Moldovan language

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Moldovan (Latin alphabet: limba moldovenească, Cyrillic alphabet: лимба молдовеняскэ), an Eastern Romance language, is the official language of Moldova and one of the official languages of the de-facto independent state of Transnistria.

Moldovan, in its official form, is near-identical to Romanian, the official language of Romania and most people in the Republic of Moldova refer to the language most commonly as simply Romanian; according to latest Moldovan census, about 1.2 million (roughly 33%) people in Moldova (excluding Transnistria) declared "Moldovan" as their native language, while the rest considered themselves Romanian speakers. The Moldavian chronicler, Grigore Ureche (1590 - 1647), established in his "Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei" (The Chronicles of the land of Moldavia) that Moldavian (Moldovan) and Wallachian (Romanian from Wallachia) are essentially the same language; and that Moldavians and Wallachians share the same ethnicity.

The term "Moldovan" is also used by some to refer to any Eastern Romance variety native to Moldova (see spoken language below).

History and Politics

Beginnings of "Moldovan"

The Moldavian chronicler, Grigore Ureche (1590 - 1647), established in his "Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei" (The Chronicles of the land of Moldavia) that Moldavian (Moldovan) and Wallachian (Romanian from Wallachia) are essentially the same language; and that Moldavians and Wallachians share the same ethnicity. The theory has been written also by Dimitrie Cantemir and not contended since the Soviet era. The territory of Bessarabia, which forms the present-day Republic of Moldova, historically the eastern part of the Romanian principality of Moldavia, has has been disputed between Romania and Russia during most of the 19th and 20th centuries. It was first annexed by Imperial Russia in 1812 and remained part of the Russian Empire for 105 years, until that empire was dissolved following the October revolution of 1917. Bessarabia united with Romania in 1918.

22 years after the Bessarabian union with Romania, in 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia. A year later, in 1941, Romania invaded the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa and retook Bessarabia (along with a large portion of the Ukraine). These territories were taken back by the Soviet Union 3 years later in 1944, and remained under Soviet administration until the dissolution of the Union in 1991.

As a result of all this back and forth motion, along with ethnic Romanian deportations and the encouraged migration of citizens from the rest of USSR, Bessarabia had large communities of Russian speakers by the mid-20th century, among the ethnic Romanian natives. After World War II, the new Stalinist authorities renamed the language spoken by the majority of Bessarabians as "Moldovan", for the purpose of giving the region its own identity separate from Romania in an attempt to cut any feelings of fraternity towards it.

The Latin alphabet used for writing the Romanian language was changed to a version of the Cyrillic alphabet derived from the Russian variant. To justify this, the government noted that the first writings in Romanian were in Cyrillic. (See: Moldovan alphabet)

Also, during Soviet rule, Moldovan speakers were encouraged to learn the Russian language, this being a prerequisite for higher education, social status and political power.

Reversion to Latin script, and beyond

In 1989, Moldovan was declared the official language of Moldova, and the pre-1992 Romanian version of the Latin alphabet was restored as the official script.

After the independence of Moldova in 1991, Romanian in Latin script, was declared the official language, but the 1994 constitution changed the name of the language to Moldovan.

A 1996 attempt by the Moldovan president Mircea Snegur to change the official language back to "Romanian" was dismissed by the Moldovan Parliament as promoting Romanian expansionism.

In 2002, the government of Moldova gave the Russian language the same privileges as Moldovan, since after Soviet rule and the massive Russian settlement it invited, a significant proportion of the population is of mother-tongue speakers of Russian. It was declared to be a mandatory foreign language in schools. This created a wave of indignation among the Moldovan-speaking majority of the population, and rallies against this decision were organized in Chişinău and other major cities.

In 2003, a Romanian-Moldovan dictionary (Dicţionar Moldovenesc-Românesc (2003), Vasile Stati) was published, suggesting that the two countries speak different languages. The linguists of the Romanian Academy in Romania declared that all the Moldovan words are also Romanian words. Even in Moldova, the head of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Linguistics, Ion Bărbuţă, described the dictionary as an "absurdity", serving political purposes.

On the 2004 census, about two thirds of the Romanian-Moldovans, which are the majority population in the Republic of Moldova, declared their mother tongue to be "Romanian", and one third "Moldovan", which is, according to the press, why the release of the official census results was delayed.

The true story of Moldovan language

We speak about the same language: romanian. But the russians wanted to make a difference hoping that in this way the russification of the romanian part of Moldova will be russian. This is absurd since we talk about the same nation and people who have the same language.

On April 9, 1918 (old style March 27, 1918) the Bessarabian legislature (Sfatul Ţării) voted in favor of unification with Romania with 86 votes in favor, 3 against and 36 abstentions. The union was confirmed by Romania's Western allies in the Treaty of Paris (1920).

The so called Soviet-era theories

In the Soviet era, some very anti-romanian russian linguists postulated that Moldovan was actually a Slavic language with a strong Vlachian, which is of course a big lie (i.e. Romanian) superstratum. ^{[citation needed]} (all are such lies).

Although similar theories have been fielded for other languages, this proposal is now believed to have been made to serve political purposes only, and nobody has provided any evidence so-far towards the idea that Moldovan and Romanian are not from common linguistic stock. Strong evidence to the contrary is the fact that they are nearly identical.

Russian occupation and oppresion against romanian part of Moldova

Between 1711 and 1812, Russia occupied the region five times during wars between Ottoman Empire, Russia, and Austria. Between 1820 and 1846, the Gagauz tribes migrated to Russia via the Danube, after living many oppressive years under Ottoman rule, and settled in southern Bessarabia. Turkic-speaking tribes of the Nogai Horde also inhabited the Budjak Region of southern Bessarabia from the 16th to 18th centuries, but were totally driven out prior to 1812.

By the Treaty of Bucharest of May 28, 1812 Russia annexed the Eastern half of the Principality of Moldavia. That region was then called Bessarabia. Prior to this year, the name was used only for approximately its southern one quarter, which as stated before was already under direct Ottoman control ever since 1484. At the end of the Crimean War, in 1856, by the Treaty of Paris, two districts of southern Bessarabia were returned to Moldova, Russia lost access to the Danube river. Many localities, including Chişinău (Kishinev in Russian), now fell in the border area.

After the Russian Revolution, a Romanian nationalist movement started to develop in Bessarabia. In the chaos brought by the Russian revolution of October 1917, a National Council (Sfatul Ţării) was established in Bessarabia, with 120 members elected from Bessarabia and 10 elected from Transnistria (the left shore of the river Dnister, inhabited by ethnic Moldavians/Romanians).

On April 9, 1918 (old style March 27, 1918) the Bessarabian legislature (Sfatul Ţării) voted in favor of unification with Romania with 86 votes in favor, 3 against and 36 abstentions. The union was confirmed by Romania's Western allies in the Treaty of Paris (1920).

On June 26, 1940, as a consequence of the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the USSR issued a ultimative note that required Romania to cede Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, and evacuate in four days (unless, war would ensue). The two provinces had an area of 20,000 square miles (51,000 km²) and they were inhabited by about 3.75 million people, mostly Romanians.

Two days later |Romania administration started to retreat from the provinces. Soviet troops entered Bessarabia and incorporated it into the USSR, which divided it between the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian SSR.

Romanian vs. Moldovan

The constitution of the Republic of Moldova refers to the country's language as Moldovan rather than Romanian, though in practice it is often called "Romanian". The law that officialized the Moldovan language and the 1989 law that changed the alphabet back from Cyrillic to Latin both state that Moldovan is identical to Romanian. In schools, the language is called Romanian and it is taught with textbooks from Romania. The Academy of Sciences of Moldova calls the language Romanian ([1]). Also, in 2004, the Moldovan Minister of Justice, Ion Morei, said that Romanian and Moldovan are the same language and that the Constitution of Moldova should be amended, not necessarly by changing the word Moldovan into Romanian, but by adding that "Romanian and Moldovan are the same language". Ethnologue's Moldova page [2] and the U.S. Department of State [3] both say that Romanian is the official language of Moldova.

The Moldavian chronicler, Grigore Ureche (1590 - 1647), established in his "Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei" (The Chronicles of the land of Moldavia) that the Moldavian and Wallachian (Romanian from Wallachia) dialects of the time were essentially the same language; and that Moldavians and Wallachians shared the same ethnicity.

Greater Romania

Greater Romania (România Mare) generally refers to the territory of Romania in the years between the First and Second World Wars, the greatest territorial exent of a united country of ethnic Romanians, on historically Romanian lands. The politically correct Romanian term "România Întregită" has its closest meaning in English as "Whole Romania".

In 1918, at the end of World War I, Transylvania and Bessarabia united with the Romanian Old Kingdom, Transylvania united by a Proclamation of Union of Alba Iulia voted by the Deputies of the Romanians from Transylvania; Bessarabia, having declared its independence from Russia in 1917 by the Conference of the Country (Sfatul Ţarii), called in Romanian troops to protect the province from the Bolsheviks who were spreading the Russian Revolution. The union of the regions of Transylvania, Maramureş, Crişana and Banat with the Old Kingdom of Romania was ratified in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon which recognised the sovereignty of Romania over these regions and settled the border between the independent Republic of Hungary and the Kingdom of Romania. The union of Bucovina and Bessarabia with Romania was ratified in 1920 by the Treaty of Versailles. Romania had also recently acquired the Southern Dobrudja territory called the Quadrilateral from Bulgaria as a result of its victory in the Second Balkan War in 1913.

National symbols

Flag

File:FlagOfMoldova.png

Flag of Moldova

File:Romania flag large.png

Flag of Romania

The Moldovan flag is similar to the flag of Romania, with the same color, but with the addition of a coat of arms, expressing the link between the same nation.

Currency

The currency of Moldova, the leu (plural: lei) has the same name as the currency of Romania. The name means "lion".

Ştefan cel Mare

Ştefan cel Mare ("Stephen the Great and Holy"), Dracula's cousin, was the most important Prince of Moldavia. He was born around 1436, at Borzeşti, Bacău County, and died at Suceava in 2 July 1504. He ruled 47 years, from 14 April 1457 to 2 July 1504. He is considered a national hero in both Romania and Republic of Moldova, being a symbol link between them.

Actual differences

Alphabet

Cyrillic was replaced by Latin as the official alphabet for the Moldovan language in 1989. Nearly all urban Moldovans can read the Latin alphabet, although many over 30 are more comfortable writing in Cyrillic, as it was the script of their education. In the countryside, many people over 30 — especially peasants — are barely literate at all in Latin, and prefer Cyrillic.

Spelling

Romanian â and î are both written as î in Moldovan. Although they sound identical, the Romanian justification for start using this spelling in 1992 is to bring Romanian closer orthographically to other Romance languages, and that etymologically, â and î are separate. In the Moldovan language, only the word "română" (Romanian) and "România" (Romania) are written with â, officially.

Romanian sunt is written as sînt in Moldovan. However, in Moldovan Cyrillic, it is variably written sunt or sînt. Although it is actually pronounced sînt in both languages, the Romanian justification for writing sunt is that it is etymologically correct and that it brings Romanian closer orthographically to other Romance languages.

However, in both countries, the official versions are not always respected. For example, some Romanian newspapers use the "î"/"sînt" spelling (Evenimentul Zilei, Academia Caţavencu among others), while some Moldovan newspapers use "î/â/sunt" spelling. (Accente, Garda, etc).

Only very rarely are "română" and derivatives are written using "î", and most people from either country will consider it to be incorrect usage.

Spoken language

The Moldovan slang of Chisinau and its suburbs tends to use a much higher number of Russian and Ukrainian loanwords than in Romania. However, Moldovan speakers generally avoid Russian loanwords when writing their language in most contexts. Residents of rural areas tend to use less slang and foreign words, and their speech is reported to be more conservative than that of residents of urban areas.

In Chişinău, most strangers, even ethnic Romanians, address one another in Russian, despite the fact that Moldovan is official. In the autonomous regions of Gagauzia and Transnistria, Russian predominates while Moldovan is spoken by a minority.

The spoken language of the cities is an amalgamation of Romanian and Russian, which has been called a "jargon" by some, although it could perhaps be called a creole since it is the native variety for some. Only some nationally-conscious members of the elite urban intelligentsia make any effort to purge Russian words from their speech. In the countryside, Russian linguistic influences tend to be far fewer, excepting the regions of Gagauzia and Transnistria. Speakers of Moldovan tend to code-switch their language with Russian.

For example, common slang among youngsters even of Romanian heritage uses "crasavic" to mean "beautiful" (from Russian красавец (m)/красавица (f)), where the official written language uses "frumos".

Among younger speakers, situational code switching is common, especially among people of Russian and Ukrainian heritage, and even moreso among the children of mixed marriages. It's also common in situations where one person's native language is Moldovan/Romanian and the other person's native language is Russian, for each person to speak in his native language even though the other person responds in the other language. This often results in some degree of intentional grammatical simplification (or "foreigner talk", as it is sometimes known due to intentional grammatical simplification often used when speaking to foreigners), and a higher frequency of borrowing words from the other language than in normal discourse.

Examples of bilingual code switching or other contact linguistic phenomena (what is occurring here is debatable); Romanian words in italics, Russian words in bold:

Latin: Vseo eu m'am dus!

Cyrillic: Всё еу м'ам дус!

Latin: Vină încoace cac deneoc proşel...

Cyrillic: Винэ ынкоаче как денёк прошел...

Such phenomena are rarely found in writing, except when such a conversation is being transcribed, or occasionally in IM and forums. When such phenomena are found in writing, it is more common for them to be in Cyrillic than in Latin.

Notes

The Cyrillic script has not been in official use in the Republic of Moldova since independence 1989, but is official in Transnistria, and is still used by smaller groups elsewhere
The Romanian language, considered by most people to be identical to Moldovan, is spoken by approximately 36 million people worldwide. According to the 2004 census in Moldova, 2.4 million people said they speak "Romanian" while only 1.2 million people said they speak "Moldovan".
While the Romanian language in Romania officially uses the â/î/sunt orthography as described in the article, it used the exact same orthography as Moldovan (î/sînt) during its Communist regime. The â/î/sunt decision was made by the Romanian Academy in the 1990's.

External links

References

Dyer, D. (1999). The romanian dialect of moldova: a study in language and politics. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. (ISBN 0773480374)
Dyer, Donald Leroy, ed. Studies in Moldovan. New York: Columbia University Press (East European Monographs), 1996. (ISBN 0880333510)
Stati, V.N. Dicţionar moldovenesc-românesc. [=Moldovan-Romanian dictionary.] Chisinau: Tipografia Centrala (Biblioteca Pro Moldova), 2003. (ISBN 9975782485)
Ильяшенко, Татиьяна Павловна. Языковые контакты : на материале славиано-молдав, отношений. Moscow: "Наука" [Nauka = Science], 1970. (LCCN 78510414)
Афтени, М.К., Батыр, Л.К., Богач, И.И. (1961). Молдавско-русский словарь. [Afteni, M.K., Batyr, L.K., Bogač, I.I. (1961). Moldavsko-russkij slovar`. = Moldovan-Russian dictionary.] Moscow, USSR: Государственное издательство иностранных и национальных словарей. [Gosudarstvennoe izdatel`stvo inostrannyh i nacional`nyh slovarej. = State Foreign and National Dictionary Publishing House.] (LCCN 62045065)
Ецко, И.И. (1987). Молдавско-русский словарь. [Ecko, I.I. (1987). Moldavsko-russkij slovar`. = Moldovan-Russian dictionary.] Kishinev, Moldavian SSR: МСЭ [MSE]. (LCCN 88112743)
Баскаков, Н.А. (1973). Гагаузско-русско-молдавский словарь. [Baskakov, N.A. (1973). Gagauzsko-russko-moldavskij slovar`. = Gagauz-Russian-Moldovan dictionary.] Moscow, USSR: Unknown. (LCCN 73355147)
Bruchis, M. (1982). One Step Back, Two Steps Forward. New York: Columbia University Press (East European Monographs). (ISBN 0880330023)
Bruchis, M. (1984). Nations, Nationalities, Peoples. New York: Columbia University Press (East European Monographs). (ISBN 0880330570)
Bruchis, M. (1988). USSR Language and Realities. New York: Columbia University Press (East European Monographs). (ISBN 088033147X)
Dumbrava, V. (2004). Sprachkonflikt Und Sprachbewusstsein In Der Republik Moldova: Eine Empirische Studie In Gemischtethnischen Familien (Sprache, Mehrsprachigkeit Und Sozialer Wandel). Bern: Peter Lang Publishing. (ISBN 3631507283)
http://www.contrafort.md/2002/90-91/338_7.html
http://reference.allrefer.com/country-guide-study/moldova/moldova27.html
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/modern_languages/Dyer.html
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/europe/moldavia.html
http://www.east-west-wg.org/cst/cst-mold/
Letopiseţul Ţărîi Moldovei