Language

Introduction

Romanian is the last of the main Romance languages, included with Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Like the others, it is based in Latin but also includes influences from surrounding languages from an early time, starting in 7th Century AD when the Slaves came to the region. This influence is especially apparent in their writing, as they adopted the Cyrillic alphabet.

Previous to the full use of Romanian in documents, Slavonic was the main language of culture, written in the Cyrillic alphabet. The first document written entirely in Romanian dates to the 1500s. Early use of Romanian was largely religious, with translations of the gospels beginning into it done in the 1530s.

The language’s use in literature and in documents in the region grew in the 17th and 18th Centuries, especially after eliminating the use of Slavonic in the second half of the 17th Century in favor of this regional language in Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia. It was during this time that a literary tradition and efforts to standardize the language began.

The first standardized grammar book for Romanian is published around 1780. During the 1800s, Romania began to go about the process of re-latinizing their language, which included the standardization of spelling and an adoption of the Latin Alphabet, with the alterations of a few characters to match the language. A transitional alphabet was put in place, combining both Cyrillic and Latin characters until a fully latinized alphabet was standardized a few decades later.

The Romanian Speaking World

Romanian is spoken throughout the country of Romania as well as Moldova. Together, the Romanian speaking world is comprised of over 24 million people today.

Language diversity in records

Like any language, Romanian has distinct regional varieties. This is particularly true the earlier the records go back. Southern type in the 17th Century, for example, was mainly used in places like Transylvania and was distinct from the northern dialect. Efforts to formalize and unify the language are deeply tied to the creation of Romania as a country and a unifying effort in the 19th century. Not until the late 19th and 20th centuries was spelling standardized. Even then, Romania’s neighbor, Moldova, didn’t fully adopt the new Latin Alphabet until 1989, instead following a standard set by Russia in their writing.

Records in Romania, beyond being written in different alphabets, also have adopted different languages depending on the region, organization, and time period. The Catholic Church, for example, kept records in Latin in German for much of their history. The Orthodox Church for much of their history kept official and religious documents in Old Church Slavonic. The full use of Romanian in regional records really comes about in the second half of the 17th Century, with Romanian replacing Slavonic as the learned language in Moldavia, Transylvania, and Wachovia. Even after that, different entities continued to keep records in the old language. The Catholic Church, for example, kept records in Latin and even German within the region.