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ROMANIAN LANGUAGE

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Romance language derived mainly from the Latin spoken in the ancient Roman province of DACIA, (q.v.), which coincides roughly with modern Romania. Romanian has four principal dialects. Daco-Romanian, or Romanian proper, is spoken by about 18 million people in Romania, in parts of northeastern Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Hungary and (in a variant called Moldovan) in Moldova. Macedo-Romanian, or Aromanian, has several hundred thousand speakers in various Balkan countries. Only a few thousand still speak Megleno-Romanian, or Meglenitic, in Greece northwest of Salonika; and Istro-Romanian, on the Istrian Peninsula of Croatia. These dialects are classified by some linguists as independent languages.

The Romanian literary language is based on the Daco-Romanian of the historic region of Walachia, in southern Romania. Romanian preserves some Latin traits lost in other ROMANCE LANGUAGES, (q.v.), notably the inflection of nouns. Like other non-Romance Balkan languages, it places the definite article after the noun. It has absorbed an unusually large number of Slavic, Greek, Turkish, Hungarian, and Albanian words.

An article from Funk & Wagnalls® New Encyclopedia. © 2006 World Almanac Education Group. A WRC Media Company. All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted by written agreement, uses of the work inconsistent with U.S. and applicable foreign copyright and related laws are prohibited.

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ENCYCLOPEDIA:

ROMANIA,

POPULATION About 89% of the Romanian people are native-born. The official language is Romanian (see Romanian Language), one of the Romance languages, . . .

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ENCYCLOPEDIA: ROMANCE LANGUAGES,

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ENCYCLOPEDIA: INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES,

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