Romanian language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Romanian română |
||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Canada, USA, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Serbia, Hungary; various communities around the wider Balkan peninsula and beyond. | |
| Region: | Southeastern Europe | |
| Total speakers: | First language: 24 million Second language: 4 million [1] |
|
| Ranking: | 36 (native) | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Italic Romance East Romance Romanian |
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language of: | Romania, Moldova [2], Vojvodina (Serbia) | |
| Regulated by: | Academia Română | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | ro | |
| ISO 639-2: | rum (B) | ron (T) |
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | ron | |
 |
||
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
|
||||||||||||||||
Romanian (limba română IPA /'limba ro'mɨnə/) is the fifth of the Romance languages in terms of number of speakers. It is spoken as a first language by somewhere around 24 to 26 million people, and enjoys official status in Romania, Moldova and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Serbia). The official form of the Moldovan language [2] in the Republic of Moldova is identical to the official form of Romanian save for a minor rule in spelling. Romanian is also an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations (such as the Latin Union and the European Union – the latter as of 2007).
Romanian speakers are also found abroad in many other countries (due to emigration), notably in Italy, Spain, the United States, Canada, France and Germany (cf. Romanians). Owing to a general lack of consistently-derived data, precise estimates for the total numbers of Romanian-speaking emigrants are not available. Some secondary sources claim for example that more than 3 million Romanian speakers live abroad as immigrants in Europe and North America[3]; however, such census data as is available indicates that these numbers may be overestimates.
Contents |
[edit] 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.
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.
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, which can explain why it is one of the most uniform languages in Europe. It is more conservative than other Romance languages in nominal morphology. Romanian has preserved declension, but whereas Latin had six cases, Romanian has 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.
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. 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, indicating a relatively recent migration to the northern territories.
Romanian developed in isolation with regard to the other Romance languages. Therefore, it was influenced by Slavonic (due to migration/assimilation, and feudal/ecclesiastical relations), Greek (Byzantine, then Phanariote), Turkish, and Hungarian, while the other Romance languages adopted words and features of Germanic.
[edit] Classification and related languages
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, Portuguese and Spanish.
However, the languages closest to Romanian are the other Eastern Romance languages, spoken south of Danube: Aromanian/Macedo-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian, which are sometimes 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).
The Romanian variety spoken in Moldova has been named Moldovan language by the Soviet and later Moldovan authorities, but linguists do not recognize it as a different language.
Out of the main Romance languages, Romanian is closest to Italian, the two show limited degree of asymmetrical mutual intelligibility, especially in their cultivated forms: speakers of Romanian seem to understand Italian more easily than the other way round. Even though Romanian has obvious lexical and grammatical similarities with French, Catalan, Spanish or Portuguese, it is not mutually intelligible with them to a practical extent; Romanian speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary before being able to understand even the simplest sentences in those languages (and vice-versa).
In the following sample sentence (meaning "She always closes the window before having dinner.") cognates are written in bold:
- Ea închide întotdeauna fereastra înainte de a cina. (Romanian)
- Ea semper fenestram claudit antequam cenet. (Latin)
- Ella (or lei) chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare. (Italian)
- Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de dîner. (French)
- Ella siempre cierra la ventana antes de cenar. (Spanish)
- Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. (Portuguese)
- Ella tanca sempre la finestra abans de sopar. (Catalan)
On the other hand, Romanian vocabulary has been strongly influenced by French and Italian in the Modern Age (see #French, Italian and other international words). At present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 77%, whereas French follows at 75%, Sardinian 74%, Catalan 73%, Spanish at 71%, Portuguese and Rheto-Romance at 72%.
[edit] Geographic distribution
 |
|||
| Country | Speakers (%) |
Speakers (native) |
Population (2005) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Europe | |||
| Romania | 91% | 19,736,517 | 21,698,181 |
| Moldova ² | 78.2% | 2,649,477 | 3,388,071 |
| Transnistria ³ | 31.9% | 177,050 | 555,500 |
| Vojvodina (Serbia) | 1.5% | 29,512 | 2,031,992 |
| not official: | |||
| Timočka Krajina (Serbia) 4 | 5.9% | 42,075 | 712,050 |
| Ukraine 5 | 0.8% | 327,703 | 48,457,000 |
| Hungary | 0.08% | 8,482 | 10,198,315 |
| Italy | 0.43% | 248,849 | 58,462,375 |
| Asia | |||
| not official: | |||
| Israel | 3.7% | 250,000 | 6,800,000 |
| Kazakhstan 1 | 0.1% | 20,054 | 14,953,126 |
| Russia 1 | 0.12% | 178,000 | 145,537,200 |
| The Americas | |||
| not official: | |||
| Canada | 0.2% | 60,520 | 32,207,113 |
| United States 6 | 0.11% | 340,000 | 281,421,906 |
|
1 Many are Moldovans who were deported |
|||
Romanian is spoken mostly in Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, but there are also Romanian language speakers in countries like Canada, United States, Germany, Israel, Australia and New Zealand, mainly due to post-World War II emigration. A further surge in emigration to the Western countries occurred following the collapse of the Communist Bloc in 1989, as well as to other Latin countries such as Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal.
[edit] Legal status in Romania
According to the Constitution of Romania of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic.[4]
Romania mandates the use of Romanian in official government publications, public education and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words.
Institutul Limbii Române, established by the Ministry of Education of Romania, promotes the knowledge of the Romanian language and supports people willing to learn this language, working together with the MFA's Department for Romanians Abroad.[5]
There exist in addition to Romanian a variety of officially-recognised minority languages spoken in Romania; see Languages of Romania.
[edit] Legal status in Moldova
About 10% of the world's Roumanophones are Moldovan, and Romanian is the single official language of Moldova. In the Constitution, the language is officially named Moldovan, although most linguists consider it virtually the same as the Romanian language. Also, the language used in schools, media, scientific environment and in the colloquial speech and writing is called Romanian.
Romanian has been the only official language of Moldova since the endorsement of the law on language of the Moldavian SSR. This law, still in force today, mandates the use of Moldovan in all the political, economical, cultural and social spheres, as it also does assert the real existence of "linguistic Moldo-Romanian identity". [6]
Title I, Article 13 of the Moldovan Constitution, names it the "national language" (limba de stat) of the country. In the unrecognized state 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) chose Romanian as their mother tongue, whereas 60% chose Moldovan. While 40% of all urban Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose Romanian as their mother tongue, in the country side hardly each 7th Romanian/Moldovan speaker indicated Romanian as his mother tongue.[7] 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 using them.[8]
[edit] Legal status in Vojvodina
Article 8 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia (published in the Official Gazette of RS", No. 1/90) stipulates that in the Republic of Serbia the Serbo-Croat language and the Cyrillic script shall be officially used, while the Latin script shall be officially used in the manner established by the law. In addition to that, the provision in Article 8/2 precisely 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.
Article 6 of the Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (published in the "Official Gazette of APV") 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 Ruthenian 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. The bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are: the Assembly, the Executive Council and the Provincial administrative bodies.[9]
The Romanian language and script are officially used in 8 municipalities: Alibunar, Biserica Albă, Zitişte, Zrenianin, Kovăciţa, Cuvin, Plandişte and Secanj. In the municipality of Vârşeţ, Romanian is official only in the villages of Vojvodinci, Markovac, Straža, Mali Žam, Malo Središte, Mesić, Jablanka, Sočica, Ritiševo, Orešac and Kuštilj.[10]
In the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1,5% Vojvodinians chose Romanian as their mother tongue (barely 0,1% of the world's Roumanophones).
[edit] Legal status in other countries and organisations
In other parts of Serbia the Romanian communities (see Vlach language) have very few rights regarding the use and preservation of their language in schools, press, administration and institutions.[citation needed]
In parts of Ukraine where Romanians constitute a significant share of the local population (districts in Chernivtsi, Odessa and Zakarpattia oblasts) the Romanian language is being taught in schools as a primary language and there are newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting in Romanian.[11][12] The University of Chernivtsi trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics.[13]
Romanian is also an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations (such as the Latin Union and the European Union - the latter as of 2007).
Romanian is one of the five languages in which religious services are performed in the autonomous monastic state of Mount Athos, spoken in the sketae of Prodromos and Lacu (a sketa being a community of monks; sketae is plural).
[edit] Romanian as a second and foreign language
| ██ native | ██ over 5% | ██ 1-5% | ██ under 1% | ██ n/a |
Use of Romanian as a second language is recorded among many of the ethnic minorities in Romania, as well as Moldova. According to a 1979 census in the Moldova SSR (as it was then), approximately 4% of the population indicated Romanian/Moldovan as their second language [14].
Romanian is studied and taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such as Serbia (Vojvodina), Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary. The Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) has since 1992 organised summer training courses in Romanian for language teachers in these countries.[15] In some of the schools, there are non-Romanian nationals, that study Romanian as a foreign language (for example the Nicolae Bălcescu High-school in Gyula, Hungary).
Romanian is taught as a foreign language in various Tertiary institutions, most prevalently in neighboring European countries (such as Germany, France and Italy, as well as the Netherlands) but also elsewhere, such as the USA. Overall, it is taught as a foreign language in 38 countries around the world.[16]
[edit] Dialects and regional varieties
The term "Romanian" in a general sense envelops four hardly mutually intelligible speech varieties commonly regarded as independent languages. For more on these, please see the article "Eastern Romance languages".
It is thought that the Romanian language appeared north and south of the Danube. All the four dialects are offsprings of the Romance language spoken both in the North and South Danube, before the settlement of the Slavonian tribes south of the river - Daco-Romanian in the North, and the other three dialects in the south.
However, this article deals primarily with Daco-Romanian, and thus the regional variations of that will be discussed here instead. The differences between these varieties are usually very small, usually consisting in a few dozen regional words and some phonetic changes.
Blue: Southern varieties
Red: Northern varieties
Like all other languages, Romanian can be regarded as a dialect continuum. However, such a formulation tends to obscure the high homogeneity and uniformity of the language. The Romanian language cannot be neatly divided into separate dialects and Romanians themselves speak of the differences as accents or "speeches" (in Romanian: "accent" or "grai"). This correctly conveys the linguistics notion of accent, as language variants that only feature slight pronunciation differences (Romanian accents are fully mutually intelligible). Several accents are usually distinguished:
- Muntenian accent (Graiul muntenesc), spoken mainly in Wallachia and southern parts of Dobruja.
- Moldavian accent (Graiul moldovenesc), spoken mainly in Moldavia, northern parts of Dobruja and the Republic of Moldova. Written <p> is realised as /k/; written <c> before front vowels is realised as /ʃ/. Written <ă>, in final position, is palatalized.
- Maramureşian accent (Graiul maramureşean), spoken mainly in Maramureş.
- Transylvanian accent (Graiul ardealean), spoken mainly in Ardeal.
- Banatian accent (Graiul bănăţean), spoken mainly in Banat. Written <t> before front vowels is realised as /ʧ/.
- Oltenian accent (Graiul oltenesc), spoken mainly in Oltenia and by the Romanian minority in Timok region of Serbia. Notable feature of this dialect is the usage of the Simple perfect tense rather than the Complex perfect which is used in other dialects.
Over the last century, however, regional accents have been weakened due to mass communications and greater mobility.
[edit] Contacts with other languages
[edit] Dacian language
The Dacian language was an Indo-European language spoken by the ancient Dacians. It may have been the first language to influence the Latin spoken in Dacia, but there is very little knowledge about it. About 300 words found only in Romanian (in all dialects) or with a cognate in the Albanian language may be inherited from Dacian, many of them being related to pastoral life (for example: balaur "dragon", brânză "cheese", mal "shore"; see Eastern Romance substratum). Some linguists have asserted that Albanians are Dacians who were not Romanized, and migrated south.
A different view is that these non-Latin words (many 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. However, the Eastern Romance substratum appears to have been a satem language, while the Paleo-Balkan languages spoken in Northern Greece (Ancient Macedonian language) and Albania (Illyrian language) were most likely centum languages.
The general view is that Dacian was a satem language, as was Thracian. Dacian was either close to the neighboring Albanian or Balto-Slavic branches of Indo-European, or a member of a distinct branch.
[edit] Balkan linguistic union
While most of Romanian grammar and morphology are based on Vulgar Latin, there are some features that are shared only with other languages of the Balkans and not found in other Romance languages.
The languages of the "Balkan linguistic union" belong to distinct branches of the Indo-European language family: Bulgarian and Albanian, and in some cases Greek and Serbian.
The shared features include a postposed definite article, the syncretism of genitive and dative case, the formation of the future and perfect tenses, as well as the avoidance of infinitive.
[edit] Slavic languages
The Slavic influence was first due to the migration of Slavic tribes, which traversed the territory of present-day Romania during the early evolution of the language. It is interesting to note that Slavs were assimilated north of the Danube, whereas they almost completely assimilated the Romanized population (Vlachs) living south of Danube. An important part of this population was still Vlach in the 10th century, only to fade away along with Vlach political power. For more information about this, see Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian. The other surrounding languages (all Slavic, with the exception of Hungarian) also influenced Romanian, through centuries of mutual interactions.
Of great importance was the influence of Old Church Slavonic, as it was the liturgical language of the Romanian Orthodox Church (compared to western and central European countries which used Latin) from the Middle Ages, until the 18th century.
Borrowings from Old Church Slavonic include: a izbăvi < izbaviti "to save", a blagoslovi < blagosloviti "to bless", blajin < blažĕnŭ "merciful, peaceful", cinste < čĩştĩ "honesty", ispravă < isprava "deed, accomplishment", vrednic < vrĕdĩnŭ "dignified, worthy", jertfă < žrŭtyva "sacrifice, immolation", mir < miro "chrism, holy oil".
As was characteristic of the Middle Ages, the Church had a great influence on people's lives. Thus even basic words such as a iubi "to love", glas "voice", nevoie "need", and prieten "friend" are of Church Slavonic origin. Names were also influenced by the use of Slavonic in Church and in administration.
There are some Slavonic influences, both on the phonetic and on the lexical level. However, many Slavic words are archaisms and it is estimated that of the 20% of Slavic borrowings, only 10% are in use in modern Romanian.[citation needed]
[edit] Other influences
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"
- Hungarian: oraş < város "town", a cheltui < költeni "to spend", a făgădui < fogadni "to promise", a mântui < menteni "to save"
- Turkish: cafea < kahve "coffee", cutie < kutu "box", papuc < papuç "slipper", ciorbă < çorba "wholemeal soup, sour soup"
- German: cartof < Kartoffel "potato", bere < Bier "beer", şurub < Schraube "screw"
[edit] French, Italian and other international words
Since the 19th century, many modern words were borrowed from the other Romance languages, especially from French and Italian (for example: birou < bureau "desk, office", avion "airplane", exploata "exploit"). It was estimated that about 38% of the number of words in Romanian are of French or Italian origin and adding this to the words that were inherited from Latin, about 75%-85% of Romanian words can be traced to Latin.
In the process of lexical modernization, many of the words already existing as Latin direct heritage, as a part of its core or popular vocabulary, have been doubled by words borrowed from other Romance languages, thus forming a further and more modern and literary lexical layer. Typically, the popular word is a noun and the borrowed word an adjective. Some examples:
| Latin | Romanian direct Latin heritage |
Romanian neologism |
|---|---|---|
| angelus (angel) | înger (angel) | angelic (fr.<angelique) (angelic) |
| aqua (water) | apa (water) | acvatic (fr.<aquatique) (aquatic) |
| dentis (tooth) | dinte (tooth) | dentist (fr.<dentiste) (dentist) |
| directus (straight) | drept (straight, right) | direct (fr.<directe) (direct) |
| frater (brother) | frate (brother) | fratern (fr<fraterne) (brotherly) |
| frigus (cold) | frig (cold) | frigid (fr.<frigide) (frigid) |
| crassus (fat) | gras (fat) | cras (fr.<crasse) (blatant) |
| mania (madness) | mânie (anger) | manie (fr.<manie) (mania) |
| monumentum (monument) | mormânt (grave) | monument (fr.<monument) (monument) |
| oculus (eye) | ochi (eye) | ocular (fr.<oculaire) (ocular) |
| pulveris (dust) | pulbere (dust) | pulveriza (fr.<pulveriser) (pulverise) |
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). These words are assigned grammatical gender in Romanian and handled according to Romanian rules; thus "the manager" is managerul. Some of these English words are in turn Latin lexical constructions (like "management" and "interview").
[edit] Grammar
Romanian nouns are inflected by gender (feminine, masculine and neuter), number (singular and plural) and case (nominative/accusative, dative/genitive and vocative). The articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns, agree in gender 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 North Germanic languages), instead of in front (proclitic). They were formed, as in other Romance languages, from the Latin demonstrative pronouns.
Romanian has four verbal conjugations which further split into ten conjugation patterns. Verbs can be put in five moods that are inflected according to the person (indicative, conditional/optative, imperative, subjunctive, and presumptive) and four impersonal moods (infinitive, gerund, supine, and participle).
[edit] Phonology
Romanian has seven vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /ə/, and /ɨ/. Additionally, /ø/ and /y/ may appear in some words.
In final positions after consonants (rarely inside words) a short non-syllabic /i/ can occur, which is IPA: [ʲ] and is produced as a palatalization of the preceding consonant. A similar sound, the voiceless ending u, existed in old Romanian but has disappeared from the standard language.
There are also four semivowels and twenty consonants.
[edit] Diphthongs
Descending diphthongs: ai, au, ei, eu, ii, iu, oi, ou, ui, ăi, ău, îi, îu.
Ascending diphthongs: ea, eo, ia, ie, io, iu, oa, ua, uă.
[edit] Triphthongs
Pattern S-V-S (main vowel between two semivowels): eai, eau, iai, iau, iei, ieu, ioi, iou, oai.
Pattern S-S-V (two-semivowel glide before the main vowel): eoa, ioa.
[edit] Phonetic changes
Due to its isolation from the other Romance languages, the phonetic evolution of Romanian was quite different, but does share a few changes with Italian, such as [kl] > [kj] (Lat. clarus > Rom. chiar, Ital. chiaro) and also a few with Dalmatian, such as [gn] > [mn] (Lat. cognatus > Rom. cumnat, Dalm. comnut).
Among the notable phonetic changes are:
- diphthongization of e and o
- Lat. cera > Rom. ceară (wax)
- Lat. sole > Rom. soare (sun)
- iotacism [e] → [ie] in the beginning of the word
- Lat. herba > Rom. iarbă (grass, herb)
- velar [k], [g] → labial [p], [b], [m] before alveolar consonants:
- Lat. octo > Rom. opt (eight)
- Lat. quattuor > Rom. patru (four)
- Lat. lingua > Rom. limbă (tongue, language)
- Lat. signum > Rom. semn (sign)
- Lat. coxa > Rom. coapsă (thigh)
- rotacism [l] → [r] between vowels
- Lat. caelum > Rom. cer (sky)
- Alveolars [d] and [t] palatalized to [dz]/[z] and [ts] when before short [e] or long [i]
- Lat. deus > Rom. zeu (god)
- Lat. tenem > Rom. ţine (hold)
On the other hand, it (along with French) has lost the /kw/ (qu) sound from original Latin, turning it either into p (patru, "four"; cf. It. quattro) or a hard or soft c (când, "when"; calitate, "quality").
[edit] 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!").
The oldest written text in Romanian is a letter from late June 1521, in which Neacşu of Câmpulung wrote to the mayor of Braşov 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.
In the late 1700s, Transylvanian scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted the Latin alphabet to the Romanian language, using some 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 it returned to the Romanian Latin alphabet.
[edit] Romanian alphabet
The Romanian alphabet is as follows:
A, a (a); Ă, ă (ă); 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 / haş); 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); Ș ș (șe); T, t (te); Ț ț (țe); U, u (u); V, v (ve); X, x (ics); Z, z (ze / zet).
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.
Today, the Romanian alphabet is largely phonetic. However, the "â" (used inside the words) and "î" (used at the beginning or the end; it can also be used in the middle of a composite word, see the exception below) both represent the same close central unrounded vowel /ɨ/, which is a slack sound somewhere between "i" in English "bit" and "oo" in English "food".
Until 1904 there were four letters representing the /ɨ/ sound: â, ê, î and û. By the middle of the century, through successive simplifications, only â and î remained in use. A further simplification was mandated in 1953 whereby î would be used exclusively, including in such words as România (which became Romînia) or limba română (which became romînă). For this reason, the spelling reform was perceived as an attempt of the new pro-Soviet government to delete the Romanians' national identity. In 1965, exceptions were made for România and the other related words; these would continue to be spelled with â.
In 1993 the Romanian Academy decided to fully revert to the pre-1953 spelling rules, on the grounds that the 1953 reform was forcibly imposed by the Communists. According to the current usage accepted by the Romanian Academy, /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 (exception: î occurs also in the middle of composite words; examples: bineînţeles, reînvestire). Also the first person singular and third person plural of the verb a fi "to be" have to be spelled and pronounced as sunt instead of the previous form sînt. However this move was met with resistance, especially in the linguistic community. The Academy rules are mandatory in government organisations and in state schools. In practice, either usage is acceptable, and indeed there are publishing houses and printed magazines who use either of the two rules.
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.
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".
Letters K, Q, W, and Y are not part of the native Romanian alphabet; they are used mainly to write loanwords, such as kilogram, quasar, watt, and yoga.
Because early computer encoding systems did not provide the letters ș and ț (representing (/ʃ/) and /ʦ/, respectively) writing them with a cedilla (i.e., ş, ţ) instead of a comma below is now rather widespread. However, the Romanian Academy has declared the use of cedilla incorrect, and the use of comma below is preferable where the quality of typography is important.
[edit] Reading rules
Reading Romanian involves learning a few rules, quite similar to reading Italian.
- h represents /h/
- j represents /ʒ/
- There are two letters with a comma below, Ș and Ț, which represent the sounds /ʃ/ and /ʦ/. 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").
- ă represents the schwa, /ə/.
- The letter e is generally pronounced as the diphthong ie /je/ when it is in the beginning of a form of the verb a fi "to be", e. g. este /jeste/ "is". This rule also applies to personal pronouns beginning with e, e. g. el /jel/ "he".
- x represents either the phoneme /ks/ as in expresie = expression, or /gz/ as in exemplu = example.
- Similarly to the reading rules in Italian, the letters c and g represent the affricates /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ before i and e, and /k/ and /g/ elsewhere. When /k/ and /g/ 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.
| Group | Phoneme | Pronunciation | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| ce, ci | /tʃ/ | ch in chest, cheek | cerc (circle), cine (who) |
| che, chi | /k/ | k in kettle, kiss | chem (I call), chimie (chemistry) |
| ge, gi | /dʒ/ | j in jelly, jigsaw | ger (frost), gimnast (gymnast) |
| ghe, ghi | /g/ | g in get, give | gheţar (glacier), ghid (guide) |
[edit] Punctuation and capitalization
The main particularities Romanian has relative to other languages using the Latin alphabet are:
- The quotation marks use the Polish format in the format „quote «inside» quote”, that is, 99 down and 99 up for normal quotations, with the addition of non-French double angle quotes without space for inside quotation when necessary.
- 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;
- 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.).
[edit] 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.
Usage of Polish or 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 (the official one), 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.
[edit] Language sample
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.
Contemporary Romanian - highlighted words are French or Italian loanwords:
- Toate fiinţele umane se nasc libere şi egale în demnitate şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu raţiune şi conştiinţă şi trebuie să se comporte unele faţă de altele în spiritul fraternităţii.
Romanian, excluding French or Italian loanwords - highlighted words are Slavic loanwords:
- Toate fiinţele omeneşti se nasc slobode şi deopotrivă în destoinicie şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu cuget şi înţelegere şi trebuie să se poarte unele faţă de altele după firea frăţiei.
Romanian, excluding loanwords:
- Toate fiinţele omeneşti se nasc nesupuse şi asemenea în preţuire şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu cuget şi înţelegere şi se cuvine să se poarte unele faţă de altele după firea frăţiei.
See also: The Lord's Prayer in different languages
[edit] Common words and phrases
| English | Romanian | Phonetical transcription |
|---|---|---|
| Romanian (person) | (m.) român, (f.) româncă | /ro'mɨn/, /ro'mɨn.kə/ |
| Greetings! | Salut! | /sa'lut/ |
| What's your name? | Cum te cheamă? | /'kum.te.kěa.mə↘/ |
| How are you? | Ce mai faci? | /'ʧe.maǐ.faʧʲ↘/ |
| Goodbye! | La revedere! | /la.re.ve'de.re/ |
| Bye! | Pa! | /pa/ |
| Please. | Vă rog. | /və'rog/ |
| Sorry. | Îmi pare rău. | /ɨmʲ.pa.re'rəǔ↘/ |
| Thank you. | Mulţumesc. | /mul.ʦu'mesk/ |
| Yes. | Da. | /da/ |
| No. | Nu. | /nu/ |
| I don't understand. | Nu înţeleg. | /'nu.ɨn.ʦe.leg↘/ |
| Where's the bathroom? | Unde e toaleta? | /'un.de.ǐe.to.a.le.ta↘/ |
| Do you speak English? | Vorbiţi engleza? | /vor'biʦʲ.eŋ'gle.za↗/ |
[edit] Notes
- ^ 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
- ^ a b The constitution of the Republic of Moldova refers to the country's language as Moldovan rather than Romanian, though in practice it is often called "Romanian". The introduction of the law concerning the functioning of the languages (September 1989), still effective in Moldova according to the Constitution [1], asserts the linguistic identity between the Romanian language and the Moldovan language. [2] For more information, see History of the Moldovan language.
- ^ "Milioane de români pe drumul emigrarii" ("Millions of Romanians on the road of emigration"). Evenimentul Zilei, May 10, 2004. Page is on Internet Archive, retrieved Oct 25, 2004.
- ^ Constitution of Romania
- ^ Ministry of Education of Romania
- ^ 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 Moldovans that live across the borders of the Republic, and considering the really existing linguistical Moldo-Romanian 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."
- ^ National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova: Census 2004
- ^ Experts Offering to Consult the National Statistics Bureau in Evaluation of the Census Data, Moldova Azi, May 19, 2005, story attributed to AP Flux. Retrieved October 11, 2005.
- ^ Official use of languages and scripts in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina published by the Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities
- ^ Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities: Official use of the Romanian language in the APV
- ^ Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research: [3], [4]
- ^ Slovak Academy of Sciences in Kosice
- ^ University of Chernivtsi
- ^ Language, religion and culture in the Moldavian SSR
- ^ Cursuri de perfecţionare, published in Ziua on August 19, 2005
- ^ Romanian Language Institute: Data concerning the teaching of the Romanian language abroad
[edit] References
- Rosetti, Alexandru, Istoria limbii române, 2 vols., Bucharest, 1965-1969.
- Uwe, Hinrichs (ed.), Handbuch der Südosteuropa-Linguistik, Wiesbaden, 1999.
[edit] See also
- Romanian vocabulary
- Swadesh list of Romanian words
[edit] External links
[edit] Learning Romanian
- Romanian Lessons
- Verbix - Romanian verbs conjugation
- Romanian Reference Grammar, by Dana Cojocaru, University of Bucharest (183 pages) - 4.6 MB - pdf
[edit] Phrasebooks
[edit] Dictionaries
- Online Romanian-English dictionary
- DEX Online - Romanian explicative dictionary
- Free downloadable dictionary
[edit] Miscellaneous
- SAMPA for Romanian
- The Letter of Neacşu from Câmpulung - The oldest written document in Romanian (English translation)
- Ethnologue report for Romanian
Aragonese • Aromanian • Arpitan • Auvergnat • Asturian (Astur-Leonese) • Burgundian • Catalan (Valencian, Balear) • Champenois • Corsican (Gallurese, Sassarese) • Dalmatian • Dgèrnésiais • Emiliano-Romagnolo • Extremaduran • Fala • Franc-Comtois • French (with Cajun French) • Friulian • Galician • Gallo • Gascon (Aranese) • Genoese • Istriot • Istro-Romanian • Italian (Judeo-Italian) • Jèrriais • Ladin • Ladino • Languedocien • Ligurian (Monégasque) • Limousin • Lombard • Lorrain • Megleno-Romanian • Mirandese • Mozarabic • Neapolitan • Norman • Occitan • Picard • Piedmontese • Poitevin-Saintongeais • Portuguese • Provençal • Romanian (Moldovan, Vlach) • Romansh • Sardinian • Sicilian • Spanish (Castillian) • Shuadit • Venetian • Walloon • Zarphatic
 |
Official languages of the European Union | |
|---|---|---|
| Czech | Danish | Dutch | English | Estonian | Finnish | French German | Greek | Hungarian | Italian | Latvian | Lithuanian | Maltese Polish | Portuguese | Slovak | Slovenian | Spanish | Swedish |
||
| from 1/1/07 also: Bulgarian | Irish | Romanian | ||
| Source: Official EU website | ||
