Revue belge de philologie et

d'histoire

Romanian
Marius Sala

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Sala Marius. Romanian. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 88, fasc. 3, 2010. Langues et littératures
modernes. pp. 841-872;

doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/rbph.2010.7806

https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_2010_num_88_3_7806

Fichier pdf généré le 18/04/2018

 Romanian
Marius SALA (1)

1. The identity

1.1. The name (română)

In the past, foreigners used to call it valahă (Engl. wallachian, Fr. valaque,
Germ. Wallachisch, Ital., Port., Sp. valaco) or moldo-valahă ‘Moldo-Wallachian’.
This term — of Celtic origin and with a complex history — was used by non-
Roman European peoples (Germans, Slavs, Hungarians, Greeks, Turks,
Albanians) as an equivalent of Roman ‘Romanized’ and Romance, often
specialized for ‘French’, ‘Italian’, ‘Dalmatian’ or ‘Romanian’. Frequent in
medieval writings referring to Balkan Romania, these state organizations and
grounds were called vlahii. The ethnic meaning also developed, in certain epochs
and zones, the social meanings of ‘(nomad) shepherd’ or ‘serf’ (cf. rumân) or the
religious meaning ‘orthodox’. The speakers of the Meglenoromanian and
Istroromanian dialects also appropriated the term vlah as an ethnic name. In older
linguistic works, the term vlah (in the broad sense) is an equivalent of Romanian
(from both the North and the South of the Danube) or (in the narrow sense) an
equivalent of mountaineer.
Incidentally, for political reasons in the former USSR Romanian spoken in
the Moldavian Republic was considered a different language, knows as
Moldavian.

1.2. The family affiliation

1.2.1. Origin
Romanian is a Romance language. Romanian is a continuation of the
Danubian (or Balkanik) Latin. Only Romance language is Eastern Europe. This
language emerged after the Romanization of the ancient provinces of Dacia under

(1) Marius Sala (Academia Română), born in 1932, coordinates Romanian linguistics works:
Dicţionarul limbii române, Micul dicţionar academic, 4 vol. (2001-2003), Enciclopedia limbii
române (2001), the data base containing Romanian texts, Dicţionarul etimologic român, Istoria
limbii române; Romance linguistics works: Vocabularul reprezantativ al limbilor romanice,
Enciclopedia limbilor romanice; Spanish linguistics works. Other publications about the Romanian
language: From Latin to Romanian: the Historical Development of Romanian in a Comparative
Romance Context (2005). Marius Sala has also studied languages in contact: Lenguas en contacto
(1998). Co-author to Les languages du monde (1986), Limbile Europei (2001). Director of the
Institute of Linguistics (1993). Member (1987-1993) of CIPL (Permanent International Committee
of Linguists). Membre d’honneur du Bureau de la Société de Linguistique Romane. Chief Editor of
Revue roumaine de linguistique, Studii şi cercetări lingvistice, Limba română.
 MARIUS SALA 842

Roman rule (between 106 and 275), of Moesia and possibly Illiria (the Roman
presence lasted longer in these two provinces). The period of “language
formation”, more specifically the period during witch the language acquired its
distinct (Romance) identity different from Latin, is placed between the 6th-8th
centuries and has a final beginning of the Slavic influence.
No Romance language is phonetically identical with Latin. Conversely, no
Latin word was preserved in all Romance languages without undergoing some
formal change in at least one of these languages.
Some of the many specific phonetical features of Romanian are also present
in other Romance languages: the affricates [tS], [dZ] (ceară ‘wax’, geme ‘moan’)
are also found in Italian; the diphthong [je].
The morphological structure of Romanian is almost entirely Latin. No
Romanian sentence can be formed without the obligatory use of Latin elements,
mainly represented by various prepositions and conjunctions, all inherited from
Latin. Plural endings are Latin-inherited (-e, -i, -uri: casă ‘house’ — case
‘houses’, lup ‘wolf’ — lupi ‘wolves’, timp ‘time’ — timpuri ‘times’), just like the
verbal endings that indicate person (cânt ‘[I] am singing’, cânţi ‘[you] are singing’
2 sing., cântă ‘[he, she, it] is singing’, cântăm ‘[we] are singing’, cântaţi ‘[you] are
singing’ 2 pl., cântă ‘[they] are singing’) or the suffixes which differentiate
between various tenses and moods (cânta ‘to sing’ is used for present infinitive,
cânta ‘[he] was singing’ used to mark the imperfect, cântase ‘[he] had sung’ used
for “mai mult ca perfect”).
Many similarities also exist, extending to details, between the pronominal
systems transmitted to Romanian and to the other Romance languages. Numerals
from 1 to 10 were preserved in all Romance languages.
Finally, let us remark that some morphological facts of Latin origin are
peculiar only to Romanian. A few are already outdated, for instance the nominal
case inflection, which was reduced to three forms (in the other Romance languages
it was reduced to only one form much earlier). Romanian has distinct genitive /
dative singular forms for feminine nouns as opposed to the nominative forms: a
unei case ‘of a house’, a unei vulpi ‘of a fox’ as opposed to casă ‘house’, vulpe
‘fox’. Romanian also has a special vocative singular form for masculine nouns:
bărbate ‘[hey,] man!’. Similarly, the neuter plural ending -uri appears only in
Romanian (and only sporadically in central Southern Italian dialects) as a
derivation from the Latin -ora: tempus — tempora > timp ‘time’ — timpuri
‘times’. Some of the morphological facts peculiar to Romanian are innovations:
the nominal inflection with the definite article (omul ‘the man’, omului ‘to the
man’, omule ‘(hey), man!’), special plural forms ending in -le (stea ‘star’ — stele
‘stars’), relative superlative forms (cel mai bun ‘the best’), specific pronominal
forms (îmi ‘to me’, îţi ‘to you’, dânsul ‘he’), the ordinal numeral (al doilea ‘the
second’), the conjunction să ‘that’ (<Lat. si) that marks the subjunctive mood, the
 ROMANIAN 843

conditional with the auxiliary aş (aş vrea ‘[I] would like’), forms of the auxiliary
verb a avea ‘to have’ different from those of the finite verb a avea (a / are, am /
avem, aţi / aveţi), new verbal suffixes (-ez < Lat. -izo, suffix of Greek origin, very
frequently used in vulgar Latin: lucrez ‘[I] am working’, lucrezi ‘[you] are
working’, lucrează ‘[they] are working’). Both archaisms and innovations in
Romanian morphology, of which we have provided only a few examples, are
inherited from Latin.
The Latin syntactic system was also transmitted, in its essence, to Romance
languages. However, Latin conjunctions expressing various coordination and
subordination rapports underwent some changes. Their reorganization caused the
loss of numerous classic Latin conjunctions. Romance languages, Romanian
included, inherited a small number of Latin conjunctions. Only two coordinating
copulative conjunctions are pan-Romanic (et, see old Rom. e ‘and’, and the Latin
nec > nici ‘neither; nor’); one disjunctive conjunction (aut, see Rom. dialectal au
‘or’); and only three Latin subordinating conjunctions (Lat. quando > când ‘when’
and Lat. quomodo > cum ‘as; how’, Lat. si > Rom. să ‘to’). In addition to these
pan-Romanic conjunctions, other Latin conjunctions were preserved in selected
Romance languages. Romanian has the richest and most original inventory of
simple and compound subordinating conjunctions; next to those inherited from
Latin, Romanian created other conjunctions with the aid of Latin elements (căci
‘as, for’, dacă ‘if’, as well as conjunction phrases which are more diverse than in
other Romance languages (pentru că ‘because’, chiar dacă ‘even if’).
There are two syntactic peculiarities by which Romanian and other Romance
languages differ from Latin: the expression of the direct object and the restatement
of the (direct or indirect) object by a personal pronoun. Thus, in some Romance
languages, including Romanian and Spanish, the direct object can be preceded by
a preposition (pe < Lat. per in Romanian, a < Lat. ad in Iberian-Romanic idioms
and in Sardinian) usually when it is the name of a person: Rom. o văd pe mama ‘I
see mother’, îl văd pe Petru ‘I see Peter’ (Sp. he visto a Pedro). Reinforcing the
(direct or indirect) object by restating or anticipating it with a pronoun is
sporadically present in the vulgar Latin. The phenomenon is more widespread in
the Iberian-Romanic languages and in Romanian: Rom. pe mine m-au văzut ‘they
saw me’, nu îl văd pe Petru ‘I don’t see Peter’, Sp. a mi me vieron, no lo veo a
Pedro (direct object), Rom. ţie ţi se cuvine totul ‘you deserve everything’.
As opposed to other Romance languages which observe, though not very
strictly, the sequence of tenses (consecutio temporum), this feature is even less
strict in Romanian, thereby allowing it a freer, simpler sentence, such as all
languages with a predominantly oral, spoken character have.
Each Romance language, Romanian included, inherited about the same
number of Latin words (approximately 2,000). Approximately 500 of these words
were transmitted to all Romance languages. They are called pan-Romanic words.
 MARIUS SALA 844

This category includes: link words, adverbs, pronouns, numerals, polysemantic

verbs. Terms referring to apparel, footwear, jewelry, nourishment, dwelling, sky
and atmosphere, time, earth, flora, fauna; attributes of the outer world: agriculture,
crafts, culture, society. Religious (Christian) terminology includes both pan-
Romanic terms înger ‘angel’, păcat ‘sin’, Paşte ‘Easter’) and other terms inherited
from Latin (boteza ‘to baptize’, cruce ‘cross’, rugăciune ‘prayer’), all of its basic
vocabulary being Latin. Most pan-Romanic words refer to human beings (parts of
the body, sex, age, family, verbs denoting human activities).
Most of the inherited words are those that were transmitted to Romanian as
well as to a few other Romance languages (from 2, 3 to 7). For instance, some
words were preserved only in Romanian and the Iberian-Romance languages
spoken in the areas south-west of Romania (Rom. frumos ‘beautiful’, Sp. hermoso
and Port. Formoso). There are also words preserved only in Romanian and French
(Rom. mânca ‘to eat’, Fr. manger).
As to the words inherited only by Romanian, they amount to about 100:
ajutor ‘help’, ierta ‘to forgive’, lingură ‘spoon’, oaie ‘sheep’, ospăţ ‘feast’, putred
‘rotten’, urî ‘to hate’. Attempts have been made to explain why some of these
words were preserved by pointing to the Romanian ways of life. A fact worth
noticing is that, whereas Romanian adopted these words through popular usage,
Western Romance languages subsequently borrowed from scholarly Latin the
same words: Lat. christianus > Rom. creştin — Fr. chrétien, It., Sp. cristiano; Lat.
imperator > Rom. împărat — Fr. empereur, It. imperatore, Sp., Port. emperador.
Words inherited by Romanian from Latin allow a positive characterization
of the Latin vocabulary inherited by Romanian. Conversely, words preserved in all
Romance languages except Romanian (approximately 200) help the negative
characterization of the Latin vocabulary in Romanian. The explanations given to
account for the disappearance of these words are varied. Most of these words were
not preserved in Romanian due to extra-linguistic reasons, which had a profound
influence upon the make-up of terminologies. Navigation, for instance, is
represented in Romanian only by the word luntre ‘boat’ (< Lat. lunter), and
aquatic animals are represented only by the generic term peşte ‘fish’ (< Lat.
piscis); all other Latin words, especially relating to sailing, were not preserved in
Romanian (navis ‘ship’, portus ‘harbour’), but are present in all other Romance
languages. Among the linguistic causes that may explain the absence from
Romanian of some words that were preserved in all other Romance languages we
can mention the fact that these words were innovations that took place in Latin
after Dacia broke its ties with the Western world (sapere ‘to know’, infans ‘child’
are words preserved in all other Romance languages whereas Romanian still
retains the Latin-inherited word a şti ‘to know’ from the older root scio, which did
not survive in the other Romance languages.
 ROMANIAN 845

Just like other Romance languages, Romanian inherited the Latin word-
formation system. As in the case of the vocabulary, there is a series of prefixes
which were passed on to all Romance languages, including Romanian.
Pan-Romanic prefixes: Lat. ad- (Rom. adormi ‘to fall asleep’, Lat. dis-
(Rom. desface ‘to untie’), Lat. in- (Rom. împărţi ‘to divide’), Lat. re- (Rom.
răpune ‘to kill’). Still, there are some prefixes in Romanian which were not
preserved in other Romance languages: Lat. extra- (Rom. străbate ‘to cross’, It.
stravecchio, not to be found in French).
Pan-Romanic suffixes include collective suffixes denoting the idea of
collectivity: Lat. -etum: Rom. făget ‘beech forest’, Lat. -ime (Rom. broştime ‘a
group of frogs’), suffixes for names of agents and professions: Lat. –arius (Rom.
argintar ‘silversmith’, diminutival suffixes: Lat. –ellus (Rom. degeţel ’little
finger’), suffixes for abstract verbal nouns: Lat. -ura (Rom. arsură ‘burn’).
There are also suffixes which were preserved only in a few Romance
languages: the diminutival suffix -iccus was inherited by Romanian (măturică
‘little broom’), Spanish and Portuguese. In one respect Romanian is negatively
distinguished from other Romance languages since it does not possess adverbial
formations such as the It. chiaramente, Fr. prudemment, Sp. habilmente (the
formation process of these adverbs appears to have evolved only after the
separation of Romanian from the rest of Romance languages).
The compounding system of classical Latin underwent very important
changes in all Romance languages, including Romanian. Thus, the favored method
of compounding preserved and developed in Romanian is full word compounding:
noun + adjective (miazăzi ‘south’), numeral + noun (primăvară ‘spring’).
Generally it has been noticed that the most productive categories of compounds in
all Romance languages are adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions (aproape
‘close’, niciodată ‘never’.

1.2.2. Substratum and superstratum

(a) Substratum
The substratum of Romanian is represented by the language of the
autochtonous Romanised population: the (Thraco)-Dacian, an Indo-European
satem language.
The autochthonous elements of the Romanian language represent — still —
the least clarified domain of the history of this language. We cannot be sure about
a single autochthonous element in Romanian. Some of the least unsure proof come
from proper place names. A fewer nouns, naming important bodies of water, are
very old. First and foremost is the name Dunăre ‘the Danube’. It is certain that it is
a very old name that was used (also) by the Dacian just as in the name of Carpaţi
‘the Carpathians’, referring to the most important chain of mountains in Romania.
 MARIUS SALA 846

Also very old are the names of the rivers Argeş, Buzău, Cerna, Criş, Motru,
Mureş, Nistru, Olt, Prut, Siret, Someş, Timiş.
The names of towns / villages witch recall their ancient autochthonous
names are fewer in Romanian than in French. The explanation lies in the fact than,
from early Middle Ages on, Romanians were forced to leave their towns and to
settle in villages sometimes located up in the mountains. The raids of migrating
populations, especially those of the Huns (376), caused many damages; of the city
in Dacia what remains today are most compact layers of ashes found in
Transylvania. City names as Abrud, Iaşi, Turda may came from Thraco-Dacian.
The least unsure method than can be used to establish what words come
from Thraco-dacian is the study of resemblances between these Romanian words
and similar Albanian ones. Starting from such similarities, researchers of the
substratum established a number of about 80-90 words regarded as certain words
of the substratum, and other 40 considered as probable substratum words. It is
worth mentioning that most of the words regarded as certain words of the
substratum refer to relief (waters, flora, fauna). Some of the autochthonous words
abovementioned (especially those referring to fauna) can also be included in
another category rich in autochthonous terms, namely the vocabulary of shepherds.
Animals, plants, land configurations are part of the traditional environment of
cattle breeders, the basic occupation of Thraco-Dacians, practised by Romanians
through centuries until today.
The Thraco-Dacian influence becomes less sure in the domain of the sounds
of Romanian language. Sounds like ă, h and ş, considered by some linguists to
have been inherited from Thraco-Dacian, can also be found in other Romance
languages (ă and ş), or, if found only in Romanian (h), a more convincing
explanation is the loan from Old Slavic
In the domain of morphology, two singular facts have been explained as
inherited from Thraco-Dacian: the postposition of the definite article and the way
numerals from 11 to 19 are formed. Romanian uses the form omul ‘the man’ or the
form casa as opposed to om and casă, the forms without article. The postposition
of the definite article in Romanian has been explained by the preference to place
the adjective after the noun it modifies (om bun ‘good man’, tată bun ‘good
father’), an option which is also found in Albanian. Numerals from 11 to 19 are
formed according to a characteristic model of compounding which uses the
preposition spre: unsprezece ‘11’, doisprezece ‘12’ where all components are of
Latin origin (both the underived numerals from 1 to 10 and the preposition spre
which comes from super). The latest hypotheses regarding this construction follow
two directions: it may have appeared independently of the situation encountered in
other languages, or it may be the result of transposing a similar substratum
construction into Latin.
 ROMANIAN 847

(b) Superstratum
The Superstratum of Romanian is slavic. The Slavs arrived in the Danube
region and in the Balkan Peninsula in the 5th or 6th century. Attracted by the riches
of the Byzantine Empire, they migrated in large numbers to the south of the
Danube after the destruction of the defensive structures of the Roman Empire
(602). The Slavic states appeared and, from the 9th century on, the church that used
Slavonic as its official language began to impose its influence on the Romanic
element. In front of massive invasion of the valleys and fields south of the
Danube, part of the Romanized population, the ancestors of the present-day
Macedoromanians, left the center of the Balkan Peninsula and headed south as far
as the Pindus Mountains, Thessaly and Epirus. Thus, the arrival and settling of the
Slavs in the Balkan Peninsula broke the compact Romanic block of people who
lived in the Latinophone provinces along the Danube (Dacia, Lower Pannonia and
Moesia Inferior and Superior). In Dacia the number of the Slavs decreased as most
Slavs headed south. This lead to their assimilation by the native Romanized
populations, a phenomenon some linguists call “the second Romanization”.
Most obvious are the elements of vocabulary, which can be found in a wide
range of onomasiologic fields. The evaluation of the Old Slavic elements in
Romanian takes on a new dimension when the lexical units used by various
Romance languages to express notions for which Romanian borrowed Old Slavic
terms are examined. It is then found that Old Slavic words in Romanian sometimes
have a Germanic correspondent in the superstratum of Western Romance: bogat
‘rich’ corresponds to the French riche, the Italian ricco, the Spanish and the
Portuguese rico.
Due to the large number of Old Slavic loans, Romanian provides pairs of
words in which a member of the pair is generally derived by means of affixes
(prefixes or suffixes), as for instance a pândi ‘to watch’ and pândar ‘field guard’.
These suffixes and prefixes were later on attached to Latin-inherited words or to
words of other origins. Romanian acquired thus many suffixes, some of which are
still frequent today and are attached to Latin themes: -eală: iuţeală ‘quickness’,
răceală ‘cold’, -enie: ciudăţenie ‘oddity’, -an: bogătan ‘rich man’, -iş: aluniş
‘hazelwood’, etc. Prefixes of this kind are not so numerous. Romanian has
preserved a number of such prefixes that are homonyms or paronyms of Latin
ones: ne- (neadormit ‘alert’, necinstit ‘dishonest’, prea- (preabun ‘very kind’, a
preaslăvi ‘to honor’. This situation also obtains with suffixes where a suffix like -
ar used to form names of agents is inherited from Latin along with a noun theme
in words such as argintar ‘silversmith’ (from argint ‘silver’, but from Old Slavic
in words with verb themes such as: pândar ‘field guard’ (next to pândi ‘to watch’).
In the domain of morphology, the least open to loans, certain linguistic facts
inherited from Latin were probably reinforced by Old Slavic influences, which
would explain the development of the neuter gender in Romanian.
 MARIUS SALA 848

Owing to the Slavic superstratum, Romanian is the only Romance language

that includes h in its consonantal set (the presence of h in the substratum seems
less likely)

1.3. The distinctive features

1.3.1. Phonetics, phonology and prosody

The phonetic (phonological) system of standard Romanian is made up of 33
sounds (phonemes) of which:
7 vowels: [a], [ә], [i], [e], [i ], [o], [u]
2 semivowels: [e8], [o8]
2 semi-consonants: [j] and [w]
22 consonants: [b], [p], [d], [t], [g], [k], [´g], [´k], [v], [f], [z], [s], [Z], [S],
[dZ], [tS],[ts], [h], [m], [n], [l], [r]
ă = the vowel [ә], middle vowel, half open (between [a] and [i]).
â = the vowel [i] which does not exist in many European languages. It is a
middle vowel, more closed than [ә]. The same vowel is graphically represented by
î as well; the distribution of the two letters depends on their position in the word: â
is only used inside words, never in initial or final position; e.g. când ‘when’,
român ‘Romanian’, luând ‘taking’, în ‘in’, înger ‘angel’, a urî ‘to hate’.
The foreigners studying Romanian needs to pay attention to: the vowels [ә]
and [i], which must be pronounced distinctly because they make the difference in
pairs of words such as rău ‘bad’ masc. sing. and râu ‘river’; văr ‘cousin’ and vâr
‘[I] put into’.
The ‘rising’ diphthongs [e8a], [o8a], which are pronounced in one syllable (as
if they were vowels, more open than the English [æ] from cat or [O] from saw) and
should not be mistaken for the hiatus pronunciation in different syllables of the
same vowels [e — a], [o — a]: rea ‘bad’ fem. sing. (one syllable) vs. real ‘real’
(two syllables); coadă ‘tail’ (one syllable with a diphthong) vs. coacuzat ‘co-
defendant’ (with hiatus). The diphthongs [e8a], [o8a] are in many ways similar, but
no identical to [ja] and [wa] in a post-consonantal position; one should however
distinguish between the pronunciation of such words as mea ‘my’ fem. sing. and
mia ‘female lamb’ or of the syllables coa- from coadă ‘tail’ and cua- from
acuarelă ‘watercolor’.
The final half-voiced, non-syllabic, post-consonantal sound spelled as i,
which should be pronounced differently from both the vowel [i] in the same
position and the absence of any final vocalic appendix: albi ‘white’ masc. pl. vs. a
albi ‘to whiten’ and vs. alb ‘white’ masc. sing.
Although vowels followed by consonants [m], [n] are nasalized, there are no
nasal vowels proper, as in French or Portuguese.
 ROMANIAN 849

Stress is free, meaning in other words, it can fall on different syllables in

different words. Most words are stressed on the last and penultimate syllable, the
stress placed nearer the end of the word being favored.
Romanian stress is movable, that is, it can shift within the same word’s
paradigm. This phenomenon occurs especially in verbal inflection: tac ‘[I / they]
keep silent’ — tăcem ‘[we] keep silent’ [tê'tSem], tăceţi ‘[you] keep silent’
[tә'tSetsj] — tăcu ‘[he / she] kept silent’ [tә'ku] and less frequently in the nominal
one (soră ‘sister’ ['sorә] — surori ‘sisters’ [su'rorj]; zero ‘zero’ ['zero] — zerouri
‘zeros’ [ze'rourj].
The fact that Romanian stress is free and movable explains the existence of
non-homophonous homographs, such as copii ['kopij] ‘copies’ and copii [ko'pij]
‘children’ or adună [a'dunә] ‘[he / she) gathers, [they] gather’ and adună [adu'nә]
‘[he / she] gathered’, as well as the existence of certains words where stress may
fall on different syllables, without any change in meaning, all stress variants being
equally acceptable: profesor ‘professor, teacher’ is pronounced both [pro'fesor]
and [profe'sor]; the proper name Ştefan (Steven) has two pronunciations as well:
[Ste'fan] and ['Stefan].

1.3.2. Morphology
Romanian is a highly inflected language; unlike other Romance languages, it
has both rich verbal inflection as well as rich nominal and pronominal inflection.
Inflectional endings are often associated with phonetic alternations in the root: sg.
masă ‘table’ — pl. mese ‘tables’; sg.m. românesc ‘Romanian’, f. românească
‘Romanian’ — pl. româneşti ‘Romanian’; [eu] merg ‘I go’ — [el] să meargă ‘he
subj. marker go 3rd sg.’.
Adjectives (qualifying and pronominal), pronouns (personal and
nonpersonal) and articles (definite and indefinite) have two genders: the masculine
and the feminine; these classes of words inflect for number, case and gender.
Nouns, however, have three genders: the masculine, the feminine and the neuter;
neuter nouns take masculine determiners in the singular and feminine determiners
in the plural: acest tablou ‘this-sg.m. picture’ — aceste tablouri ‘these-pl.f.
pictures’. Within nominal declension, the nominative is homonymous with the
accusative (often with the vocative as well), and the genitive is homonymous with
the dative. Case is morphologically marked on the determiners of nouns, in
particular on the article. The definite article is enclitic fused with the noun (as in
Swedish, Bulgarian and Albanian), sometimes replacing the inflectional ending:
m.sg. băiatul ‘boy-the nom. / acc.’ băiatului ‘boy-the dat. / gen.’ — pl. băieţii
‘boys-the nom / acc.’, băieţilor ‘boys-the gen./dat.’. Invariable nouns, most of
them masculine personal names, inflect for the genitive-dative with preposed lui:
cartea lui Dan ‘book-the def.art. gen. Dan’, ‘Dan’s book’; I-am scris lui Dan. The
lexemes cel, cea, cei, cele, e.g. băiatul cel deştept ‘boy-the art.m.sg. clever m.sg.’,
 MARIUS SALA 850

‘the clever boy’, and al, a, ai, ale, e.g. o carte a Mariei ‘a book art. f.sg. Maria-
gen.’, ‘a book of Mary’s’ have an ambiguous status: articles or / and pronouns.
The accusative of (common or proper) nouns which denote persons and of
pronouns is formed with the semantically bleached preposition pe: Îl cunosc pe
băiat / pe Dan / pe el ‘him-dat. know-1st pe boy / pe Dan / pe he’, ‘I know the
boy / Dan / him’. Nouns preceded by prepositions which assign the accusative do
not take the definite article: Dan pleacă la munte ‘Dan goes to mountains’, ‘Dan
is going to the mountains’, except for the preposition cu, in most contexts:
Călătoreşte cu avionul ‘Travels with plane-the’, ‘He travels by plane’, but Îmi
place cafeaua cu lapte ‘Me-dat. like-3rd sg. coffee-the with milk’, ‘I like white
coffee’.
All degrees of comparison of qualifying adjectives and adverbs are formed
analytically: the comparative of superiority with mai ‘more’, e.g. mai înalt /
înaltă / înalţi / înalte ‘more tall m.sg.’, ‘taller’, mai repede ‘more quickly’, the
relative superlative with cel / cea / cei / cele + mai, e.g. cel mai înalt ‘more tall
m.sg.’, cel mai repede ‘more quickly’, ‘the quickliest’, e.g. the absolute superlative
with foarte ‘very’, e.g. foarte înalt ‘very tall m.sg.’, foarte repede ‘very quickly’.
Many adverbs are identical with the masculine singular form of the corresponding
adjective: băiat frumos ‘beautiful boy’ vs Scrie frumos ‘He writes beautifully’.
The adverbial counterpart of the adjective bun ‘good’ is bine ‘well’ and the adverb
corresponding to adjectives with the suffix -esc is formed with the suffix -eşte:
comportament copilăresc ‘childish behaviour’ vs. A procedat copilăreşte. ‘He
acted childishly’.
Personal pronouns have suppletive case forms, e.g. eu ‘I nom.’, tu ‘you
nom.’ — mie ‘me dat.’, ţie ‘you dat.’ — (pe) mine ‘me acc.’, (pe) tine (acc.). The
dative and the accusative strong forms are doubled by a clitic: îmi, mi ‘me dat.’, îţi,
ţi ‘you dat.’, etc.; mă ‘me acc.’, te ‘you acc.’, etc. The 3rd person personal
pronouns have the forms el, ea, ei, ele as well as dânsul, dânsa, dânşii, dânsele
‘he, she, they m., they f.’; the latter tend to express a weak degree of politeness in
the contemporary language. Other polite forms of pronouns are dumneata ‘you
sg.’, dumnealui / dumneaei ‘he / she’, dumneavoastră ‘you sg. / pl.’. Romanian
has emphatic pronouns (adjectives): însumi / însămi ‘myself m. / myself f.’, însuţi /
însăţi ‘yourself m. / yourself f.’, etc. The form of some pronominal adjectives
differs from that of the corresponding pronouns: alt ‘other adj.’ — altul ‘other
pron.’, cărui / cărei ‘whose / whom m.sg. / whose / whom f.sg. adj.’ — căruia /
căreia ‘whose / whom m.sg. / whose / whom f.sg. pron.’. Other pronominal
adjectives have different forms depending on their position: preposed acest e.g.
acest om ‘this m. man’ — postposed acesta, e.g. omul acesta ‘man this m.’.
The verb has a richly inflected paradigm, with different forms for the six
persons. There are five personal moods: the indicative, the subjunctive (formed
with the conjunction să), e.g. să merg ‘subj.marker go-1st sg.’, să fi mers
 ROMANIAN 851

‘subj.marker be go-past part.’, the conditional e.g. aş merge ‘aux. 1st sg. go’, aş fi
mers ‘aux. 1st sg. be go-past part.’, the presumptive (va fi mergând ‘will 3rd sg. be
go-gerund’ and the imperative, e.g. mergi! ‘go-2nd sg.’. There are also four
impersonal verbal forms: the infinitive (built with the infinitival particle a) a
merge ‘inf.particle go’, a fi mers ‘inf.particle be go-past part.’, the gerund
mergând ‘go-ger.’, the participle mers ‘gone’ and the supine de mers ‘of gone’.
The indicative mood has several tenses, especially in the domain of the past: the
imperfect mergeam ‘go-imperf.1st’, the simple perfect mersei ‘go-simple perf. 1st .
sg.’, the compound perfect (with the auxiliary a avea) am mers ‘have 1st gone’,
and the past perfect mersesem ‘go-past perf. 1st sg.’. The passive voice is formed
both with the verb a fi ‘to be’ in all persons, e.g. Eşti iubit de toţi ‘be-2nd sg. loved
by all’, ‘You are loved by everybody’, and with the pronoun se, with the 3rd person
singular or plural, e.g. Se construiesc multe vile ‘refl. build. 3rd pl. many villas’,
‘Many villas are being built’. The impersonal meaning is expressed only with the
3rd person singular form preceded by se: Se călătoreşte confortabil cu avionul
‘refl. travel 3rd sg. comfortably with plane-the’, ‘Travelling by plane is
comfortable’. There are numerous verbs with an obligatory reflexive pronoun,
especially in the accusative, e.g. a se cuveni ‘to be proper’, a se înrudi ‘to be
related’, a se zbate ‘to wriggle’, etc., but also in the dative, e.g. a-şi închipui ‘to
imagine’. The mark of all negative forms is the adverb nu ‘no’, with all personal
moods as well as with the infinitive e.g. nu spun ‘no say 1st sg.’, ‘I don’t say’ , a
nu spune ‘inf.particle no say’, ‘not to say’, or the prefix ne- ‘not’ with the other
impersonal forms, e.g. nespunând ‘not-say-ger.’, ‘not saying’, nespus ‘not-say-past
part.’, ‘unsaid’, de nespus ‘of not-say-supine’, ‘unmentionable’.

1.3.3. Syntax
An interesting property of Romanian is the occurrence of sentences without
a noun in the nominative, i.e. subjectless, if the predicate is a weather verb, e.g. Ø
A nins ‘It has snowed’, Ø Plouă torenţial ‘It is raining in buckets’, or a verb which
selects an indirect object and a prepositional object: Ø Nu-ţi pasă de nimic ‘You
don’t care about anything’, Ø Îi arde de distracţie ‘You feel like having fun’.
Also, if the predicate is a verb with a 1st or 2nd person subject, the subject
pronoun is omitted (it is inferred from the form of the verb): Ø Am multe griji ‘I
have many worries’, Ø Veneai întotdeauna la timp ‘You always arrived on time’.
Subject pronouns occur only for emphasis: Voi ştiaţi ce se întâmplă, dar eu nu
bănuiam ‘You knew what was happening, but I had no idea’.
When a verb and its verbal complement have the same subject, the
complement is a subjunctive, not an infinitive: Vreau să plec ‘ I want to leave’.
The direct and the indirect objects expressed by nouns are doubled (via
anticipation or resumption) with accusative and respectively dative clitic forms of
the personal pronoun: Pe Dan l-am cunoscut la mare ‘I met Dan at the seaside’,
 MARIUS SALA 852

Concurentului acestuia i s-a acordat premiul întâi ‘This competitor has been
awarded the firts prize’.
In possessive constructions, the possessor may be expressed by a possessive
adjective, e.g. Am luat umbrela ta. ‘I have taken your umbrella’, or by the genitive
of the 3rd person personal pronoun, e.g. Am luat umbrela lui /ei /lor ‘I have taken
his / her / their umbrella’, both having the syntactic function of noun modifier, as
well as by dative clitic forms of the reflexive or personal pronoun, in all persons:
Ţi-am luat umbrela ‘I have taken your umbrella’, Şi-a luat umbrela ‘He has taken
his umbrella’.
As in any other inflectional language, agreement plays an important role in
the syntax of Romanian. All determiners agree in gender, number and case with
the noun, and so does the qualifying adjective with the noun it modifies. The verb
agrees in person and number with the pronoun-subject. Both the adjective used as
a predicative as well as the past participle in the passive voice construction agree
in gender and number with the subject.
Also worth mentioning, are a number of issues regarding word order. In the
overwhelming majority of situations the subject precedes the verb. With some
verbs, however, the normal word order is verb—subject: S-a produs un accident
‘An accident has occurred’, Ţi se cuvin laude ‘You deserve compliments’, Nu-mi
convine situaţia ‘I don’t like this situation’, Îi trebuie un medicament scump ‘He
needs an expensive medicine’. With verbs occurring in double object
constructions, the word order of the constituents is verb—indirect object—direct
object: I-am dat lui Ion cartea ‘I have given Ion the book’. If the direct object is
placed before the indirect one, e.g. I-am dat cartea lui Ion ‘I have given the book
to Ion’, the sentence is ambiguous: lui Ion could be interpreted as a noun modifier
in the genitive, given the homonymy of the genitive and the dative. The qualifying
adjective follows the noun which it modifies. If , for emphasis, it is placed before
the noun, the adjective takes the definite enclitic article: băiatul frumos ‘the
handsome boy’ vs frumosul băiat ‘the handsome boy’. As for determiners, some
have a fixed position, whereas others do not. Those which always precede the
noun are: the interrogative adjective, e.g. Care băiat? ‘Which boy?’, the relative
adjective, e.g. Spune-mi ce carte vrei ‘Tell me which book you want’, the
indefinite (relative) adjective, e.g. fiecare / oricare / alt băiat ‘each / any / another
boy’, the demonstrative adjective acelaşi, e.g. acelaşi băiat ‘the same boy’, the
negative adjective, e.g. niciun băiat ‘no boy’, as well as the indefinite article, e.g.
un băiat, nişte băieţi ‘a boy, some boys’. The standard position of the possessive
adjective is after the noun which takes the definite enclitic article: băiatul meu
‘my boy’. It is only rarely, for emphasis, that the possessive adjective precedes the
noun: al meu băiat ‘my boy’. The demonstrative adjective may either precede or
follow the noun: acest băiat ‘this boy’ vs băiatul acesta ‘this boy’. Consequently,
Romanian has structure with two determiners, i.e. definite article + possessive /
 ROMANIAN 853

demonstrative adjective, e.g. băiatul meu / băiatul acesta ‘boy-the my / boy-the

this’, and even three determiners, i.e. definite article + demonstrative adjective +
possessive adjective, e.g. băiatul acesta al meu ‘boy-the this my’.

1.3.4. Alphabet and spelling system

From the 16th century to the beginning of the 19th century, writing with the
Cyrillic alphabet prevailed. This alphabet had been borrowed from the Slavs
probably in the 13th century. This alphabet consisted of 43 letters, among which ↑
is considered specific (it had various values) and Џ for the sound [dZ] was
borrowed from Serbian script. Between 1797 and 1828, several simplifications of
this alphabet, which had many superfluous letters, occurred. The so-called
transition alphabet (a Cyrillic alphabet with some letters from the Latin one) was
used between 1830 and 1860. The Latin alphabet, which became official in 1860,
had been used sporadically from the 16th to the 18th century (until 1779), the
spelling made use of foreign orthoghraphy: Hungarian (Carte de cântece, printed
in Cluj between 1570 and 1573), Polish (Tatăl nostru, copied by the Moldavian
Luca Stroici, 1593), Italian (17th-18th centuries writings of some Italian
missionaries; some elements in texts also written by Romanians even in the 16th
century) or German (18th century documents). Romanian writing began using its
own orthographic systems, namely etymological ones, in 1779. In 1881, the
Romanian Academy established and normalized Romanian orthography in
accordance to the phonetic principle. Further changes of some importance occured
in 1904, 1932, 1953, 1965 and 1993. For the Moldavian sub-dialect spoken in the
Moldavian Republic writing with the Russian Cyrillic alphabet was used (1944-
1989).
Since the mid-nineteenth century Romanian writing (i.e. in the
Dacoromanian dialect) employed the Latin alphabet, with some peculiarities: five
letters with diacritical signs: : ă [ә], â and î [i], ş [S], ţ [ts]. Of these, the first three
letters also exist in the writing of other languages, although with different values;
the letter ş with the same value also exists in Turkish; the letter ţ is specific to the
Romanian language. The total number of letters in the alphabet is 31, of which 5
(k, q, w, x, y) are used only in neologisms.
Romanian spelling is mainly phonetic, but is also governed by a few
grammatical principles and it features a few cases of etymologic spelling (as in the
case of unadapted neologisms such as: design, show, whisky) or pseudo-
etymologic spelling (the vowel [i] is represented by two letters, â and î: lână but
în, urî; cf. târî).
Spelling peculiarities: the value of the letters c and g and that of the groups
of letters ch, gh followed by e, i, as in Italian spelling: [tS], [dZ], respectively [´g],
[´k]. The letters e, o, i and u represent vowels as well as the semivowels [e8], [o8] and
the semiconsonants [j] and [w], respectively; the letter i at the end of the words
 MARIUS SALA 854

after a consonant represent both the respective vowel (membri, veni) and a type of
final nonsyllabic half-voiced [j]: Bucureşti, Focşani.
The use of the Latin alphabet in writing became official in 1860. Before that,
it had been sporadically used in a few old Romanian texts dating from the 16th-18th
centuries, but until 1779 these texts used foreign spellings (Hungarian, Polish,
Italian, German). Various etymological (Latinized) spelling systems were
suggested between 1779 and 1880. In 1881, the Romanian Academy regularized
the spelling on the basis of the phonetic principle and a few changes were made
later on, the last one in 1993. In the 16th century and until the beginning of the 19th
century Dacoromanian was predominantly written with Cyrillic alphabet with
some additions / adaptations and simplifications in the course of the time. During
Soviet rule, the Moldavian Republic had to use the slightly adapted Russian
Cyrillic alphabet in writing. In 1989 the use of the Latin alphabet in writing
became again official in the Moldavian Republic.

2. The history

2.1. The emergence

The Latin lost its unity after the 4th century, as the Roman Empire began to
disintegrate, and crumbled into the varieties which were to become today’s
Romance languages. Hence it can be assumed that the Latin spoken in the
Danubian provinces, which was evolving in isolation from the Western Romanic
world, started in the 5th century to emphasize its own characteristic features,
developing independently from other Romance languages. This process continued
for a few centuries and it is generally admitted that Latin gave way to Romanian
by the 7th-8th century. The main transformations of the Latin language now become
Romanian had already taken place before this moment. One proof is that the old
Slavic elements that start to enter the language after the 8th century, as we shall see
below, do not undergo the changes produced in the elements inherited from Latin.
Hence we may not think that Romanian emerged as a new language after its
contact with Old Slavic. The isolation of the Latin spoken in the Danubian area
from the rest of the Western world, was reinforced by another factor: under the
reign of Emperor Heraklius (610-614), Greek replaced Latin as the official
language of the Eastern Roman Empire. Consequently, the vulgar Latin that
developed into Romanian no longer had a model (represented in Western Europe
by scholarly Latin) and thus a series of developments that took place in all
Romance languages tended to come to a faster end in Romanian. We can conclude
that, just as in the case of the other Romance languages, Romanian emerged as an
idiom different from Latin, the language it sprang from, some time before the 8th
century.
 ROMANIAN 855

The history of Romanian as a language proper begins in the period preceding

the separation of the four Romanian dialects: Dacoromanian, spoken the North of
the Danube, and Macedoromanian, Meglenoromanian and Istroromanian at the
South of the Danube. This stage is called Protoromanian. The separation of the
dialects was caused by the massive settlement of the Slavs in the Balkan
Penninsula and by the foundation of the Southern Slavic states. After the
separations of four dialects (10th-13th centuries), each dialect had an independent
evolution, so that their history is not subject to a common periodization. As a rule,
the periodization known so far continue to refer exclusively to the history of the
Dacoromanian dialect, identified to the Romanian Language.
A comparison of these dialects reveals that their main characteristic features,
distinguishing them from Latin on one hand and from other Romance languages
on the other, are present in all four. Such features are: nominal declension with
specific forms for genitive and dative singular as opposed to the nominative and
accusative of feminine nouns (casă ‘house N-A’ — case ‘G-D’), the postposition
of the definite article (om ‘man’ — omul ‘the man’, casă ‘house’ — casa ‘the
house’), the development of the neuter gender ending -uri (timp ‘time’ — timpuri
‘times’), the analytical present conditional (aş cânta ‘I would sing’), the analytical
future tense formes with the auxiliary verb volo, etc. In phonetics we should
mention the appearance of the vowel ă. All the data we have mentioned so far
prove that, in the incipient phase of Romanian language, the ancestors of the
Romanian people have not been separated yet. Consequently, there must have
been an epoch of Romanian communion before the language was divided into four
dialects as it is today. This epoch is known by various names: Oldest Romanian,
early Romanian, proto-Romanian, common Romanian. The language of this period
was reconstructed with the aid of the system of common features present in all
four dialects or at least in the Macedoromanian and Dacoromanian since there are
no linguistic documents dating from that period, except perhaps for the formula
torna, torna, fratre. There is no way of knowing when this epoch of linguistic
territorial unity came to an end (the proposed dates vary from the 10th to the 11th
century). In any case, it is certain that the terms borrowed from Hungarian are only
present in the Dacoromanian dialect, which proves that the proto-Romanian period
could not have lasted longer than the 11th-12th century. The Dacoromanian dialect,
the only one that later a become a literary standard and official language,
developed north of the Danube (roughly in the former Dacia).
The state organization of the speakers of the Dacoromanian dialect was
established at different times, varying from one region to another. The first state
formations were reported in Transylvania where they were founded by east-bound
Hungarians. More important to the subsequent development of Romanian were the
two states from the extra-Carpathian area, Muntenia (Ţara Românească) =
Wallachia and Moldova = Moldavia, created at the beginning of the 14th century.
 MARIUS SALA 856

Church organization. After the 10th century the organizational forms of

Dacian Christianity more nearly approached to the ones of the Byzantine Empire.
The authors of this junction were Bulgarian priests who not only received various
benefits from the Byzantine Empire, but were also given the task to organize the
bishoprics north of the Danube. As Orthodox Christians north of the Danube
adopted the ritual, hierarchy, various aspects of church administration and even the
Cyrillic alphabet, the corresponding terminology and other important words were
transferred into Romanian from Slavonic, the church language of Orthodox in
those areas where Greek did not perform this office.
Shortly after this, Slavonic was also introduced as the official written
language of the first Romanian state formations, a consequence of the close link
between state and church, as in the Byzantine model. It must be emphasized that
Slavonic was used only for written documents and religious service, while
Romanians continued to speak their own language (the princely court included),
just as in the West Romance languages were spoken whereas Latin was used for
written documents. In Transylvania the official written language was Latin,
whereas the language of religious service was Slavonic.
In the Romanian Principalities, where until modern times social and cultural
history developed “facing toward the Orient” (Sextil Puşcariu), at the moment of
the functional extension of Romanian (i.e when it came to be used in churches and
offices) the language that was resorted to as a source of lexical material was
Slavonic, the language of culture at the time. Thus, a series of words related to the
two fields (church and administration) are of Slavonic origin: evanghelie ‘gospel’,
cazanie ‘sermon’, episcop ‘bishop’, stolnic ‘high steward’. Slavonic words are not
the result of direct, close contact between Romanians and Slaves; rather they
indicate the vertical influence of a language of culture upon the vernacular. The
influence of Slavonic resembles that of Medieval Latin upon Western Romance.
Romanian words appear at first isolated in certain Slavonic or Latin texts:
abia (soon, immediately) inherited from the Latin (ca 863-867); cumătră
‘godmother, busybody’ < lat. cummater (ca 869-885), ţapu ‘billy goat’ occurs in a
Latin glossary from the 10th century, is an autochthonous word in Romanian. In
Medieval Latin-Romanian and Slavic-Romanian documents and texts (i.e. written
in other languages on Romanian territory) between 1374 and 1521 Romanian
words are much more numerous. The first continuous and indisputable text in
Romanian (namely, in Dacoromanian), of those discovered so far, is Neacşu’s
Letter (1521). The original is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. It is the letter of a
merchant (Neacşu) from Câmpulung (Ţara Românească = Wallachia) addressed to
the mayor of Braşov (Transylvania), to whom he gives confidential information on
the Turks’ preparations for a military campaign in Transylvania. The text’s
introductory and closing formulas are in Slavic, according to customary practice in
the offices of the Romanian Principalities, and they correspond to the Latin
 ROMANIAN 857

formulas specific to Western Romanic texts. The language of the text is clear,
generally intelligible even to contemporary readers, with few old and / or regional
peculiarities. The vocabulary is preeminently Latin with a few words of different
origin (Slavic, Hungarian, Greek). The spelling exhibits few inconsistent elements,
denoting the existence of a writing tradition in Romanian (indirectly confirmed by
information on previous Romanian texts that were not conserved).

2. 2. The periodization
Thus, the first texts written in Romanian appeared rather late in the 16th
century. The emergence of writing in Romanian and the circumstances which
determined this cultural event are still debated. Some researchers think that this
event can be explained exclusively by internal factors (changes in the Romanian
feudal society). Others relate it to certain external factors (the influence of
Hussitism in the 15th century or of Lutheranism in the 16th century).
Among diverse Romanian texts from the 16th century, we must distinguish
between the so-called literary ones (usually religious and popular books) and the
over 120 non-literary ones. We have already seen that the oldest Romanian text is
a private letter from 1521. After 1560 non-literary texts steadily increase. By the
end of the century, juridical and administrative papers, official and private letters,
brief notes were written in Romanian. During the reign of Michael the Brave
(1593-1601), writing in Romanian is gradually adopted by the state chancellery in
Wallachia. We know that the Romanian administration in Transylvania wrote
letters both in Slavonic and Romanian. In 1602, the first Romanian funerary
inscription is recorded.
The history of literary Romanian has two main subdivisions: the old and the
new epoch.
The old epoch last from the 16th to the 18th century, that is, during the
interval 1500-1780, which is also divided by some linguists in two periods: before
and after 1640.
The number of 16th century literary texts preserved until today amounts to
59. No doubt there were more; there is information about an Evanghelie ‘Gospel’,
an Apostol ‘Apostle’ (in Moldavia, 1532), a Catehism luteran ‘Lutheran
Catechism’ (printed in Sibiu in 1544). Most of the literary texts from that period,
vanished today, were religious texts (only three have a different character: a moral
didactic work, a historic fragment, and some medical prescriptions).
The oldest literary text preserved and dated is probably Evangheliarul slavo-
român ‘The Slavo-Romanian Gospel’ printed in Sibiu in 1551-1553. Both this
text, of which only some fragments remain, and the Lutheran Catechism were
meant to attract Romanians to Lutheranism.
The first extensive literary texts, approximately as old as the first complete
Romanian text, are the rhotacized texts. They are called so because all words
 MARIUS SALA 858

inherited from Latin included in these texts exhibit the rhotacism of intervocalic n
(intervocalic n changes into r). All these texts are preserved in manuscripts. In
general, known by this name are the oldest four religious texts discovered in
Moldavia (Bucovina) at the end of the 19th century: Codicele Voroneţean,
Psaltirea Voroneţeană, Psaltirea Scheiană, Psaltirea Hurmuzaki. They are
translations of Slavonic religious texts. A consensus has not been reached yet
concerning the date, the place or the cultural-religious movement which was the
reason of the translation, or the status of copies / originals of the translations.
Some researchers believe the reason for the translation was internal, others
external (various factors: Bogomilism, Hussitism, Lutheranism, Catholicism).
The books printed by Coresi in Braşov: Întrebare creştinească ‘Christian
Question’ (1559), Tetraevanghelul ‘The Gospel’ (1561). All these works are very
important for the revision and the adaptation to the Wallachian idiom of the
rhotacized texts. Due to these adaptations, the printed books could be understood
more easily by a larger number of readers and thus could lay the foundations for
the development of literary Romanian. Literary Romanian is, then, based upon the
idiom spoken in northern Wallachia and south-eastern Transylvania. Some of
Coresi’s printings (1561, 1564) have prefaces and epilogues written directly in
Romanian, i.e they are not translations.
Palia de la Orăştie (1581-1582), printing of an original translation from
Hungarian, exhibits a series of regional peculiarities. It is one of the most
important books from the 16th century due to both the quality of the translation and
its originating from a region less well represented (Banat — south-western
Transylvania).
Most of the 16th century Romanian texts were written with the Cyrillic
alphabet. However, there are also a few texts with Latin characters. A Calvinist
anthology of religious songs (psalms) was printed in Oradea or Cluj (1570-1573).
A Tatăl Nostru ‘Pater noster’, written in the Latin alphabet and given by bailiff
Luca Stroici, a Moldavian boyar, to the Polish writer Stanislaw Sarnicki, was
published in Krakow (1593).
17th and 18th centuries texts are literary texts, predominantly religious and
historic. Some of them are translations, others are variants of other works.
Religious texts: Cazania (1643) by Varlaam, Noul Testament, printed by
Metropolitan Simion Ştefan at Bălgrad (Alba Iulia : 1648), Viaţa şi petreacerea
svinţilor, an anthology of texts translated by Metropolitan Dosoftei (4 volumes,
1682-1686). The complete translation of the Bible, owed to the brothers Radu and
Şerban Greceanu (Bucharest : 1688), is an event of great cultural importance
because it crowned a century-long effort to provide the church with its most
important document of faith, written in Romanian and flawlessly edited. In the
same period the Wallachian Metropolitan Antim Ivireanul introduces the literary
genre of sermons of high rhetoric class (Didahiile). Of these texts, Varlaam’s
 ROMANIAN 859

Cazania, printed in a large number of copies, spread in all the regions inhabited by
Romanians and thus contributed to the consolidation and unification of literary
Romanian.
Original history writings, chronicles (manuscripts). Moldavia: Letopiseţul
Ţării Moldovei, written by Grigore Ureche, focuses upon the history of Moldavia
between 1359 and 1595; this is the oldest chronicle written in Romanian and has
been preserved in copies that also include interpolated texts by Simion Dascalu.
Miron Costin is the author of Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei (which covers the history
of Moldavia from 1595 to 1661) and of De neamul moldovenilor, a polemic study
on the origin of Romanians. Ion Neculce wrote Letopiseţului Ţării Moldovei,
which covered the history of Moldavia between 1661 and 1743. Hronicul vechimei
a romano-moldo-vlahilor by Dimitrie Cantemir was written partly in Romanian,
partly in Latin. Wallachia: Letopiseţul Cantacuzinesc or Istoria Ţării Româneşti de
când au descălecat pravoslavnicii creştini, started by Constantin Cantacuzino, was
continued by Stoica Ludescu. Cronica Bălenilor was written by Radu Popescu.
Fiction writings: Psaltirea în versuri written by Dosoftei and printed in
1673. Divanul sau gâlceava înţeleptului cu lumea sau giudeţul sufletului cu trupul,
written by Dimitrie Cantemir (1698), is a theological and philosophic essay printed
in Iaşi. The same author wrote Istoria ieroglifică, an allegoric novel intended as a
political pamphlet.
Juridical-administrative writings (prints): Pravila de la Govora (1640), with
elements of cannonic law; Pravila lui Vasile Lupu (Iaşi : 1646); Îndreptarea legii
or Pravila lui Matei Basarab (Târgovişte : 1652); Pravilniceasca condică (1780).
Translations of secular books, popular books: Alexandria (1620; the first
novel in Romanian), of moralizing / didactic books: Floarea darurilor (Snagov :
1700), Varlaam şi Ioasaf, Archirie şi Anadan, Viaţa lui Esop. The first Romanian
“calendar”, Foletu(l) novel (1693-1700).
Grammar books: the first grammar to be printed is Elementa linguae daco-
romanae sive valachicae (1780), written by Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Şincai.
Although written in Latin, it had an important role in the “cultivation” of the
national language. The fact that three grammar books were written in less than
three decades shows that need to study and cultivate scientifically the national
language.
The end of the 18th century was in conclusion a flourishing period for culture
in the national language. Only religious books have been printed earlier
(catechisms, collections of homilies, missals, gospels). Part of the aristocracy and
of the clergy, though, prefered Hellenism.
At the end of the 18th century, in Transylvania, part of the Orthodox
Romanians accepted the union with the Roman-Catholic church (they are the
Greek-Catholics) hoping they would obtain equal rights with those of other
nations. Some of them studied theology and philology in schools from Blaj and in
 MARIUS SALA 860

higher schools in Vienna and Rome, where they learned Latin and came into
contact with historical sources. As a consequence of these new horizons,
Romanians began to act to raise their cultural level, in the atmosphere of the
Enlightenment.
The new epoch (from 1780 until today) is divided into three stages:
— the pre-modern or stage of modernization (1780-1830), with numerous
translations and the first linguistic normative works;
— the modern stage (1831-1880) when a stylistic diversification took
place and original literature developed through the 1848 writers;
— the contemporary stage (1880 until today), which begins with classical
writers M. Eminescu, I. Creangă and I.L. Caragiale.
In the pre-modern period (1780-1830), Romanian culture undergoes a
process of rebirth manifested as a tendency to modernize its structures. The epoch
is dominated by the doctrine of Şcoala Ardeleană ‘The Transylvanian School’,
represented by Samuil Micu, Gheorghe Şincai, Petru Maior and Ion Budai-
Deleanu (whose works remained in manuscript). The credo of this movement had
as principal goal the demonstration of the Latin character of Romanian. The
cultivation of everything Latin led to the idea of replacing the Cyrillic alphabet
with the Latin and the proposed orthography is etymological (closer to written
Latin), not phonetic. The first printed book using the Latin alphabet is Carte de
rogacioni pentru evlavia homului chrestin ‘Prayer book for Christian piety’
written by Samuil Micu (1779). The promotion of Latin elements was to have an
important influence on the process of linguistic unification. In parallel with the
tendency of linguistic unification, Şcoala Ardeleană ‘The Transylvanian School’
promoted the idea of modernizing the language by borrowing words from Latin
and, sometimes, from Romance languages. In addition to the grammar text by
Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Şincai mentioned above, there appeared Ortographia
romana sive latino-valachica by Petru Maior (1819), Lexiconul de la Buda (1825),
a collective work with the participation of Petru Maior included. Normative works
also appeared in Wallachia: Observaţii sau băgări dă seamă asupra regulelor şi
orînduielelor gramaticii rumâneşti ‘Observations on Romanian grammar rules and
norms’ (1787) by Ienăchiţă Văcărescu and Gramatica românească ‘Romanian
Grammar’ (1828) by I. Heliade Rădulescu, the latter being the most important.
The period is also characterized by the presence of numerous works from all
fields of written culture. Also at this time the foundations of superior education in
Romanian were laid (Gh. Asachi in Moldavia and Gh. Lazăr in Wallachia) and the
first cultural, literary and scientific magazines were issued (Albina românească
‘The Romanian Bea’, 1829, and Curierul românesc ‘The Romanian Courier’,
1829). In order to express heretofore unvoiced notions of material and spiritual
life, literary Romanian turned at first to Neo-Greek. Soon after 1800, the
orientation changes fundamentally. Due to Şcoala Ardeleană ‘The Transylvanian
 ROMANIAN 861

School’, Romanian turned to Latin and the other modern Romance languages. It is
the beginning of a deliberate process of re-Latinization of the literary language,
which would last a century and generate, after 1840, excesses of linguistic purism.
In the adaptation of new terms, of neologisms, to the phonetic and morphologic
structure of Romanian, hesitations, oscillation and uncertainty are noted that would
last several decades. Finally, in this epoch a process of emancipating the written
language from the influence of the language of religious texts began. At the end of
this period, literary Romanian has three main variants, each confined to a certain
province (Transylvania, Moldavia, Ţara Românească = Wallachia).
The modern period (1831-1880) brings to an end the modernizing process
started in the previous period. The period is dominated by the scholars’ wish to
overcome the regionalism of the culture and to lay the foundations of a pan-
Romanian culture. On the level of linguistics, the period is dominated by the
Latinist ideology, whose representatives argued for the elimination of non-Latin
elements from the literary language. Although the excesses of linguistic purism
were eliminated, the Latin model will have left its permanent imprint on the
literary aspect of the language.
The unification of the literary language was accomplished according to the
norms spelled out by I. Heliade-Rădulescu around 1840. The unified language had
to start from the literary norm of religious texts, which had the advantage of being
unitary. Accepting the norm of religious texts as basis for the unification of the
language, Heliade founded the new literary language upon the Wallachian idiom,
which had been accepted as the unique language of culture in the printed religious
texts of the 1750’s.
Concerning the modernization of the literary language, “the enrichment” of
the lexic was a major preoccupation. Most cultural personalities suggested
Romanian should resort to Latin, others that it should approach French, in the first
place, or Italian (the direction promoted by I. Heliade Rădulescu). There were also
people who believed that the renewal of vocabulary should use the internal
elements of the language (obviously, those of Latin origin). In parallel with
enriching the vocabulary, scholars also thought of purifying it by eliminating terms
that were not relevant for the modern aspect of the literary language (scholarly
Slavonic words or strictly regional terms). The syntax of literary language was
renewed as well. The old syntactic structures that copied Slavonic syntax and
appeared in the language of the translations were replaced by new ones that took
French as a model. The simplicity and flexibility specific to the syntax of spoken,
common language made its way into the syntax of the texts from this period.
The last two decades witnessed the crystallization of literary styles
(scientific, juridical-administrative and fictional). The fictional style is illustrated
in the original literature created by the 1848 generation of writers (N. Bălcescu,
M. Kogălniceanu, Gr. Alexandrescu, C. Negruzzi, A. Russo, V. Alecsandri).
 MARIUS SALA 862

Also in this period the normative works (orthography, grammar book and
dictionary) of the Romanian Academic Society were issued. These works had a
provisional character.
The contemporary period (from 1881 to the present) is characterized by the
completion of the process of linguistic unification and modernization of the
literary language. The Romanian Academy played an important part in this process
by publishing in 1881 the first official orthography orientated towards phonetism.
This was the first breach with Latinism and thus contributed to the decline of this
cultural trend. The Latin model was replaced by the Wallachian one, which had
started to gain ground, in some cases, even since 1860-1880. This process was
accelerated after 1918, when the unitary Romanian state came into existence. The
concentration of the most important part of administrative, political, cultural and
scientific life in the capital of the country (Bucharest) was decisive for this
process.
This is the epoch in which the great classics of Romanian literature created
their works: M. Eminescu, I. Creangă, I.L. Caragiale, M. Sadoveanu, L. Rebreanu,
T. Arghezi.
In the modern period, literary Romanian has undergone a strong Latin-
Romance influence (especially French, but also scholastic Latin and Italian;
Şcoala Ardeleană is the initiator of a Latinist current, I. Heliade Rădulescu of an
Italienizing one). The consequences were not only the enrichment and renewal of
the vocabulary, but also other phenomena such the reinforcement of certain
Romance grammatical categories (the revitalization of the infinitive, the increase
in the number of verbs of the IIIrd conjugation of the type cuprinde ‘to include,
comprise’ or the introduction of syntactic models. In the lexical domain, old terms,
borrowed through scholarship, are eliminated : secol is used next to veac ‘century’,
insulă next to ostrov ‘island’. The French influence contributed especially to the
massive replacement of terms from certain languages (e.g. dată ‘date’, deja
‘already’, destin ‘destiny’, discuta ‘discuss’). German terms (turn ‘tower’) and
English ones later entered too. The number of French borrowings is quite large. In
this sense, we speak of the re-Latinization, re-Romanization or the Westernization
of Romanian. The Latin model is used in naturalizing many neologisms of
immediate Romance origin ‘obiecţie < fr. objection with [ţ] as in preţ < Lat.
pretium ‘price’ or from scholastic Latin (demn ‘worthy’ < Lat. dignus, with [mn]
as in semn which is inherited from the Latin signum). Doublets appear through the
apparition of loanword neologisms with the same etymon as words inherited from
Latin (dens and des ‘thik’, saluta ‘to salute’ and săruta ‘to kiss’ represent the same
Latin word, densus and salutare, respectively; the first term of the pair is
loanword, while the other is the word inherited from Latin). Finally, the neologic
derivates can be related to an inherited word, bun cannot be analyzed through it
 ROMANIAN 863

(ocular ‘ocular’, oculist ‘oculist’ are close to ochi ‘eye’, inherited from the Latin
oculus from which ocular and oculist were derived in Latin or in Romance).
The modern epoch meant in fact Romania’s and Romanian’s turning with
it’s face towards the West, after having had it’s “face turned”, for several centuries
of social and cultural history, “toward the East”. Romanians, the only Latin people
of the Orthodox religion, could not have recourse to Latin, used in the Romance
West in schools, administration and of course church. While the Western neo-
Latin people continuously renewed their language(s), throughout centuries and
especially during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with Latin forms and turns of
phrase, Romanians turned to Slavonic, the language of culture here in use. We
shouldn’t forget the reverse side of the coin, too : free from the pressure of literary
Latin, so powerful in the West through schools and church, Romanian was able to
develop unimpended in accordance with the tendencies of late Latin. As a result,
Romanian became the most Latin of the Romance languages: not through Latin
element and accrued through the centuries, but through natural evolution of the
Latin tendencies; in the words of the German Romanist E. Gamillscheg,
“Romanian, the child who was separated from his family early on, preserved old
family features with more fidelity, even in the new ambiance where it grew up”.

3. The Geography

3.1 The Expansion

Romania and the Moldavian Republic (South-East Europe): official
language and majority language.
Ukraine, Bulgaria, Kazahstan, Serbia, Macedonia, Croatia, Greece, Albania,
Hungary: language of a minority, of family / local use. Communities of immigrants
in the USA, Canada, Latin America, Australia, Israel, Turkey, various other
European countries (especially France, Germany, Italy, Spain Sweden, Russia) and
Asian countries (Kirghiztan, Kazahtan): language strictly of family use.

3.2. Romanian in contact

Internal and mass contacts are determined by the linguistic configuration of
the regions in which Romanian is spoken.
The Dacoromanian dialect continues the regional contacts with Hungarian,
Slavic languages and Rromani.
The Romanian dialects south of the Danube have specific contacts, mainly
with the official languages of the majority in the respective countries (Greek,
Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian, Croatian) as well as with the idioms belonging
to other ethnic minorities living there. The Macedoromanians and the
Meglenoromanians who settled in Romania suffer the influence of the
Dacoromanian dialect (mainly the influence of the official literary language).
 MARIUS SALA 864

Regarding all contacts with other languages roughly in chronological order:

Hungarian, Slavonic, Greek in different eras (Old Greek, through Latin, Middle
Greek and Neo-Greek), Turkish, the modern Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Serbian,
Polish, Russian, Ukrainian), Rromani, dialectal and literary German (included the
Austrian German), scholarly Latin, Italian, French, English, Romanian is
characterized as a very hospitable language, which easily accommodates with
borrowed elements.

3.3. The Romanian speakers

The sociolinguistic status of Romanian differs according to the place and
environment where it is used.

3.3.1. Romanian as a “de jure” language

In the two Romanian states (Romania and the Republic of Moldova),
Romanian is an official language, as well as the native tongue of the majority of
the population; it fulfills all the functions of a modern national language freely
practiced by its speakers; in these two countries, Romanian is also spoken as a
secondary language, appropriated to various degrees by the citizens belonging to
ethnic minorities.
Approximately 22,000,000 in Romania, out of which almost 20,500,000 as
mother tongue; approximately 4,400,000 in the Moldavian Republic, out of which
almost 2,900,000 as mother tongue; approximately 2,500,000 speakers outside of
the two Romanian states. Total of speakers: approximately 29,000,000.
The sociolinguistic status of Romanian has varied in time as regards the
functions discharged and the exclusive use by its speakers. During its pre-literary
stage, Romanian had a rustic character (semantic evolutions of a figurate type of
various terms connected with rural life, rich in set phrases designating rustic
images) as opposed to cultural Slavonic used in church, in administration and in
various literary manifestations. In the old literary stage, in the Romanian
Principalities, the assertion of Dacoromanian as the written language in various
fields take place gradually, fighting the Slavic tradition (18th century Romanian),
also including, throughout the 18th century, some ephemeral uses of Greek as the
language used in church, in administration and in literary works.
In the former USSR, Romanian (which is called Moldavian) has been
reduced to an inferior sociolinguistic status, as it only fulfills cultural functions (in
literature, journalism, pre-university education), but not other public functions
(e.g. in science, technology, economy, administration), while bi-lingualism has
been practiced only by the native speakers of Romanian; the official Russian
language has prevailed by far.
 ROMANIAN 865

3.3.2. Romanian as a “de facto” language

The speakers of Romanian (of the Dacoromanian dialect) from outside the
borders of Romania and of the Republic of Moldova, live in countries having other
majoritary and official languages, therefore they live in an aloglot environment.
This environment may be Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Greek,
Albanian, or English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, etc. for the recent
communities of Romanian immigrants. In these environments, Romanian is a
minority language of familiar and local use, resorted to by speakers who are
usually bi-lingual, often polyglots; it has very few cultural functions (it is
sometimes used in church, in journalism, and in education on a local level), but it
has no function in administration. Total of speakers: approximately 2,500,000.
Among the Romanian territorial communities of the bordering states with a
more developed cultural life: part of the Romanians in Serbia (namely those of
Vojvodina) and in the Ukraine (the inhabitants of Bukovina and of the Hertza
zone). Among the communities of relatively recent immigrants, such a cultural life
is especially characteristic of the Romanian in the USA and of the Romanian Jews
of Israel. In aloglotal environments, there are many passive users of Romanians,
who understand it although they do not practice it. In such circumstances,
sometimes Romanian is used as a “secret code”.
From the four South-Danubian Romanian dialects, the aloglotal environment
is the exclusive characteristic of the Istroromanian dialect, and the prevalent
characteristic of the Macedoromanian dialect and of the Meglenoromanian dialect.

4. Auxiliaries

4.1. Institutions and language planning

The correct usage of the language is directed by two institutions: the
Romanian Academy (founded in 1866), which establishes the norms, and the
school system, which propagates them.
For over a century, the Romanian Academy has been concerned with setting
up the rules of orthography (spelling). After various attempts at etymologic
spelling and after the confrontation between etymologists and phoneticizators, the
Romanian Academy decided, in 1881, to normalize spelling according to the
phonetic principle — followed by the reforms of 1904, 1932 and 1953. The latest
reform in 1993 represents a partial step back for phonetism, by comparison with
the 1953 reform. Although the orthographic rules established by the Academy and
taught in schools were not and are not integrally observed by all those who write
in Romanian, by and large the unity of the written aspect of Romanian can be said
to have been secured.
The rules of orthography also make references to orthoepy. However,
pronunciation has remainded less unified than writing, especially because of
 MARIUS SALA 866

certain elements which are not marked in the written form (the place of the word
stress, the distinction among multiple phonetic values for certain letters, hence the
distinction between a diphthong and two vowels in hiatus), but also because of the
persistence of certain regional pronunciations in the language used by many a
speaker.
Orthographic rules also often make references to morphologic norms, which
are implicitly or explicitly covered in the main orthographic guides/dictionaries.
The Romanian Academy has also directed and endorsed a special normative work
on the grammatical structure of Romanian, namely Gramatica limbii române
‘Grammar of the Romanian Language’ (11954, 21963), which is the basis of the
official pre-university study of Romanian in all schools and at all levels. A new
description of the grammatical structure of Romanian language came out under the
aegis of the Romanian Academy in 2005: Gramatica limbii române ‘Grammar of
the Romanian Language’ (2 volumes).
In the domain of the vocabulary, the academic dictionaries, chief
among which is the current Dicţionarul explicativ al limbii române ‘Explicative
Dictionary of the Romanian Language’ (11975, 21996), have prescriptive function
also, specifying wherever necessary the restrictions in the usage of certain words
(labeled as regional, popular, colloquial, slang, obsolete, archaic etc.) and the
contexts where they are appropriate.
The Romanian academic norms are slightly conservative, but far more
permissive than the academic norms of other languages (for example French).
In the current stage of development of the Romanian language, the main
source of the introduction of certain borrowings and of internal creations is
represented by the mass media. Of course, the decisive model for the language of
artistic literature is that of the great writers, for scientific languages, the model of
the great scholars and professors, but for the currently used standard language, the
role of the written and spoken press takes precedence. After 1989, Romanian has
known, through the mass media, a veritable lexical explosion of borrowings and
internal formations, not all of them with equal chances of naturalization or
survival; time and usage will make the selection.

4.2. Linguistics Resources

4.2.1. Conventional Resources

(a) Dictionaries
The Historical reference dictionary now: Academia Română, Dicţionarul
limbii române ‘The Thesaurus Dictionary of the Romanian Language’ (in
progress), (Tiktin : 2000-2005), MDA (2001-2003). There are many in one volume
dictionary of good quality: DEX (1998), CADE (1926-1931). A good etymological
 ROMANIAN 867

dictionary is (Ciorănescu : 1958-1961). A reference dictionary for spelling and

pronunciation is DOOM. A short history of Romanian lexicography is (Seche : 1966
and 1969).
(b) Grammars, history of Romanian
The best companions for contemporary Romanian grammar are: Academia
Română, Gramatica limbii române (1963) and Gramatica limbii române (2005),
and (Avram : 2001) (like the French Bon usage). Good grammars are: (Dimitriu
(1999, 2002), (Irimia : 2004), (Iordan : 1956), (Iordan, Guţu-Romalo, Niculescu :
1967). A synchronic description based on transformational linguistics is (Vasiliu şi
Golopenţia : 1969). German-speaking readers can consult (Beyrer, Bochmann und
Bronsert : 1987), Italian-speaking (Dascălu Jinga : 2004), Swedish-speaking
(Lombard : 1973).
For the history of Romanian Grammar, see (Ionaşcu : 1914) and (Iordan :
1956). For the history of Romanian, see (Densusianu : 1929, 1938), (Rosetti :
1968), (Ivănescu : 2000), (Philippide : 1923-1927), (Graur : 1968), (Puşcariu :
1976), (Sala : 2006), (Graur : 1963), and (Fischer : 1985). For the history of
literary Romanian, see (Rosetti, Cazacu, Onu : 1971), (Munteanu, Ţâra : 1983)
(Gheţie : 1975), and (Gheţie, ed. : 1997).
An short introduction to Romanian is (Avram şi Sala : 2000-2001). A good
encyclopedia of Romanian is (Sala : 2006).
For the history of Romanian Linguistics, see (Iordan, ed. : 1978).
Three scholarly series should be mentioned: Revue roumaine de linguistique
(since 1956), Studii şi cercetări lingvistice (since 1950), Limba română (since
1952).

4.2.2. Electronic resources

General information about linguistics resources can be found in Cristea (D.),
Forăscu (C.) : 2006, “Linguistic Resources and Technologies for Romanian
Language”, Journal of Computer Science of Moldova, 14, 1(140), pp. 43-73
(http://www.racai.ro/resources/resources.html).
(a) Dictionaries
DEX online was processed by a team of volunteers, who made the electronic
version of various prestigious Romanian dictionaries (DEX, neologisms, synonyms,
antonyms, etc.).
(b) Corpora
The electronic version of spontaneous interactions included in Fondul CORV
(Spoken Romanian Corpus) is a constituent part of the Phonogram Archives of the
Romanian language, at the Institute of Linguistics in Bucharest.
(c) Romanian literature online
Various classical authors are published online, e.g. M. Eminescu
(http://www.eminescu.petar.ro/opera_completa/index.html) or I. L. Caragiale
 MARIUS SALA 868

(http://www.caragiale.net), but also contemporary writers (http://www.editura.

liternet.ro), lyrics (http://romanianvoice.com/poezii, http://poezie.org), volumes
published by the Romanian Cultural Foundation (http://www.biblioteca.
euroweb.ro).
Various Romanian literary texts are available on the sites of publishing
houses, like Humanitas (http://www.autori.humanitas.ro), Polirom (http://www.
polirom.ro) a.o.; cf. also Asociaţia Editurilor Româneşti ‘Romanian Publishers’
Association’ ( http://www.aer.ro).
Newspapers and journals online (http://ziareromanesti.com): e.g. Adevărul
(http://www.adevarulonline.ro), Cotidianul (http://www.cotidianul.ro), România
liberă (http://www.romanialibera.ro), România literară (http://www.romlit.ro),
22 (http://www.revista22.ro), Dilema (http://www.algoritma.ro/dilema), Obser-
vator Cultural (http://www.observatorcultural.ro), Secolul 21 (http://www.
secolul21.ro).
(d) World-wide educational online
Basic lessons of spoken Romanian are available at (http://www.
geocities.com/romanianlessons, http://www.freewebs.com/invata_ limba_romana)
and method EuroCom at http://www.eurocomcenter.com.
4.3. Culture
4.3.1. Books, Series
The most important series of Romanian literary text are: Opere (Bucureşti :
Minerva, 1957- [over 70 books]), Scriitori români (Bucureşti : Minerva, 1963-
[over 170 books]), Opere fundamentale (ed. Eugen Simion) (Bucureşti : Univers
Enciclopedic, 2000- [150 books]).
Dictionaries of literature are Academia Română (ed. Eugen Simion),
Dicţionarul general al literaturii române (2004-2006), (Zaciu, Papahagi, Sasu :
1995-2002), and Academia Română, Dicţionarul literaturii române de la origini
până la 1900 (2002).
The best histories of Romanian Literature are (Călinescu : 1982), (Pop :
2000-2003).
4.3.2. Other medias
The public national radio corporation and the public national television
corporation broadcast Romanian programs by satellite. Some private television
channels also broadcast programs in Romania, by satellite.

5. Present and future role of Romanian

5.1. In countries where Romanian is an official language
Romanian is the only official language in Romania, where it is spoken by all
the inhabitants and it is a native tongue of the majority of the population (almost
 ROMANIAN 869

90 p.c.), it is also an official language and a native tongue in the Republic of

Moldova, where it is spoken by ca. 70 p.c. of the population.

5.2. In other countries

In Europe, Romanian (including its South-Danubian dialects) is spoken in
Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Russia,
Serbia, Turkey, the Ukraine (especially in Bukovina and Southern Ukraine),
Hungary; in these states Romanian is not an official language.
Three dialects south of the Danube (different zones of the Balkan Peninsula)
should be mentionned:
— the Macedoromanian dialect, the most important of the three,
according to the total number of speakers (a few hundred thousand), and the only
one that (also) has a cultural literary function. It is spoken in Bulgaria, Greece,
Albania and Macedonia and partially also in Romania;
— the Meglenoromanian dialect, spoken by a few thousand bilingual
persons in Greece, Macedonia, Turkey and Romania;
— the Istroromanian dialect, spoken by ca. 1,500 bilingual persons in the
Istrian Peninsula at the Adriatic Sea, in Croatia.

5.3. In international circles and institutions

Romanian, by the side of Catalan, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese,
is one of the official languages of the Latin Union, an inter-governmental
organism which convenes 35 states.

6. Bibliographical orientation
(a) Dictionaries
Academia Română, Dicţionarul limbii române A—B (1913), C (1940), D—
deînmulţit (2006), F—I (1934), J—Lacustru (1937), Ladă—lojnitţă (1940-
1948), M (1965-1968), N (1971), O (1969), P (1972-1984), R (1975), S
(1986-1994), Ş (1978), T (1982-1983), Ţ (1994), U (2002), V, W, X, Y (1997-
2005), Z (2000).
CADE = CANDREA (I.-Aurel), ADAMESCU (Gh.) : 1926-1931, Dicţionarul
enciclopedic ilustrat (Bucureşti : Editura “Cartea Românească”).
CIORANESCU (Alejanndro) : 1958-1961, Diccionario etimológico rumano (La
Laguna : Universidad de la Laguna).
DEX = Dicţionarul explicativ al limbii române (eds. I. Coteanu, Luiza Seche,
Mircea Seche) (Bucureşti : Editura Univers Enciclopedic, 21998).
DOOM = Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică “Iorgu Iordan-Al. Rosetti”,
Dicţionarul ortografic, ortoepic şi morfologic al limbii române (ed. Ioana
Vintilă-Rădulescu) (Bucureşti : Univers Enciclopedic, 22005).
 MARIUS SALA 870

MDA = Academia Română, Micul dicţionar academic (eds. Marius Sala, Ion
Dănăilă), I-IV (Bucureşti : Univers Enciclopedic, 2001-2003).
TIKTIN (H.) : 32000-2005, Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, I-III (Cluj-Napoca :
Clusium).
(b) History of Language, Grammar, Philology
Academia Română, Gramatica limbii române (ed. Al. Graur, Mioara Avram şi
Laura Vasiliu), I-II (Bucureşti : Editura Academiei, 21966).
Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică “Iorgu Iordan-Al. Rosetti”,
Gramatica limbii române (ed. Valeria Guţu-Romalo), I-II (Bucureşti :
Editura Academiei Române, 2005).
AVRAM (Mioara) : 32001, Gramatica pentru toţi (Bucureşti : Humanitas).
AVRAM (Mioara) and SALA (Marius) : 2000, May We Introduce the Romanian
Language to You? (Bucureşti : The Romanian Cultural Foundation).
AVRAM (Mioara) et SALA (Marius) : 2001, Connaisez-vous le roumain ?
(Bucureşti : Fondation Culturelle Roumaine—Union latine).
BEYRER (Arthur), BOCHMANN (Klaus) und BRONSERT (Siegfried) : 1987,
Grammatik der rumänischen Sprache der Gegenwart (Leipzig : VEB Verlag
Enzyklopädie).
BIDU-VRĂNCEANU (Angela) şi FORĂSCU (Narcisa) : 2005, Limba română
contemporană. Lexicul (Bucureşti : Humanitas Educaţional).
CHIVU (Gheorghe), BUZA (Emanuela) şi ROMAN MORARU (Alexandra) : 1992,
Dicţionarul împrumuturilor latino-romanice în limba română veche (1421-
1760) (Bucureşti : Editura Academiei).
CHIVU (Gheorghe) şi GHEŢIE (Ion), eds. : 2000, Contribuţii la istoria limbii
române literare. Secolul al XVIII-lea (1688-1780) (Cluj : Clusium).
COTEANU (I.) : 1973, 1986, Stilistica funcţională a limbii române, I, Stil,
stilistică, limbaj, II, Limbajul poeziei culte (Bucureşti : Editura Academiei
1973).
DASCĂLU JINGA (Laurenţia) : 2004, Grammatica romena per italiani
(Alessandria : Edizioni del Orso)
DENSUSIANU (O.) : 1929 et 1914-1938, Histoire de la langue roumaine, I
(Bucarest : Ernest Leroux) et II (Paris : Ernest Leroux).
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