Romanian (limba română IPA ? {{IPA|/'limba ro'mɨnə/}}) is the fifth of the Romance languages ? in terms of number of speakers. It is spoken as a first language by somewhere around 24 to 26 million people, and enjoys official status in Romania, Moldova ? and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina ? (Serbia ?). The official form of the Moldovan language ? <ref name=Moldova/> in the Republic of Moldova ? is identical to the official form of Romanian save for a minor rule in spelling ?. Romanian is also an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations (such as the Latin Union ? and the European Union ? – the latter as of 2007).

Romanian speakers are also found abroad in many other countries (due to emigration), notably in Italy ?, Spain ?, the United States ?, Canada ?, France ? and Germany ? (cf. Romanians ?). Owing to a general lack of consistently-derived data, precise estimates for the total numbers of Romanian-speaking emigrants are not available. Some secondary sources claim for example that more than 3 million Romanian speakers live abroad as immigrants in Europe ? and North America ?<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20041025024030/http://www.expres.ro/topstory/?news_id=154270http://web.archive.org/web/20041025024030/http://www.expres.ro/topstory/?news_id=154270 "Milioane de români pe drumul emigrarii"] ("Millions of Romanians on the road of emigration"). Evenimentul Zilei ?, May 10 ?, 2004. Page is on Internet Archive ?, retrieved Oct 25, 2004.</ref>; however, such census data as is available indicates that these numbers may be overestimates.

== History == thumb|440px|The place of Romanian within the Romance language family ?

The Romanian territory was inhabited in ancient times by the Dacians ?, an Indo-European people. They were defeated by the Roman Empire ? in 106 ? and part of Dacia (Oltenia ?, Banat ? and Transylvania ?) became a Roman province. For the next 165 years, there is evidence of considerable Roman colonization in the area, the region being in close communication with the rest of the Roman empire. Vulgar Latin ? became the language of the administration and commerce.

Under the pressure of the Free Dacians ? and of the Goths ?, the Roman administration and legions were withdrawn from Dacia between 271 ?-275 ?. Whether the Romanians are the descendants of these people that abandoned the area and settled south of Danube or of the people that remained in Dacia is a matter of debate. For further discussion, see Origin of Romanians ?.

Due to its geographical isolation, Romanian was probably the first language that split and until the modern age was not influenced by other Romance languages, which can explain why it is one of the most uniform languages in Europe. It is more conservative than other Romance languages in nominal ? morphology. Romanian has preserved declension ?, but whereas Latin had six cases, Romanian has three, the nominative ?/accusative ?, the genitive ?/dative ?, and the vocative ?, and retains the neuter gender ? as well. However, the verbal ? morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compound perfect ? and future tense ? as the other Romance languages.

frame|Map of Balkans with regions inhabited by Romanians/Vlachs highlighted ?

All the dialects of Romanian are believed to have been unified in a Common Romanian ? language until sometime between the 7th ? and the 10th century ? when the area was influenced by the Byzantine Empire ? and Romanian became influenced by the Slavonic languages ?. Aromanian language ? has very few Slavonic words. Also, the variations in the Daco-Romanian ? dialect (spoken throughout Romania and Moldova) are very small. The use of this uniform Daco-Romanian dialect extends well beyond the borders of the Romanian state: a Romanian-speaker from Moldova speaks the same language as a Romanian-speaker from the Serbian Banat ?, indicating a relatively recent migration to the northern territories.

Romanian developed in isolation with regard to the other Romance languages. Therefore, it was influenced by Slavonic (due to migration/assimilation, and feudal/ecclesiastical relations), Greek (Byzantine, then Phanariote ?), Turkish, and Hungarian, while the other Romance languages adopted words and features of Germanic ?.

== Classification and related languages ==

Romanian is a Romance language ?, belonging to the Italic branch ? of the Indo-European language family ?, having much in common with languages such as French ?, Italian ?, Portuguese ? and Spanish ?.

However, the languages closest to Romanian are the other Eastern Romance languages ?, spoken south of Danube: Aromanian/Macedo-Romanian ?, Megleno-Romanian ? and Istro-Romanian ?, which are sometimes classified as dialects of Romanian. An alternative name for Romanian used by linguists to disambiguate with the other Eastern Romance languages is "Daco-Romanian", referring to the area where it is spoken (which corresponds roughly to the onetime Roman ? province of Dacia ?).

The Romanian variety spoken in Moldova has been named Moldovan language ? by the Soviet and later Moldovan authorities, but linguists do not recognize it as a different language.

Out of the main Romance languages, Romanian is closest to Italian ?, the two being mutually intelligible ? to some extent, especially in their cultivated forms. However, compared to Italian, Romanian sounds considerably softer and less emphatic (rather like Portuguese compared to Spanish). Even though Romanian has obvious lexical and grammatical similarities with French ?, Catalan ?, Spanish ? or Portuguese ?, it is not mutually intelligible with them to a practical extent; Romanian speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary before being able to understand even the simplest sentences in those languages (and vice-versa).

In the following sample sentence (meaning "She always closes the window before having dinner.") cognates ? are written in bold:

:Ea închide întotdeauna fereastra înainte de a cina. (Romanian) :Ea semper fenestram claudit antequam cenet. (Latin) : Ella (or lei) chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare. (Italian) : Elle ferme toujours la fenętre avant de dîner. (French) :Ella siempre cierra la ventana antes de cenar. (Spanish) :Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. (Portuguese)

On the other hand, Romanian vocabulary has been strongly influenced by French and Italian in the Modern Age (see #French, Italian and other international words). At present, the lexical similarity ? with Italian is estimated at 77%, whereas French follows at 75%, Sardinian 74%, Catalan 73%, Spanish at 71%, Portuguese and Rheto-Romance at 72%.

== Geographic distribution == {| border=1 align=right cellpadding=0 cellspacing=2 width=345 style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em; border: 1px #dddddd solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;" |+<big><big>Romanian language countries and territories</big></big> |- |colspan="4"|345px|right|Dark red: national; red: official language; Light red: national minority; green: minority.? <center> national | official | national minority | minority |-

bgcolor=#DDDDDD| Country

bgcolor=#DDDDDD|Speakers (%)

bgcolor=#DDDDDD|Speakers (native)

bgcolor=#DDDDDD|Population (2005 ?)

colspan="4" bgcolor=#f9f9f9|Europe ?

|- |Romania | align="right" | 91% | align="right" | 19,736,517 | align="right" | 21,698,181 |- |Moldova ? ˛ | align="right" | 78.2% | align="right" | 2,649,477 | align="right" | 3,388,071 |- |Transnistria ? ł | align="right" | 31.9% | align="right" | 177,050 | align="right" | 555,500 |- |Vojvodina ? (Serbia ?) | align="right" | 1.5% | align="right" | 29,512 | align="right" | 2,031,992 |- |colspan="4"|not official: |- | (Serbia ?) 4 | align="right" | 5.9% | align="right" | 42,075 | align="right" | 712,050 |- |Ukraine ? 5 | align="right" | 0.8% | align="right" | 327,703 | align="right" | 48,457,000 |- |Hungary ? | align="right" | 0.08% | align="right" | 8,482 | align="right" | 10,198,315 |- |Italy ? | align="right" | 0.43% | align="right" | 248,849 | align="right" | 58,462,375 |-

colspan="4" bgcolor=#f9f9f9|Asia ?

|- |colspan="4"|not official: |- |Israel ? | align="right" | 3.7% | align="right" | 250,000 | align="right" | 6,800,000 |- |Kazakhstan ? 1 | align="right" | 0.1% | align="right" | 20,054 | align="right" | 14,953,126 |- |Russia ? 1 | align="right" | 0.12% | align="right" | 178,000 | align="right" | 145,537,200 |-

colspan="4" bgcolor=#f9f9f9|The Americas ?

|- |colspan="4"|not official: |- |Canada ? | align="right" | 0.2% | align="right" | 60,520 | align="right" | 32,207,113 |- |United States ? 6 | align="right" | 0.11% | align="right" | 340,000 | align="right" | 281,421,906 |-

colspan="4" bgcolor=#f9f9f9 align="left" |

1 Many are Moldovans who were deported ˛ Data only for the districts on the right bank of Dniester (without Transnistria and the city of Tighina) In Moldova, it is called "Moldovan language ?" ł Transnistria's independence is not internationally recognized Here it is called "Moldovan language ?" and it is written in Cyrillic ? 4 Officially divided into Vlachs and Romanians 5 Most in Northern Bukovina and Southern Bessarabia; according to a Moldova Noastră study (based on the latest Ukrainian census); the study also says that there are 409,000 ethnic Romanians in Ukraine. [http://noinu.rdscj.ro/article.php?articleID=146&document=4] 6 See Romanian-American ? |}

Romanian is spoken mostly in Romania, Moldova ?, Ukraine ?, Hungary ?, Serbia ?, Bulgaria ?, but there are also Romanian language speakers in countries like Canada ?, United States ?, Germany ?, Israel ?, Australia ? and New Zealand ?, mainly due to post-World War II ? emigration. A further surge in emigration to the Western countries occurred following the collapse of the Communist Bloc ? in 1989, as well as to other Latin countries such as Italy ?, Spain ?, France ?, and Portugal ?.

===Legal status in Romania=== Per the Constitution of Romania ? of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic.<ref>[http://www.cdep.ro/pls/dic/site.page?den=act2_1&par1=1 Constitution of Romania]</ref>

Romania mandates the use of Romanian in official government publications, public education ? and legal contracts ?; advertisements ? must bear a translation of foreign words.

Institutul Limbii Române ?, established by the Ministry of Education of Romania, promotes the knowledge of the Romanian language and supports people willing to learn this language, working together with the MFA ?'s Department for Romanians Abroad.<ref>[http://www.edu.ro/index.php/articles/c262/ Ministry of Education of Romania]</ref>

There exist in addition to Romanian a variety of officially-recognised minority languages spoken in Romania; see Languages of Romania ?.

===Legal status in Moldova=== {{main|Moldovan language}}

About 10% of the world's Roumanophones are Moldovan, and Romanian is the single official language of Moldova ?. In the Constitution, the language is officially named Moldovan ?, although most linguists consider it virtually the same as the Romanian language. Also, the language used in schools ?, media ?, scientific ? environment and in the colloquial speech and writing is called Romanian.

Romanian has been the only official language of Moldova ? since the endorsement of the law on language of the Moldavian SSR ?. This law, still in force today, mandates the use of Moldovan in all the political, economical, cultural and social spheres, as it also does assert the real existence of "linguistic Moldo-Romanian ? identity". <ref>[http://www.iatp.md/ladom/downloads/M3.doc Legea cu privire la functionarea limbilor vorbite pe teritoriul RSS Moldovenesti Nr.3465-XI din 01.09.89 Vestile nr.9/217, 1989] (Law regarding the usage of languages spoken on the territory of the Republic of Moldova): "Moldavian RSS supports the desire of the Moldovans that live across the borders of the Republic, and considering the really existing linguistical Moldo-Romanian identity - of the Romanians that live on the territory of the USSR, of doing their studies and satisfying their cultural needs in their maternal language."</ref>

Title I, Article 13 of the Moldovan Constitution, names it the "national language" (limba de stat) of the country. In the unrecognized state ? of Transnistria ?, it is co-official with Ukrainian ? and Russian ?.

In the 2004 census ?, out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova, 16.5% (558,508) chose Romanian as their mother tongue, whereas 60% chose Moldovan. While 40% of all urban ? Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose Romanian as their mother tongue, in the country side hardly each 7th Romanian/Moldovan speaker indicated Romanian as his mother tongue.<ref>National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova: [http://www.statistica.md/recensamint.php?lang=ro Census 2004]</ref> However, the group of experts from the international census observation Mission to the Republic of Moldova concluded that the items in the questionnaire dealing with nationality and language proved to be the most sensitive ones, particularly with reference to the recording of responses to these questions as being "Moldovan" or "Romanian", and therefore it concluded that special care would need to be taken in using them.<ref>[http://azi.md/news?ID=34282 Experts Offering to Consult the National Statistics Bureau in Evaluation of the Census Data], Moldova Azi, May 19, 2005, story attributed to AP Flux ?. Retrieved October 11, 2005.</ref>

===Legal status in Vojvodina=== Article 8 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia ? (published in the Official Gazette of RS", No. 1/90) stipulates that in the Republic of Serbia ? the Serbo-Croat language ? and the Cyrillic ? script shall be officially used, while the Latin ? script shall be officially used in the manner established by the law. In addition to that, the provision in Article 8/2 precisely determines that in the regions of the Republic of Serbia inhabited by national minorities, their own languages and scripts shall be officially used as well, in the manner established by law.

Article 6 of the Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina ? (published in the "Official Gazette of APV") determines that, together with the Serbo-Croat language and the Cyrillic script, and the Latin script as stipulated by the law, the Hungarian ?, Slovak ?, Romanian and Ruthenian ? languages and their scripts, as well as languages and scripts of other nationalities, shall simultaneously be officially used in the work of the bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in the manner established by the law. The bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are: the Assembly, the Executive Council and the Provincial administrative bodies.<ref>[http://www.puma.vojvodina.sr.gov.yu/text.php?sek=42&vr=1&PHPSESSID=e5dca20bb275318e6915ffc24968d402 Official use of languages and scripts in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina] published by the Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities</ref>

The Romanian language and script are officially used in 8 municipalities: Alibunar ?, , Zitişte ?, Zrenianin ?, Kovăciţa ?, Cuvin ?, Plandişte ? and Secanj ?. In the municipality of Vârşeţ ?, Romanian is official only in the villages of Vojvodinci, Markovac, Straža, Mali Žam, Malo Središte, Mesić, Jablanka, Sočica, Ritiševo, Orešac and Kuštilj.<ref>Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities: [http://www.puma.vojvodina.sr.gov.yu/dokumenti/sljezik.xls Official use of the Romanian language in the APV]</ref>

In the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1,5% Vojvodinians chose Romanian as their mother tongue (barely 0,1% of the world's Roumanophones).

===Legal status in other countries and organisations=== In other parts of Serbia the Romanian communities (see Vlach language ?) have very few rights regarding the use and preservation of their language in schools, press, administration and institutions.{{citation needed}}

In parts of Ukraine where Romanians consitute a significant share of the local population (districts in Chernivtsi ?, Odessa ? and Zakarpattia ? oblasts ?) the Romanian language is being taught in schools as a primary language and there are newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting in Romanian.<ref>Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research: [http://www.ucipr.kiev.ua/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3384&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0], [http://www.ucipr.kiev.ua/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3377&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0]</ref><ref>[http://www.saske.sk/cas/1-2000/gulpa-petrisce.html Slovak Academy of Sciences in Kosice]</ref> The University of Chernivtsi ? trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics.<ref>[http://www.chnu.cv.ua/index.php?page=ua/gradinf/rules/02bac_d University of Chernivtsi]</ref>

Romanian is also an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations (such as the Latin Union ? and the European Union ? - the latter as of 2007).

Romanian is one of the five languages in which religious services are performed in the autonomous monastic state of Mount Athos ?, spoken in the sketae of Prodromos and Lacu (a sketa being a community of monks; sketae is plural).

===Romanian as a second and foreign language=== Use of Romanian as a second language ? is recorded among many of the ethnic minorities in Romania, as well as Moldova. According to a 1979 census in the Moldova SSR (as it was then), approximately 4% of the population indicated Romanian/Moldovan as their second language <ref>[http://countrystudies.us/moldova/16.htm Language, religion and culture in the Moldavian SSR]</ref>.

Romanian is studied and taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such as Serbia ? (Vojvodina ?), Bulgaria ?, Ukraine ? and Hungary ?. The Romanian Cultural Institute ? (ICR) has since 1992 organised summer training courses in Romanian for language teachers in these countries.<ref>[http://www.ziua.net/display.php?id=183071&data=2005-08-19&ziua=f08bdeacd2583ee59a42d5f08d1fba7e Cursuri de perfecţionare], published in Ziua ? on August 19 ?, 2005 ?</ref> In some of the schools, there are non-Romanian nationals, that study Romanian as a foreign language (for example the Nicolae Bălcescu High-school in Gyula ?, Hungary).

Romanian is taught as a foreign language ? in various Tertiary institutions, most prevalently in neighboring European ? countries (such as Germany ?, France ? and Italy ?, as well as the Netherlands ?) but also elsewhere, such as the USA ?. Overall, it is taught as a foreign language in 38 countries around the world.<ref>Romanian Language Institute: [http://www.old.edu.ro/download/ilrdoc3.pdf Data concerning the teaching of the Romanian language abroad]</ref>

=== Dialects and regional varieties === {{main|Varieties of Romanian language}}

The term "Romanian" in a general sense envelops four hardly mutually intelligible speech varieties commonly regarded as independent languages. For more on these, please see the article "Eastern Romance languages ?".

It is thought that the Romanian language appeared north and south of the Danube. All the four dialects are offsprings of the Romance language ? spoken both in the North and South Danube, before the settlement of the Slavonian ? tribes south of the river - Daco-Romanian in the North, and the other three dialects in the south.

However, this article deals primarily with Daco-Romanian ?, and thus the regional variations of that will be discussed here instead. The differences between these varieties are usually very small, usually consisting in a few dozen regional words and some phonetic changes.

thumb|340px|Romanian varieties (graiuri) Blue: Southern varieties Red: Northern varieties ?

Like all other languages, Romanian can be regarded as a dialect continuum ?. However, such a formulation tends to obscure the high homogeneity and uniformity of the language. The Romanian language cannot be neatly divided into separate dialects and Romanians themselves speak of the differences as accents or "speeches" (in Romanian: "accent" or "grai"). This correctly conveys the linguistics notion of accent ?, as language variants that only feature slight pronunciation differences (Romanian accents are fully mutually intelligible). Several accents are usually distinguished:

Muntenian accent (Graiul muntenesc), spoken mainly in Wallachia ? and southern parts of Dobruja.
Moldavian accent (Graiul moldovenesc), spoken mainly in Moldavia ?, northern parts of Dobruja ? and the Republic of Moldova ?. Written <nowiki></nowiki> is realised as /k/; written <nowiki><c></nowiki> before front vowels is realised as {{IPA|/ʃ/}}. Written <nowiki><ă></nowiki>, in final position, is palatalized.
Maramureşian accent (Graiul maramureşean), spoken mainly in Maramureş ?.
Transylvanian accent (Graiul ardealean), spoken mainly in Ardeal ?.
Banatian accent (Graiul bănăţean), spoken mainly in Banat ?. Written <nowiki><t></nowiki> before front vowels is realised as {{IPA|/ʧ/}}.
Oltenian accent (Graiul oltenesc), spoken mainly in Oltenia ? and by the Romanian minority in Timok ? region of Serbia. Notable feature of this dialect is the usage of the Simple perfect tense rather than the Complex perfect which is used in other dialects.

Over the last century, however, regional accents have been weakened due to mass communications and greater mobility.

== Contacts with other languages ==

=== Dacian language === The Dacian language ? was an Indo-European language spoken by the ancient Dacians. It may have been the first language to influence the Latin spoken in Dacia, but there is very little knowledge about it. About 300 words found only in Romanian (in all dialects) or with a cognate in the Albanian language ? may be inherited from Dacian, many of them being related to pastoral life (for example: balaur=dragon; brânză=cheese; mal=shore; see: Eastern Romance substratum ?). Some linguists have asserted that Albanians are Dacians who were not Romanized, and migrated south.

A different view is that these non-Latin words (many with Albanian cognates) are not necessarily Dacian, but rather were brought into the territory that is modern Romania by Romance-speaking shepherds migrating north from Albania, Serbia, and northern Greece who became the Romanian people. However, the Eastern Romance substratum appears to have been a satem ? language, while the Paleo-Balkan languages spoken in Northern Greece (Ancient Macedonian language ?) and Albania (Illyrian language ?) were most likely centum ? languages.

The general view is that Dacian was a satem ? language, as was Thracian ?. Dacian was either close to the neighboring Albanian or Balto-Slavic branches of Indo-European, or a member of a distinct branch.

=== Balkan linguistic union ? === While most parts of the Romanian grammar and morphology are based on Vulgar Latin ?, there are however some features that are shared only with other languages of the Balkans and cannot be found in other Romance languages.

The languages of this sprachbund ? belong to distinct branches of the Indo-European languages: Bulgarian and Albanian, and in some cases Greek ? and Serbian ?.

Among the shared features, there are the postponed definite article ?, the syncretism ? of genitive and dative cases, the formation of the future and perfect tenses, as well as the avoidance of infinitive.

=== Slavic languages === The Slavic influence was first due to the migration of Slavic tribes, which traversed the territory of today's Romania during the formation of the language. It is interesting to note that Slavs were assimilated north of Danube, whereas they almost completely assimilated the Romanized population (Vlachs ?) living south of Danube. An important part of this population was still Vlach in the 10th century, only to fade away along with Vlach political power. For more information about this, see Aromanian ? and Megleno-Romanian ?. The other surrounding languages (all Slavic, with the exception of Hungarian) also influenced Romanian, through centuries of mutual interactions.

Of great importance was the influence of Old Church Slavonic ?, as it was the liturgical language ? of the Romanian Orthodox Church ? (compared to western and central European countries which used Latin ?) from the Middle Ages, until the 18th century ?.

Borrowings from Old Church Slavonic: a izbăvi from Sl. izbaviti=to save; a blagoslovi from Sl. blagosloviti=to bless; blajin from Sl. blažĕnŭ=merciful, peaceful; cinste from Sl. čĩştĩ=honesty; ispravă from Sl. isprava= deed, accomplishment; vrednic from Sl. vrĕdĩnŭ=dignified, worthy; jertfă from Sl. žrŭtyva=sacrifice, immolation; mir from Sl. miro=chrism, holy oil;

As was characteristic of the Middle Ages ?, the Church had a great influence on people's lives. Thus even basic words such as a iubi=to love; glas=voice; nevoie=need; prieten=friend are of Church Slavonic origin. Names were also influenced by the use of Slavonic in Church and in administration.

However, many Slavic words are archaisms ? and it is estimated that of the 20% of Slavic borrowings, only 10% are in use in modern Romanian{{fact}}.

There are some Slavonic influences, both on the phonetic and on the lexical level—for example Romanian took the Slavonic da for yes.

=== Other influences === Even before the 19th century, Romanian came in contact with several other languages. Notable among these are:

Greek ? (for example: folos < ófelos = use; buzunar < buzunára = pocket; proaspăt < prósfatos = fresh)
Hungarian ? (for example: oraş < város = town; a cheltui < költeni = to spend; a făgădui < fogadni = to promise; a mântui < menteni = to save)
Turkish ? (for example: cafea < kahve = coffee; cutie < kutu = box; papuc < papuç = slipper; ciorbă < çorba = whole meal soup or sour soup)
German ? (for example: cartof < Kartoffel = potato; bere < Bier = beer; şurub < Schraube = screw)

=== French, Italian and other international words === Since the 19th century ?, many modern words were borrowed from the other Romance languages, especially from French ? and Italian ? (for example: birou < bureau = desk, office; avion = airplane; exploata = exploit, etc). It was estimated that about 38% of the number of words in Romanian are of French or Italian origin and adding this to the words that were inherited from Latin, it makes about 75-85% of the Romanian words that can be traced to Latin.

However, many of these Latin words had entered Romanian already, first as part of its core or popular vocabulary, and later as a more literary international borrowing. Typically, the popular word is a noun and the borrowed word an adjective. Some examples:

brother: frate / fratern
finger: deget / digital
water: apă / acvatic
cold: frig / frigid
eye: ochi / ocular
dust: pulbere / pulverizat
liquid: licoare / lichior (from French liqueur ?)
tooth: dinte / dentist
fat: gras / cras (from French crasse, meaning crass ?)
land: ţărână / teren (from French terrain)
grave: mormânt / monument (from French monument ?)
anger: mâníe / manie (meaning mania ? via French manie)
patch (fabric): petic / patch (software; via English patch ?)

Recently, an increasing number of English words have been borrowed (such as: gem < jam; interviu < interview; meci < match; manager < manager; fotbal < football). These words are assigned grammatical gender in Romanian and handled according to Romanian rules; thus "the manager" is managerul.

== Grammar == {{main|Romanian grammar}}

Romanian nouns are inflected by gender (feminine, masculine and neuter), number (singular and plural) and case (nominative/accusative, dative/genitive and vocative). The articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns, agree ? in gender with the noun they reference.

Romanian is the only Romance language where definite articles ? are enclitic ?: that is, attached to the end of the noun (as in North Germanic languages ?), instead of in front (proclitic). They were formed, as in other Romance languages, from the Latin demonstrative pronouns.

Romanian has four verbal conjugations ? which further split into ten conjugation patterns. Verbs can be put in five moods ? that are inflected according to the person (indicative ?, conditional ?/optative ?, imperative ?, subjunctive ?, and presumptive ?) and four impersonal moods (infinitive ?, gerund ?, supine ?, and participle ?).

=== Phonology === {{main|Romanian phonology}}

Romanian has seven vowels ?: {{IPA|/a/}}, {{IPA|/e/}}, {{IPA|/i/}}, {{IPA|/o/}}, {{IPA|/u/}}, {{IPA|/ə/}}, and {{IPA|/ɨ/}}. Additionally, {{IPA|/ř/}} and {{IPA|/y/}} may appear in some words.

In final positions after consonants (rarely inside words) a short non-syllabic {{IPA|/i/}} can occur, which is {{IPA2|ʲ}} and is produced as a palatalization ? of the preceding consonant. A similar sound, the voiceless ending u, existed in old Romanian but has disappeared from the standard language.

There are also four semivowels and twenty consonants.

====Diphthongs==== Descending diphthongs: ai, au, ei, eu, ii, iu, oi, ou, ui, ăi, ău, îi, îu.

Ascending diphthongs: ea, eo, ia, ie, io, iu, oa, ua, uă.

====Triphthongs==== Pattern S-V-S (main vowel between two semivowels): eai, eau, iai, iau, iei, ieu, ioi, iou, oai.

Pattern S-S-V (two-semivowel glide before the main vowel): eoa, ioa.

====Phonetic changes==== {{main|Latin to Romanian sound changes}}

Due to its isolation from the other Romance languages, the phonetic evolution of Romanian was quite different, but does share a few changes with Italian, such as [kl] > [kj] (Lat. clarus > Rom. chiar, Ital. chiaro) and also a few with Dalmatian ?, such as [gn] > [mn] (Lat. cognatus > Rom. cumnat, Dalm. comnut).

Among the notable phonetic changes are:

diphthongization of e and o
: Lat. cera > Rom. ceară (wax)
: Lat. sole > Rom. soare (sun)
iotacism [e] → [ie] in the beginning of the word
: Lat. herba > Rom. iarbă (grass, herb)
velar [k], [g] → labial [p], [b], [m] before alveolar consonants:
: Lat. octo > Rom. opt (eight)
: Lat. quattuor > Rom. patru (four)
: Lat. lingua > Rom. limbă (tongue, language)
: Lat. signum > Rom. semn (sign)
: Lat. coxa > Rom. coapsă (thigh)
rotacism [l] → [r] between vowels
: Lat. caelum > Rom. cer (sky)
Alveolars [d] and [t] palatalized to [dz]/[z] and [ts] when before short [e] or long [i]
: Lat. deus > Rom. zeu (god)
: Lat. tenem > Rom. ţine (hold)

On the other hand, it (along with French) has lost the /kw/ (qu) sound from original Latin, turning it either into p (patru, "four"; cf. It. quattro) or a hard or soft c (când, "when"; calitate, "quality").

== Writing system == thumb|200px|[[Neacşu ?'s letter is the oldest surviving document written in Romanian]] thumb|300px|A sample of the Romanian, written in the [[Romanian Cyrillic alphabet ?, which was still in use in the early 19th century]]

The first written record of a Romanic language spoken in the Middle Ages in the Balkans was written by the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes Confessor ? in the 6th century ? about a military expedition against the Avars ? from 587 ?, when a Vlach muleteer accompanying the Byzantine army noticed that the load was falling from one of the animals and shouted to a companion "Torna, torna fratre" (meaning "Return, return brother!").

The oldest written text in Romanian is a letter from late June 1521 ?, in which Neacşu ? of Câmpulung ? wrote to the mayor of Braşov ? about an imminent attack of the Turks. It was written using the Cyrillic alphabet ?, like most early Romanian writings. The earliest writing in Latin script was a late 16th century ? Transylvanian ? text which was written with the Hungarian alphabet ? conventions.

In the late 1700s, 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.

In the Soviet Republic of Moldova ?, a special version of the Cyrillic alphabet derived from the Russian version was used, until 1989 ?, when it returned to the Romanian Latin alphabet.

=== Romanian alphabet === {{main|Romanian alphabet}}

The Romanian alphabet ? is as follows:

A, a (a); Ă, ă (ă); Â, â (â din a); B, b (be), C, c (ce); D, d (de), E, e (e); F, f (fe / ef); G, g (ghe / ge); H, h (ha / haş); I, i (i); Î, î (î din i); J, j (je), K, k (ka de la kilogram), L, l (le / el); M, m (me / em); N, n (ne / en); O, o (o); P, p (pe); R, r, (re / er); S, s (se / es); {{polytonic|Ș}} {{polytonic|ș}} ({{polytonic|ș}}e); T, t (te); {{polytonic|Ț}} {{polytonic|ț}} ({{polytonic|ț}}e); U, u (u); V, v (ve); X, x (ics); Z, z (ze / zet).

The Romanian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet ?, and has five additional letters (these are not diacriticals, but letters in their own right). Initially, there were as many as 12 additional letters, but some of them disappeared in subsequent reforms. Also, until the early 20th century, a short vowel marker was used.

Today, the Romanian alphabet is largely phonetic. However, the "â" (used inside the words) and "î" (used at the beginning or the end; it can also be used in the middle of a composite word, see the exception below) both represent the same close central unrounded vowel ? {{IPA|/ɨ/}}, which is a slack sound somewhere between "i" in English "bit" and "oo" in English "food".

Until 1904 there were four letters representing the {{IPA|/ɨ/}} sound: â, ę, î and ű. By the middle of the century, through successive simplifications, only â and î remained in use. A further simplification was mandated in 1953 ? whereby î would be used exclusively, including in such words as România (which became Romînia) or limba română (which became romînă). For this reason, the spelling reform was perceived as an attempt of the new pro-Soviet government to delete the Romanians' national identity. In 1965 ?, exceptions were made for România and the other related words; these would continue to be spelled with â.

thumb|180 px|A pair of street signs in [[Bucharest ? show the before and after of the 1993 spelling reform.]] In 1993 ? the Romanian Academy ? decided to fully revert to the pre-1953 spelling rules, on the grounds that the 1953 reform was forcibly imposed by the Communists ?. According to the current usage accepted by the Romanian Academy ?, {{IPA|/ɨ/}} is transcribed as either î when used as the first or last letter of words, or â when it occurs in the middle of the word (exception: î occurs also in the middle of composite words; examples: bineînţeles, reînvestire). Also the first person singular and third person plural of the verb a fi "to be" have to be spelled and pronounced as sunt instead of the previous form sînt. However this move was met with resistance, especially in the linguistic community. The Academy rules are mandatory in government organisations and in state schools. In practice, either usage is acceptable, and indeed there are publishing houses and printed magazines who use either of the two rules.

Another exception from a completely phonetic writing system is the fact that vowels ? and their respective semivowels ? are not distinguished in writing. In dictionaries the distinction is marked by separating the entry word into syllables ? for the words containing a hiatus ? that might be mispronounced as a diphthong ? or a triphthong ?.

Stressed vowels also are not marked in writing, except very rarely in cases where by misplacing the stress a word might change its meaning. For example trei copíi means "three children" while trei cópii means "three copies".

Letters K, Q, W, and Y are not part of the native Romanian alphabet; they are used mainly to write loanwords, such as kilogram, quasar, watt, and yoga.

Because early computer encoding systems did not provide the letters ș and ț (representing ({{IPA|/ʃ/}}) and {{IPA|/ʦ/}}, respectively) writing them with a cedilla (i.e., ş, ţ) instead of a comma below is now rather widespread. However, the Romanian Academy ? has declared the use of cedilla incorrect, and the use of comma below is preferable where the quality of typography is important.

===Reading rules=== Reading Romanian involves learning a few rules, quite similar to reading Italian ?.

h represents {{IPA|/h/}}
j represents {{IPA|/ʒ/}}
There are two letters with a comma below, {{latinx|Ș}} and {{latinx|Ț}}, which represent the sounds {{IPA|/ʃ/}} and {{IPA|/ʦ/}}. However, the allographs with a cedilla instead of a comma, Ş and Ţ, became widespread when pre-Unicode ? and early Unicode character sets

TheLanguageOfRomanians

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TheLanguageOfRomanians

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bgcolor=#DDDDDD|Speakers </br>(native)

bgcolor=#DDDDDD|Population </br> (2005?)

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colspan="4" bgcolor=#f9f9f9|The Americas?

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colspan="4" bgcolor=#f9f9f9|Asia ?

colspan="4" bgcolor=#f9f9f9|The Americas ?