Romanian Language

The History of the Romanian Language

The Romanian language is the official language of Romania, a county in southeastern Europe. It is spoken as a native language by around 25 million people around the world. Because of emigration in the past, there are speakers of Romanian in many parts of the world, including the United States, Canada, Spain, Italy, and Germany. A lot of this is because of the post World War II migration of people out of Romania.  The Romanian language is one that has been greatly influenced from the languages surrounding it.

In ancient times, the regions of modern day Romania were occupied by the Dacians, a group of Indo-European peoples. By the time the Dacians were realized by the Romans, they had achieved an impressive level of civilization. The Romans overtook the Dacians in 106 AD, and made part of the Dacian region a Roman province. Over the next 160 years, the Romans colonized the region and the inhabitants were in contact with other Roman provinces. Thus, Vulgar Latin (or common Latin) became the language of government and business. By 275, The Romans had been forced to leave Dacia (with the help of the Goths and the areas of Dacia that had not succumbed to Roman occupation).

The Romanian language is considered a very homogeneous language. This is due in part to the country's segregation from other region's of Europe, and was therefore not subjected to other Romance languages.  Instead, the Romanian language was influenced from neighboring regions whose languages were Slavonic, Greek, Turkish, and Hungarian, where other Romance language took on the traits of the Germanic languages. This was because of migration to other regions and integration with other cultures. However, the Romanian language does retain a few characteristics of its Latin ancestor, such as noun declensions and the neutral gender of words.

The Romanian language is classified as a Romance language, specifically as a member of the Italic branch in the Indo-European family of languages. It has a great deal in common with other Romance languages, such as French, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish, because of their shared Latin roots. Romanian is related most closely to the Italian language, with the two being reciprocally understood with one another to some degree. Romanian is not reciprocally understood with the other Romance languages, however. In more modern times, though, influence of the French language on Romanian has become more apparent.

Romanian has been influenced by many languages in addition to Vulgar Latin.  For example, the Dacian language must have had some influence on Romanian. The ancient Dacian peoples, who occupied parts of modern day Romania, spoke it. Not much is known about exactly what or how much influence it had. The Slavic language also had a great deal of influence over the evolution of the Romanian language.  This first began to occur when Slavic tribes moved into the region, and it continued through to the Middle Ages.  In fact, Church Slavonic was the ceremonial language up to the 18th century, no doubt lending a great deal of weight to the Romanian language. And, as mentioned earlier, there is notable influence on Romanian from the Greek, Turkish, and Hungarian languages, as well as German. A great deal of these influences has been a result of ancient and modern political and cultural connections between Romania and the various countries.

The Romanian language is, like so many other languages, a result of thousands of years of cultural and political influence and integration. Though it's relative isolation from other Romance language-speaking areas kept it a comparatively unconnected from its relatives, it still managed to garner characteristics from other neighboring languages, as well as some qualities of the Romance languages themselves.  As a result, the Romanian language is a highly unique language.

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