The Romanian language

[Daos]

Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română [ˈlimba roˈmɨnə] ("the Romanian language") or româneşte (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova. It has official status in Romania, Republic of Moldova, the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia and in the autonomous Mount Athos in Greece. In the Republic of Moldova, the language is officially called limba moldovenească ("Moldovan") for political reasons.

Romanian speakers are scattered across many other countries, notably Italy, Spain, Ukraine, United States, Canada, Israel, Russia, Portugal, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

I found the wikipedia article to be pretty good...

This version of the Latin alphabet was used during the transition from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabets. It is still used, though mostly in church writings.

Omniglot also has an interesting article, but it has quite a number of inaccuracies... These links are noteworthy:

Online Romanian lessons
http://www.romanianlessons.com
http://www.simplyromanian.com

The Letter of Neacşu of Câmpulung (the first written document in Romanian)

Easy Romanian - a collection of Romanian words and phrases

English <> Romanian dictionary

Online Romanian radio
http://www.rri.ro
http://www.europalibera.org
http://www.europafm.ro
http://www.kissfm.ro

Televiziunea Româna (Romanian Television - includes live online programmes)

Online Romanian newspapers
http://www.adevarul.ro/
http://www.jurnalul.ro/

[Daos]

The wikipedia article on the Romanian alphabet is very interesting. I especially liked the part about the obsolete diacritics:

Before the spelling reform of 1904, there were several additional letters with diacritical marks.

Vowels:

• ĭ — i with breve indicated semivowel i as part of Romanian diphthongs and triphthongs ia, ei, iei etc., or a final, "whispered" sound of the preceding palatalized consonant, in words such as Bucureşti (/bu.kuˈreʃtʲ/), lupi (/lupʲ/ - "wolves"), and greci (/ɡret͡ʃʲ/ - "Greeks") — Bucurescĭ (the proper spelling at the time used c instead of t, see -eşti), lupĭ, grecĭ. By replacing this letter with a simple i without making any additional changes, the phonetic value of the letter i became ambiguous; even native speakers can sometimes mispronounce words such as the toponym Pecica (which has two syllables, but is often mistakenly pronounced with three) or the name Mavrogheni (which has four syllables, not three). Additionally, in a number of words such as subiect "subject" and ziar "newspaper", the pronunciation of i as a vowel or as a semivowel is different among speakers.
• ŭ — u with breve was used only in the ending of a word. Unvoiced in most cases, it served to indicate that the previous consonant was not palatalized, or that the preceding vowel i was fully voiced. When voiced, it would follow a stressed vowel and stand in for semivowel u, as in words eŭ, aŭ, and meŭ, all spelled today without the breve. Once frequent, it survives today in author Mateiu Caragiale's name - originally spelled Mateiŭ (it is not specified whether the pronunciation should adopt a version that he himself probably never used, while in many editions he is still credited as Matei). In other names, only the breve was dropped, while preserving the pronunciation of a semivowel u, as is the case of B.P. Hasdeŭ.
• ĕ — e with breve. This letter is now replaced with ă. The existence of two letters for one sound, the schwa, had an etymological purpose, showing from which vowel ("a" or "e") it originally derived. For example împĕrat - "emperor" (<Imperator), vĕd - "I see" (<vedo), umĕr - "shoulder" (<humerus), păsĕri - "birds" (<cf. passer).
• é / É — Latin small/capital letter e with acute accent indicated a sound that corresponds either to today's Romanian diphthong ea, or in some words, to today's Romanian letter e. It would originally indicate the sound of Romanian letter e when it were pronounced as diphthong ea in certain Romanian regions, e.g. acéste (today spelled aceste) and céle (today spelled cele). This letter would sometimes indicate a derived word from a Romanian root word containing Latin letter e, as is the case of mirésă (today spelled mireasă) derived from mire. For other words it would underlie a relationship between a Romanian word and a Latin word containing letter e, where the Romanian word would use é, such as gréle (today spelled grele) derived from Latin word grevis. Lastly, this letter was used to accommodate the sound that corresponds to today's Romanian diphthong ia, as in te word ér (iar today).
• ó / Ó — Latin small/capital letter o with acute accent indicated a sound that corresponds to today's Romanian diphthong oa. This letter would sometimes indicate a derived word from a Romanian root word containing Latin letter o, as is the case of popóre (today spelled popoare) derived from popor. For other words it would underlie a relationship between a Romanian word and a Latin word containing letter o, where the Romanian word would use ó, such as fórte (today spelled foarte) derived from Latin word forte. Lastly, this letter was used to accommodate the sound that corresponds to today's Romanian diphthong oa, as in the word fóme (foame today).

Consonants:

• d̦ / D̦ — Latin small/capital letter d with comma below was used to indicate the sound that corresponds today to Romanian letter z. It would denote that the word it belonged to was assumed to be derived from Latin and that its corresponding Latin letter was d. Examples of words containing this letter are: d̦i (day in English) - assumed to be derived from the Latin word dies, Dumned̦eu (God in English) - assumed to be derived from Latin phrase Domine Deus), d̦ână (fairy in English) - supposed to be derived from the Latin word Diana. In today's Romanian language this letter is no longer present and Latin letter z is used in its stead.

Use of these letters was not fully adopted even before 1904, as some publications (e.g. Timpul and Universul) chose to use a more simplified and easy to read approach, which resembled today's Romanian language writing.

[Albion]

Do you prefer to write Romanian in Cyrillic or Latin? I heard somewhere that both are used.

[Daos]

Do you prefer to write Romanian in Cyrillic or Latin? I heard somewhere that both are used.

In the late 18th century, Transylvanian scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted the Latin alphabet to the Romanian language, using some rules from Italian, recognized as Romanian's closest relative. The Cyrillic alphabet remained in (gradually decreasing) use until 1860, when Romanian writing was first officially regulated.

No one uses it any more, but I find it very interesting.

[tschort]

cyrillic is the only way romanian is written by the half million romanians + moldovans in ukraine (official numbers; the divide is made at the ukrainian census, and more than half prefer "moldovan"). cyrillic is also the standard for the moldovans (or romanians, if you want) in transdnestr republic. also, the cyrillic script was used in the moldovan republic until the last years under soviet rule, so it had and still has a large scale use - school, media

some romanians look at the cyrillic script as pro-russian, but that is NONSENSE, since the pre-romanian countries of moldova and wallachia had the cyrillic script official for centuries, with no political relation to east slavs...

anyway, romanian used to have a very slavic vocabulary until it had been replaced in a barbarian way in recent times, in the last century-and-a-little. moldavian dialect of romania holds 20% slavic words, while moldavian of the moldovan republic adds till 25%

[Blossom]

Pot sa vorbesc putina Romana!

[Albion]

cyrillic is the only way romanian is written by the half million romanians + moldovans in ukraine (official numbers; the divide is made at the ukrainian census, and more than half prefer "moldovan"). cyrillic is also the standard for the moldovans (or romanians, if you want) in transdnestr republic. also, the cyrillic script was used in the moldovan republic until the last years under soviet rule, so it had and still has a large scale use - school, media

some romanians look at the cyrillic script as pro-russian, but that is NONSENSE, since the pre-romanian countries of moldova and wallachia had the cyrillic script official for centuries, with no political relation to east slavs...

anyway, romanian used to have a very slavic vocabulary until it had been replaced in a barbarian way in recent times, in the last century-and-a-little. moldavian dialect of romania holds 20% slavic words, while moldavian of the moldovan republic adds till 25%

You have an agenda.

[tschort]

AGENDA?! woah, you don't know what you're saying. the romanians in ukraine are taught in schools romanian using cyrillic, transdnestr uses cyrillic romanian, republic of moldova used cyrillic romanian until late soviet times, romania used cyrillic all of its history until 1860s, academy survey proved 1/5 and 1/4 respectively of usual vocabulary in the moldavian dialect to be slavic. where am i wrong?

[Albion]

AGENDA?!

Yes, I believe you are over-emphasizing the links between Ukrainians and Moldovans due to your own ethnic bias, the fact that you claim to have both Ukrainian and Moldovan ancestry.

woah, you don't know what you're saying. the romanians in ukraine are taught in schools romanian using cyrillic, transdnestr uses cyrillic romanian, republic of moldova used cyrillic romanian until late soviet times, romania used cyrillic all of its history until 1860s,

I'm not doubting that.

academy survey proved 1/5 and 1/4 respectively of usual vocabulary in the moldavian dialect to be slavic. where am i wrong?

Of course there'd be a Slavic substratum, Moldova after all is a sort of border region between Romanians and Slavs and Nations didn't used to be as homogeneous as they are today.
But my point is this - in the other threads, more specifically the one regarding uniting Moldova with Romania you showed that you were clearly more inclined to think of them as Slavic and include the with Ukraine. I think this is because of your ancestry.

[aherne]

anyway, romanian used to have a very slavic vocabulary until it had been replaced in a barbarian way in recent times, in the last century-and-a-little. moldavian dialect of romania holds 20% slavic words, while moldavian of the moldovan republic adds till 25%

Not a very slavic vocabulary. Romanian is not like English, which is an Anglo-Saxon/French hybrid. The core vocabulary is and has always been latinate. What better proof than earliest Romanian document (16th century), where 90% of words used are Latin and 10% are Slavic. I do agree with you that our language has been vandalized by 19th century nationalist "reforms", who saught to purge our language of slavic-origin words who amounted to 60% of our vocabulary (to prove we are "Latins") and replace them with "cultured" French/Italian equivalents. Kyrillic script was used by ALL Romanians (including those in Transylvania, under Hungarian rule) and was perfectly suited to our language, no less so than our modern latin writing. The reason it was replaced was once again nationalist ("how could Latin's language be written in Slavs' letters", they argued).

As for "Moldavian" ethnicity, this is a Stalinist invention aimed at driving a wedge between Romanians from Bessarabia and those from Romania so as to ethnically justify incorporation into Soviet Empire. Unlike Russian people, who is now splintered linguistically into Great Russians (Russians), Little Russians (Ukrainians) and White Russians (Belarussians), our people have always been united by a language, culture and national identity who are virtually the same all across the territory inhabited by Romanians. If we speak our language without making recourse to those 19th century imports, no other people can understand it to any meaningful degree (except Aromanians, to a moderate degree).