Romanian is the easternmost member of the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family. It developed from Vulgar Latin during the 5th-6th centuries when the territory which is now Romania was part of the Roman Empire. During the 7th and 8th centuries, Romanians came into contact with their Slavic-speaking neighbors who exerted a great deal of influence on their language, religion, and culture. Other influences included Hungarian, Turkish, and Greek. Romanian is also the official language of Moldova, a former Soviet republic, where it is called Moldovan for political reasons. It is spoken in Moldova by 3 million people. Up to an additional 1 million speakers of Romanian live in Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece. In addition, there are Romanian speakers in Canada, the United States, Germany, Israel, Australia and New Zealand, mainly due to post-World War II emigration (Ethnologue).
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Romanian is traditionally divided into six dialects.
Some scholars believe that Aromanian, Megleno Romanian and Istro Romanian should be classified as separate languages rather than dialects. |
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The sound system of Romanian is characterized by a large inventory of vowels and diphthongs, and a relatively simple system of consonants.
Stress Click here to listen to some common phrases in Moldovan. |
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Romanian has preserved more of the Latin grammar than other Romance languages, possibly due to its relative isolation in the Balkans from other Romance languages, the existence of identical grammatical structures in the Dacian language spoken in the area that is now Romania, and the presence of similar structures in the neighboring languages.
Word order |
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As is the case with other Romance languages, Romanian vocabulary is mostly of Latin origin. Romanian also has many borrowings from neighboring Slavic languages (most notably in the sphere of religion), Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, French, and most recently from English. Below are some common expressions and words in Romanian. Click here to listen to some common phrases in Romanian. Below are the numerals 1-10 in Romanian. |
Writing system |
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Below is the standard Romanian alphabet used today, and the Cyrillic alphabet that was used in Moldova. Click here to learn more about Romanian orthography. |
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Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Romanian Latin and Moldovan Cyrillic scripts. |
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Vlad III "The Impaler," Prince of Wallachia |
Romanian words in English
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Click here to find out where Romanian is taught in the United States. Online resources for the study of Romanian language and culture |
How difficult is it to learn Romanian? Romanian is considered to be a Category I language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. |