Romanian language

From Citizendium
Revision as of 18:21, 24 August 2008 by imported>Domergue Sumien (copyedit)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is a stub and thus not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable Main Article is under development and subject to a disclaimer.

Romanian — rarely written Rumanian, Roumanian — (natively: româna, limba română) is a Romance language spoken mainly in Romania, in Moldova and in scattered little areas across southeastern Europe (mostly in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, the Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria and Ukraine).

It is the official state language of Romania and Moldova. In Moldova, it is officially called Moldovan or more rarely Moldavian (natively: limba moldovenească).

The main dialects are classified in Daco-Romanian, the core dialectal group comprising the vast majority of the dialects and being the basis of Standard Romanian, and three other dialects scattered in remote patches across the Balkans: Aromanian (southern Balkans), Megleno-Romanian (southern Balkans) and Istro-Romanian (Istria, Croatia).

Romanian is the only Romance language of central or eastern Europe, so it is somewhat distant from the rest of the Romance languages since it does not have any territorial contiguity with them. Nevertheless its structures are deeply Romance and quite conservative compared with their Latin origins.

Footnotes

See also