Moldovan language

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Moldovan
лимба молдовеняскэ
(limba moldovenească)

Spoken in

See under “Distribution and legal status” ( official language and recognized minority language ) below
Linguistic
classification
Official status
Official language in TransnistriaTransnistria Transnistria
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

ro

ISO 639 -2 ( B ) around ( T ) ron
ISO 639-3

ron

Moldovan (also Moldavian , Romanian-Cyrillic: лимба молдовеняскэ, Romanian: Limba moldovenească ) is a variant of the Romanian language under which it was officially established as the official language of the Republic of Moldova during the Soviet Union and from 1994 to 2013 . The colloquial language spoken by the Moldovans differs slightly from that spoken in the eastern part of Romania in the Moldova region, mainly due to some neologisms taken from Russian . In the western part of Romania (i.e. west of the Prut ), however, the new expressions mainly come from French .

In the breakaway region of Transnistria , Moldavian (but still written with the Cyrillic script ) is an official language, but here together with Russian and Ukrainian . In Gagauzia , Romanian, Gagauz and Russian are also the official languages.

Romanian dialects

Language and politics

The division of the Romanian language is considered an example of political separatism in the language . Almost all western linguists agree that Moldovan is the Romanian language that has been renamed for political reasons . The Moldovan language is not, as is often assumed, the written form of the Moldovan dialect ( graiul moldovenesc ), but the same form of the Romanian language, which also serves as the official language in Romania.

The existence of a distinct Moldovan language is also denied in the Moldovan Academy . But there are also isolated opposing opinions. According to Section I, Article XIII of the Basic Law of the Republic of Moldova, Moldovan is the “state language”. The term “Moldavian” was limited to a few areas of the state, with the term “Romanian” being used on all other levels. The current law in Moldova confirms the equality of both languages, for example in schools, media, as well as in some administrative and state areas the term "Romanian" is used.

In 2004, around 60% of Moldovan citizens referred to their mother tongue as “Moldovan”. The group of those who called their mother tongue “Romanian” made up 16.5% of the total population in Moldova, compared to just under 40% of the urban population. The identity of the Moldovan and Romanian languages ​​is seldom questioned, but rather the raison d'être of the term “Moldovan language”. Among other things, it is argued that the term “Moldovan language” is older than the term “Romanian language”.

backgrounds

In 1812 the eastern half of the Principality of Moldova was ceded to Russia and remained there as Bessarabia until 1918 . The reorientation of the Romanian script in 1868 from the Cyrillic to the Latin script had practically no effect in this area, although there was only a sparse literature. After the annexation in 1812, the Russian language gradually gained in importance. Since 1828 the official traffic was carried out exclusively in Russian. Around 1835 a seven-year period was set after which state authorities should no longer accept files in Romanian.

Between 1856 and 1878, Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail (a small part in southern Bessarabia) belonged again to western Moldova (or Romania ) as a result of the Crimean War , which led to a temporary reversal of language policy in this region.

From 1918 to 1940 what was then Bessarabia belonged to Romania, where the term “Moldovan language” was not used. In 1924 the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was founded on the east bank of the Dniester . There the Latin alphabet was first introduced for Moldovan, but in 1930 it was replaced by a Cyrillic alphabet (based on the Russian model), which became finally binding in 1937 after a new period of Latin script (from 1933).

After the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia in 1940 as part of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and united it with half of the Moldavian ASSR to form the Moldovan SSR , the term “Moldavian” was officially introduced here to sever all ties to Romania. The Latin alphabet was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet used in the Moldovan ASSR. In addition, during the Soviet rule, the Romanian-speaking population was encouraged to speak Russian, which was a prerequisite for higher education, social prestige and political office.

In 1989, the Moldovan language was declared the only official language of the Moldovan SSR and the Romanian variant of the Latin alphabet was reintroduced. The 1991 Declaration of Independence of Moldova named Romanian as the official language. In 1994 the name of the official language in the recently adopted constitution was set as "Moldovan". In 1996, the Moldovan Parliament rejected a request by President Mircea Snegur to change the name of the language to "Romanian". In Transnistria , Moldovan, which is written in Cyrillic, is still officially the official language.

Trilingual street sign in the separatist Republic of Transnistria (top to bottom): Moldovan (Romanian in Cyrillic script), Russian and Ukrainian.

In 2003 Vasile Stati published a Moldovan-Romanian dictionary. The introduction of the dictionary speaks of a “Moldovan language” which supposedly originated in parallel to the Romanian language. Stati carried out the regionalisms from the entire distribution area of ​​the Moldovan dialect as if they were not part of the Romanian vocabulary, and then translated them into Romanian with synonyms that originated outside the Moldovan area. This led to criticism from both countries, because the Moldovan regionalisms are part of the entire Romanian vocabulary.

The international standard ISO 639 originally assigned the codes mol and mo to the Moldovan language . However, these were repealed in November 2008 and replaced by those of the Romanian language, ro , ron and rum .

In December 2013 the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the country's declaration of independence, which names “Romanian” as the national language, is an integral part of the constitution and, in the event of contradictions, takes precedence over the text of the constitution. This changed the name of the national language to Romanian .

literature

  • Lenore A. Grenoble: Language Policy in the Soviet Union. (Springer 2003), ISBN 1-4020-1298-5 ; Pp. 89-93.
  • Valeria Guțu-Romalo: Evoluția limbii române în Republica Moldova. In: Adriana Grecu: Unitatea limbii române cu privire specială la Basarabia și Bucovina. Editura Academică, Bucharest 2004, ISBN 973-27-0985-5 ; Pp. 33-48
  • Klaus Heitmann : Moldovan under the sign of glasnost and perestroika. In: Wolfgang Dahmen u. a. (Ed.): Romanistic Colloquium V. Fink-Verlag, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-7705-2674-0
  • Klaus Heitmann: Romanian: Moldovan. In: Günter Holtus u. a. (Ed.): Lexicon of Romance Linguistics. Vol. 3, Niemeyer-Verlag, Tübingen 1989, ISBN 3-484-50234-7 ; Pp. 508-521
  • Marinella Lörinczi: La sconfitta del buon senso linguistico: il primo dizionario moldavo-romeno, a oltre un anno dalla sua pubblicazione. In: Cristina Guardiano u. a. (Ed.): Lingue, istituzioni, territori: riflessioni teoriche, proposte metodologiche ed esperienze di politica linguistica. Atti del XXXVIII Congresso internazionale di studi della Società di linguistica italiana (SLI), Modena, 23-25 ​​September 2004. Bulzoni, Rome 2005 (= Pubblicazioni della Società di Linguistica Italiana, 49; ISBN 88-7870-056-8 ), p 175-191
  • Klaus Steinke: Romania and Moldau / Romania and Moldavia. In: Ulrich Ammon u. a. (Ed.): Sociolinguistics / Soziolinguistik: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. 2nd edition, 3rd volume, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006 (= handbooks for linguistics and communication studies, 3; ISBN 3-11-018418-4 ), pp. 1818–1823

See also

Web links

Commons : Moldovan language  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Europe Review 2003/2004. Kogan Page. 2004. p. 242 - "A Field Guide to the Main Languages ​​of Europe - Spot that language and how to tell them apart" (English). European Commission.
  2. ↑ CONSTITUTIA - REPUBLICII MOLDOVA - ADOPTATA LA 29 IULIE 1994
  3. ^ A b RIA Novosti : Constitutional Court: The official language in Moldova is Romanian
  4. ↑ Silviu Berejan, Scientific Principal Investigator of the language institute of the Moldovan Academy: rumän. “Limba română exemplară nu poate fi numită moldovenească, pentru că limba literară moldovenească nu există. Există numai vorbire dialectală moldovenească. Ceea ce ani în șir am numit noi în RSSM impropriu «limbă literară moldovenească» nu era altceva decât limbă română exemplară, doar că era scrisă cu alfabet rusesc. E de ajuns însă ca orice text publicat în acea perioadă să fie transcris cu alfabet latin, ca oricine sa să convingă că el nu a avut și nu are nici o particularitate specifică pentru vorbirea actuală moldovenească “. (Communication at the conference on naming the official language of Moldova).
  5. ↑ The Basic Law of the Republic of Moldova ( Memento of the original from January 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (in Moldovan) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.parlament.md
  6. ↑ Legea cu privire la functionarea limbilor vorbite pe teritoriul RSS Moldovenesti no.3465-XI din 01.09.89 Vestile no.9 / 217, 1989 ( Memento of the original from February 19, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (in Romanian) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.iatp.md
  7. ↑ E.g. disposition to the state financial diary , instruction on the use of the patrimony accounting law of Moldova , consumer protection law ( Memento of October 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (in Romanian)
  8. ↑ National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova, status 2004 (in Romanian) ( Memento of February 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ eNews: "Молдавский язык древнее румынского" - Интервью с историком, автором первого первого молдавско, Сявтором первого древнее румынского, Сявтором первого молдавско-Сяваго молдавско-Сявтого молдавско-Сявтого молдавско-5 2013
  10. ↑ Cristina Petrescu, “ Contrasting / Conflicting Identities: Bessarabians, Romanians, Moldovans ( Memento of the original from August 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. “In Nation-Building and Contested Identities, Polirom, 2001, p. 157. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pasts.ceu.hu
  11. ^ K. Heitmann (1989): Moldauisch. In: G. Holtus, M. Metzeltin and C. Schmitt (eds.): Lexikon der Romanistische Linguistik , Tübingen, Vol. 3, pp. 508-521.
  12. ↑ Biblioteca Congresului American a suprimat codurile atribuite limbii moldovenești în standardul ISO 639 , urmând ca în locul acestora să fie folosite codurile limbii române: ro , ron și rum . Gardianul , 8 noiembrie 2008, Limba moldovenească a fost scoasă de americani din codurile ISO ( Memento of the original from June 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gardianul.ro