA Times. Archived from the original on 28 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-05-12.
  5. ^ Richard Peace (11 Jan 2010). "ElliptiGO seatless bike launched". Archived from the original on 29 July 2010. Retrieved 2010-07-13.
  6. ^ "Weird Bikes II - More Weird Bike Stuff". Charlie Kelly. Retrieved 2012-07-17. Here we have not one but TWO examples of bikes that raise and lower the rider during each pedal stroke. On both of these bikes, the rider pedals with his feet together and stands up and sits back down to propel himself.
  7. ^ "Weird Bikes II - Total Body Bikes". Charlie Kelly. Retrieved 2012-07-17. Slide the handles in and out as you ride, with the motion transmitted to the front wheel via a system of cords and springs.
  8. ^ James Huang (September 11, 2014). "The incredible Mando Footloose IM e-bike". Bike Radar. Retrieved 2015-02-17. There is no mechanical connection between the cranks and rear wheel at all. Instead, the cranks are connected to an alternator, which continually recharges the battery that powers the 250-watt motor at the rear wheel.
  9. ^ Pete (October 16, 2014). "No Chain?! Mando Footloose IM Series Hybrid Electric Bike". Electric Bike Report. Retrieved 2015-02-17.
  10. ^ "Weird Bike Stuff - Legacy 2 wheel drive!". Charlie Kelly. Retrieved 2012-07-17.
  11. ^ "Christini background". Elan Ligfietsen. 2005. Retrieved 2012-07-17.
  12. ^ Michael Embacher (2011). Cyclopedia. Fontaine & Noë / Lannoo. pp. 46–47. ISBN 978-90-72975-08-9.

External links[edit]