Proto-Romanian language

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Proto-Romanian (also known as Common Romanian, româna comună) is a hypothetical language considered to have been spoken by the ancestors of today's Romanians and related Balkan Latin peoples (Vlachs), between the 7th and the 9th century.

Map of Balkans with regions inhabited by Romanians/Vlachs highlighted

Proto-Romanian already had a structure very distinct from the other Romance languages, with major differences in grammar, morphology and phonology and already was a member of the Balkan linguistic union. Most of its features can be found in the modern Eastern Romance languages. It already contained around a hundred loans from Slavic languages, including words such as "trup" (body), as well as some Greek language loans via Vulgar Latin.

It was broken into the following modern languages and their dialects:

• Romanian language (sometimes called Daco-Romanian to distinguish it from the rest of the Eastern Romance languages)
• Aromanian
• Megleno-Romanian
• Istro-Romanian

The first language that broke the unity was Aromanian, in the 9th century, followed shortly after by Megleno-Romanian. Istro-Romanian was the last to break the link with Daco-Romanian in the 11th century.

The place where this language was formed is still under debate; most historians put it north of the Jireček Line, leaving the most likely areas as Dacia (current Romania (Banat, Oltenia and Transylvania), Moesia (Eastern Serbia) or Northeastern Albania. See: Origin of Romanians.