Are Romanians different from Moldovans? About the name of the language: “Moldovan” or “Romanian” They were released, but not everyone
In Moldova, August 31 is an annual holiday, established in 1989 as National Language Day. Exhibitions, festivals, other cultural events and folk festivals are held throughout the country. This year Romania participates in the festival for the first time. What is the national language for Moldova, Moldovan or Romanian?
On the eve of the annual celebration of "Our Language Day" ( Limba noastra) in Moldova, a debate has flared up over whether the name of the holiday should include the term “Romanian language”. Under this name - "Day Romanian language" - the holiday was established in the wake of national revival during the collapse of the Soviet Union, but after the communists returned to power, the word “Romanian” was removed. The language issue in Moldova has long been politically charged: recognition of the identity of the Moldovan and Romanian languages and the transition to the Latin script in early 1990 1980s became the reason for the conflict on the Dniester, the current Moldovan government tried to move away from extreme approaches and provide the opportunity for all citizens of the country to celebrate the day of their native language, no matter what they call it.
The recent call by the President of Romania for all Romanians living in other countries (including Moldovans, whom Traian Basescu also considers Romanians) to identify themselves during the next census as Romanians and their native language as Romanian could also serve as a reason for new disputes. One of the Moldovan parties responded to this with a proposal to enshrine Romanian in the Constitution as the state language. However, the government of Moldova is inclined to a more liberal approach - recognizing the need to build a civil nation based on the principle of citizenship that unites the country, and not on the dividing principle of ethnicity.
The problem is that part of the country’s population identifies itself as Romanians, while another part identifies itself as Moldovans. At the same time, no one has any doubts that the Moldovan language is identical to the Romanian language. Just as there is no doubt about the validity of using the Latin script for the Romance language. The Constitution of the Republic of Moldova states that the state language of the country is Moldovan, but most of the population perceives this as the political name of the language, one of the attributes of statehood.
Another division on the language issue lies along the Dniester. In Transnistria, for the Moldovan language it is still the same as in Soviet times, Cyrillic graphics are used. The paradox is this: those who use the Moldovan language in Transnistria use the Latin script, which is the reason for conflicts between schools teaching in the Moldovan language (they claim infringement of the right to use the Latin alphabet, which is natural for the Moldovan language) and local authorities protecting the Soviet tradition.
The creation of the proletarian Moldavian language, as opposed to the bourgeois Romanian language, began after the formation of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (within the borders of present-day Transnistria) within Ukraine in 1924. Historians point out: Soviet politicians hoped that the “proletarian Moldovan language,” as a mixture of local dialect and Russian, would contribute to a popular uprising both on the right bank of the Dniester (in the so-called Bessarabia, which was then part of Romania), and in Romania itself .
A columnist for the Moldovan RS service talks about the differences between the Moldovan and Romanian languages Alexandru Eftode:
– I call the national language Romanian. In my opinion, this issue has already been resolved among linguists: everyone says that it is the Romanian language, and in any case, it is the same language. There are politicians in Moldovan society who say that this is the Moldovan language. There are also those who propose to change the Constitution, which says that official language– Moldavian. But changing the constitution requires many votes, and politically Moldova is divided almost in half. There is no way to get the votes to change the Constitution on this issue.
– The territory of modern Moldova was, to one degree or another, under Russian influence for two hundred years, and all this time the policy of Russification was pursued to a greater or lesser extent. Are there differences in pronunciation and vocabulary between the national language in Moldova and the Romanian language in Romania?
– There was an interval between the two world wars, when the current Republic of Moldova, Bessarabia, was part of Romania. On the left bank of the Dniester, Stalin created the Autonomous Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, on the territory of which they tried to create the Moldavian language. After the war, they tried to introduce this language into the newly created Moldavian USSR. There was even such a list - 100 mandatory “Moldavian” words had to be used in any text. Well, for example, in Romanian they call a tie cravată
, and they came up with a “neck collar” or something like that. Or, for example, they took Russian word and added the Moldavian ending. After Stalin's death, even the classics of Marxism-Leninism began to be published in this Moldavian fictitious language, so funny and stupid situations resulted. And this generally presented communism in a bad light. Such a prominent linguist, Vladimir Shishmarev, worked in Leningrad, and under his leadership, Romanian classics began to be published in Soviet Moldova. In Romanian, but only in Cyrillic.
– Are school standards for learning the native language different in Romania and Moldova?
– The standards are uniform. The two Academies of Sciences on different banks of the Prut have the same linguistic norms.
– Several million Russians live in Ukraine. They speak Russian, although with minimal peculiarities of the local use of some individual words. The difference with the Romanian and, relatively speaking, the Moldovan language is exactly that, right?
– If we mean literary language, then there is no difference. But in spoken language the difference is quite large. The language of today's Moldova and Transylvania, for example, is closer than the language of Chisinau and Bucharest. On the other hand, in the Republic of Moldova there is a very big influence provided Russian language. In tsarist times, the political elite - mainly Russians from Russia and local landowners - spoke Russian; the common people were not required to know Russian. During the Soviet period, the influence increased: even now it happens that Moldovans speak Romanian, but use Russian words, which they themselves have converted into the Moldovan way.
– Is the language problem in Moldova still as acute as it was twenty years ago, or is it being erased over time?
- Gradually wears off. If you log into the site Moldovan government, there is a choice - "rus", "eng" and "rom". It doesn’t say “Moldovan language” at all; at this level everything is decided. But this question is used by politicians, because these two decades Moldova faced either Moscow or the West. The situation develops as if in a spiral, every 4-5 years the issue of language becomes acute again.
– In this difficult situation, is there a need for a “National Language Day” in Moldova?
– I would probably cancel it, my native language is Romanian, but we must first agree that the country still celebrates. Having met such an uncertain holiday, Moldovans will not speak Romanian better, and Russians, Ukrainians or Gagauz will not be more willing to learn Romanian.
– Please read some quatrain in Romanian - what is primarily remembered from the school curriculum.
– I will read the first stanzas of the poem by Mihai Eminescu (as he was called in Soviet Moldova), or Mihai Eminescu, as he called himself, from his classic poem “The Morning Star”:
A fost odata ca-n povesti
A fost ca niciodata,
Din rude mari împaratesti,
O prea frumoasa fata.
Si era una la parinti
Si mândra-n toate cele,
Cum e Fecioara intre sfinti
Si luna intre stele…
It translates like this:
From ancient manuscripts we
You could read this
The ruling family has
Growing up was a holy child.
And in the world there has never been
Such a beautiful girl.
She shone hotly
To my dear ones as a clear star...
Is there a fundamental difference between Romanian and Moldovan languages? This question seems very difficult for the average person interested.
It is interesting that the language that officially functions today on the territory of the Republic of Moldova bears the name limba moldovenească, although it is almost identical to the literary Romanian language, which is used in neighboring Romania. At the same time, in the territory of neighboring Transnistria they use the same language, but write it in Cyrillic and, accordingly, the local language is called “Transnistrian Moldavian” - Limba Moldovenaske. Romanian philologists insist that the Moldovan language is not at all independent language, and a dialect of the Romanian language, like Olten or Transylvanian. In their favor, they argue that this dialect is also spoken in the Romanian historical region of Moldova, centered in Suceava, Bacau and Iasi.
The question of what to call the linguistic continuum - a language or a dialect - is still more political than philological. However, the very fact that some very high-ranking officials in the government of Moldova allow themselves to say that Moldovan is Romanian in pure form, says a lot.
The Moldovan language “begins to develop” after Moldova entered the family of socialist nations on the basis of distancing the language spoken on the territory of Moldova from the Romanian models proper. This situation is painfully reminiscent of the Balkan version, when Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito blessed the Macedonian language with the stroke of his pen.
Today, no one questions the viability of this Balkan language. Perhaps only the Greeks allow themselves to make unflattering statements. And even then, not so much about the language, but about the state of Macedonia as a whole. Let us recall that the Greeks are confident in the illegality of using this name by anyone other than the Greeks themselves and refuse to accept such a name for this ex-Yugoslav people, state and language.
Communist leaders, in pursuit of a new social community, seem to have given rise to another linguistic conflict in Europe, of which there are already enough.
In practice, let’s allow the Moldovans to decide for themselves about the existence of a language or dialect, and until then, each of us will remain with our own opinion. And the most interesting thing is that everyone will be right! However, this question may become another antinomy - in logic, this is a situation when opposing judgments have equal logical justification, such an antinomy of the Moldavian language.
Denis Kralikauskas(Lgroup)
inFrance Forums - France in Russian > Life in France > French— questions of learning and teaching > Which language is most related to French?
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They say Italian is very similar, but maybe Algerian has already become 🙂?
I was pleasantly surprised that Turkish has the ending “sion” (operasyon - operation, rehabilitasyon - rehabilitation, rezervasyon - reservation, etc.)
I thought the word pardon was purely French, but it turned out to be the same in Turkish with the same meaning, I wonder which one came from which one :)
Turkish kartuj (cartridge) reads closer to French cartouche than Russian cartridge
plus in Turkish all the stress is mainly on the last syllable.
"Russian cartridge is cool!" - said my son, looking over my shoulder at the monitor. :biggrin:
Tyk is not a Turkish ending, after all, but simply a borrowed European word.
07.07.2003, 13:28
A couple of years ago we were on holiday in Romania. Thus, the locals claimed that Romanian is very similar to French, and that supposedly they can understand the French without a translator :) And they also claimed that Romanian is closest to classical Latin. To my unenlightened ears, it looks like it :)
They also say that Moldovan is very similar and many people in Moldova speak French
07.07.2003, 14:04
There is no “Moldovan” language :) Both in Moldova and Romania they speak Romanian!
And Stephen the Great is great for both peoples :) More precisely, they are one and the same people.
Sanatata si bukoria frate si sore, hi sabem!
In my opinion, Romanian sounds very far from French. However, I’m not a linguist, I don’t understand. :)))))
PS I can’t vouch for the correct spelling of the phrase, I learned it by ear
Romanian is so similar that you can easily read newspapers in Romanian even if you know French...
It’s a little more difficult to hear, but there are a lot of words with Latin roots, so it’s easy to remember, although they say that the structure is more complicated (cases and so on).
It’s funny that some swear words in Romanian are taken from Russian... 😉
She lived in Moldova for five years and studied Moldavian and French. The languages are very similar. All of Moldova used to learn French and Spanish, but now they have switched to English, and Moldavian began to use the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet. And the Moldovan and Romanian languages are different, although they are very similar.
My niece, who knew Moldovan well since childhood, studied Romanian for a year in Bucharest at the preparatory university. But these languages are all of the Romance group. Will linguists confirm?
Moldavian was created after the annexation of Moldova to the Soviet Union... I don’t know myself, but the Romanians said that they differ approximately in the same way as English differs between American and British...
Of those very similar to French, there is also Catalan... if you don’t look at the endings of words and Spanish articles, it looks almost like French...
07.07.2003, 16:24
yes, I can only confirm Maxou's words. Our group consisted of 90% Moldovans and they communicated absolutely freely with Romanians. They are not considered foreigners there either. Half of the 90% have Romanian passports.
The roots in Moldavian and Romanian are mostly Latin, but the article is stuck at the end of the word, out of habit this gets in the way.
And in Catalan, the articles are not Spanish at all :) Even the names of cities in this regard may differ: La Escala in Spanish, L’Escala in Catalan. And it is also much more difficult to hear than to write. There is also a similar language called occitan, I don’t know how to say it in Russian :)
Today in Moldova the idea of unification with Romania is very popular. About a third of residents support her. About 140 Moldovan villages have already put this issue to a referendum and voted to join their Western big brother. This is economically beneficial - the Romanian pension is 6 times larger than the Moldovan one, the level of salaries is 3-4 times higher, and besides, Romanian citizenship gives the right to enter the EU. But in addition to economic benefits, Moldovans are also burdened by cultural proximity. They speak almost the same language; in Moldovan schools, instead of the history of Moldova, they study the history of Romanians. However, the question of whether these are one people or two very close, but still different, has not been finally resolved.
Brothers, neighbors, comrades
Romania as such did not exist until the second half of the 19th century. Wallachians - ancient people, the ancestor of both Moldovans and Romanians, who traces his ancestry to the Romans, lived for a long time under the rule of the Bulgarians in the Middle Ages. The Wallachians borrowed from them a strong Orthodox tradition, the Cyrillic alphabet. In the middle of the 14th century, the Bulgarian kingdom was greatly weakened, and the first two completely sovereign state formations of the Vlachs appeared in history - the Principality of Wallachia itself, and the Principality of Moldavia. At first Moldova was much stronger. But at the beginning of the 15th century, the Turks reached these lands, winning over the then rulers of Wallachia to their side, and they, despite their blood relationship, began a war with Moldova. For several centuries, this region became an arena for wars between empires. The tragedy of both Romanian and Moldovan people - Turkish yoke, which lasted about 400 years. The Wallachians and Moldavians constantly fought against the Turks, and sometimes successfully - for example, in 1600, ruler Mihai the Brave completely freed the Wallachians from the yoke and united three Wallachian principalities (the third was Transylvania). True, this state entity quickly collapsed. At this time, Transylvanians, Wallachians and Moldovans still spoke the same language, and the word “Walach” meant both a resident of Wallachia and the entire Wallachian ethnic group, and the word “Moldavian” meant only those from Moldavia. Soon new players appear here - the Russian and Austrian empires. Wallachia and Transylvania fall into the sphere of influence of Vienna, and Moldavia - of Moscow. As a result, in 1861, the 2 principalities finally united into a single kingdom of Romania.
Greater Romania
Over the long years of living apart, by the second half of the 19th century, parts had no time one people Still, they moved away somewhat. At this time, we encounter a lot of evidence, for example, of the misunderstanding of the language of Bucharest officials by Bessarabian (Moldovan) peasants. The latter, who lived side by side with Ukrainians, Russians and Jews for many years, no longer understand the Vlach language. This misunderstanding grew even more intense when, in 1918, Romania began to collect the Vlach-inhabited fragments of the collapsed Austrian and Russian empires.
This is what a group of Moldavian peasants from the Orhei district of Romanian Bessarabia wrote to the Romanian authorities in 1921: “What does the word “volumul” mean? We guess it’s some kind of brochure (book). If you guessed right, then please don’t bother sending it again, because there is no one to read it. We tell you again, if the book is useful for us, write it in Moldavian or Russian (don’t shy away from the Russian language like the devil from incense), and not in Romanian, because we have a weak understanding of the Romanian language, not that and understand it."
This situation was typical for the entire country. There was a Bucharest intelligentsia, and there were provinces with a mixed population in which Germans, Hungarians, Serbs, and Bulgarians lived side by side with the descendants of the Vlachs, who spoke their own local dialects. The country's authorities urgently needed to start building a nation - and they launched a program of strict Romanianization, which did not encounter much resistance from the Moldovans, but was not completed due to the Second World War. The divided Wallachian people almost became united again, but the war prevented the process from being completed.
Separated again
At the same time, Transnistria, the very north of Bessarabia, was part of the USSR. Before the Second World War, their own distinctive ethnic tradition was formed there, based on a clear opposition: “we are Soviet Moldovans, not Romanians.” In 1940, the USSR, under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, took Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. The Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic is created there, which includes Transnistria. After the end of the war, Moldovan society was greatly split: some rejoiced at the return of Russian power, while others, on the contrary, want to return to Romania.
When the USSR began to collapse, Moldova left it as an independent republic. The idea of reunification with Romania was expressed immediately by democratic romantics - but just as quickly as it arose, it gave way in people’s minds to more prosaic issues of poverty and privatization. In addition, a conflict with Transnistria began - the country had no time for any kind of reunification there. In the 1990s-00s, Moldova chose either supporters of European integration or pro-Russian communists as its leaders, and could not finally make a civilizational choice. It seems that pro-European forces are winning today. They actively promote the idea of unity between Romanians and Moldovans. It has become good form among Moldovan deputies to deny the very fact of the existence of the Moldovan people. The level of support for this idea has grown from 2% to 35% over 2 years - the arguments of right-wing politicians are so convincing. Probably, supporters of these two points of view will never agree on issues of cultural proximity. Today, the border between these two peoples does not run along the Prut River, like the border of two states, it runs along a huge civilizational rift. If Moldova has not yet decided who is closer to it - Russia or Europe, but for Romania this question has not even arisen. Therefore, the answer to who the Moldovans are - Romanians, or a separate people - is not in the past, but in the future.
Cyrillic (Moldavian alphabet) - in the Transnistrian Moldavian Republic,
(historical Romanian Cyrillic)
Graffiti in Chisinau.
Left: The word “Romanian” has been added under the phrase “Our language.”
Right: the inscription “I am Moldovan! I speak Moldovan!”
The literary Moldavian language began to take shape in the 16th-17th centuries, but was finally formed by the second half of the 19th century. Linguistic differences between the Romanian and Moldavian languages began to arise in the 19th century, when in Romania, which emerged in 1859, a period of correction of the Romanian language began, from which Slavic lexemes were actively removed. In the 19th-20th centuries, a significant number of scientific Latinisms were introduced into the vocabulary of the Romanian language. The linguistic construction of a norm of literary Moldavian language, different from literary Romanian, continued from 1924 to 1932, and from 1938 to 1940 in the USSR. Since the 1950s, there has been a reverse process of convergence between the Moldovan and Romanian language norms, and by the end of the 1980s they became practically indistinguishable.
One of the official languages (along with Russian and Ukrainian) of the unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic is the Moldovan language based on the Cyrillic script.
Story
Early history
Romanesque elements appeared on the territory of Moldavia no earlier than the 12th century. The first Daco-Roman monuments in Cyrillic have been known since the 17th century. The written language in the Principality of Moldova was not a local dialect, but a supra-dialectal Koine, common to the Danube principalities and Transylvania [ ] .
Parent languages:
Becoming
The Moldavian language has ancient literary traditions; literature in the Moldavian language includes the ballad “Mioritsa”, created in the 13th century. The Moldavian vocabulary fund, recorded in charters issued by the office of the Moldavian Principality, amounts to more than 1000 lexical units of the Moldavian vocabulary, recording the existence of the Moldavian written language, which has been certified since 1392.
The first official document in the Moldovan language has been known since 1571. In 1581, the first Moldavian lexicon (dictionary) was compiled - the Katastikh of the Galata Monastery.
In 1628, the book of the German scientist I. Alsted “Treasures of Chronology” (lat. Thesaurus chronologiae) was published, where the Moldavian language is also mentioned in the table of languages \u200b\u200band dialects of 24 parts of the Earth - lingua Moldavorum [ ] .
The Moldavian language was in use in the bilingual Principality of Moldova.
Monuments in the Moldavian language (Cyrillic) have been known in the Moldavian Principality since the 17th century (before that, the language of administration, church and literature in the Moldavian Principality and Wallachia was Church Slavonic, and from the construction of the phrase it is noticeable that it was not native to the scribes. A.I. Yatsimirsky speaks about the Russian basis of the language of Slavic-Moldavian letters). The grammar of this language was significantly different from the modern one. In the middle of the 17th century. Through the efforts of Metropolitan Varlaam, the first printing house in Moldova was founded in Iasi, for which Metropolitan Dosoftey (Dosifei) ordered the necessary supplies from Moscow.
The first studies were written about the Moldavian language in the 17th century: “Despre limba noastre Moldovenasca” Gr. Ureke (1635), “Despre limba moldovenyaske” by Miron Costin (1677), “Despre limba moldovenilor” and “Despre bukile moldovenilor” by D. Cantemir (1716).
Dmitry Cantemir, in his classic “Description of Moldavia” (1714-1716), devoted a separate chapter of the book to the Moldavian language.
He also notes the common language of the inhabitants of the Danube principalities and points out the difference in regional dialects:
Cantemir calls it “Moldavian language” (Latin lingua moldavica) and “Moldavian language” (Latin lingua moldavorum) and directly indicates its connection with Latin:
We, Moldavians, also call ourselves Romans, and our language is not Dacian, not Moldavian, but “Romanian,” and so, if we want to ask a stranger if he knows our language, we do not ask: “Do you know Moldavian?”, but we ask: “Do you know Romanian?”, that is (in Latin): “Do you know Roman?”
In Bessarabia
In 1814 in Chisinau, the “Russian-Moldavian primer” was developed and published, in 1819 - “A short Russian grammar with translation into the Moldavian language”, which was subsequently republished in the Chisinau diocesan printing house. In 1840, “The Outline of the Rules of Wallachian-Moldavian Grammar” and “Collected Works and Translations in the Wallachian-Moldavian Language” by Y. Ginkulov (Hinku) were published in St. Petersburg. Ginkulov proposed using the terms “Valachian-Moldovan language” or “Romanian language” as generalizing ones for the entire Daco-Romanian language space.
Starting from the 1830-1840s, there was a tendency to oust the Moldavian language from office work and the sphere of education and replace it with Russian. In 1828, the mandatory conduct of office work in the Moldavian language was abolished. In 1842, the seven-year period expired, during which it was possible to submit complaints and petitions in the Moldavian language. In 1866, a ban was imposed on the teaching of the Moldavian language at the Chisinau gymnasium. The formal reason for the ban was that “according to the new gymnasium charter... there are no special teachers assigned to teach special local dialects in our gymnasiums at all.” Five years after the exclusion of the Moldavian language from the course of the Chisinau gymnasium, a decree was issued banning the teaching of the Moldavian language in district schools of the Bessarabia region. Since the second half of the 19th century, the Moldovan language has been ousted from church services. Under Bishop Pavel (Lebedev), according to various estimates, from 340 to 417 churches were closed due to the fact that it was impossible to organize services in them in Russian. Under him, the Moldovan version of the Chisinau Diocesan Gazette ceased to be printed. Thus, in the last third of the 19th century, the Moldovan language in Bessarabia remained exclusively the spoken language of the peasant population.
The return of the Moldovan language to the public sphere, the education system and Orthodox worship was associated with the events of the revolution of 1905-1907. During this period, the teaching of the Moldavian language and church Moldavian singing began at the Chisinau Theological Seminary and others educational institutions Chisinau diocese, a number of newspapers and magazines are published (See the article Press in Moldova). In liturgical and near-religious literature, the Old Moldavian literary norm and the traditional Cyrillic alphabet were used. There was no literary norm for secular texts. Grammar and vocabulary could vary from the modern Romanian norm to imitations of local dialects. There was also no single alphabet. Most often, either the Russian alphabet or a significantly simplified version of the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet was used, differing from the Russified version by writing “ъ” instead of “e” and “й” instead of “ь” at the end of words. Writing using the Church-Moldavian alphabet, but in a civil script, was less common practice.
IN Russian Empire the terms “Moldovan” and “Romanian language” were used as synonyms by both Russian and Moldavian authors. The choice of one or another language name was determined in most cases by the context or target audience to which a particular text was addressed.
Wanting to emphasize the differences between the folk language of Bessarabian peasants and Romanian innovations, A. Mateevich, speaking at the First Congress of Teachers of Bessarabia in 1917, stated: “we will teach Moldavian, the church language, and not the language of Bucharest newspapers, from which we understand nothing, as if it were Tatar.”
- Maps of the distribution of the Romanian language at the beginning of the 20th century, made by Gustav Weigand:
Between the First and Second World Wars
Promoters of the Romanian language in Bessarabia recognized that the speech of Bessarabian Moldovans was noticeably different from the Bucharest norm, and were forced to take this into account in their activities - even to the point of publishing some issues of their newspapers in Cyrillic, which was prohibited in Bessarabia from January 1, 1919.
The Moldavian language received official status in 1924 when the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created on the left bank of the Dniester as part of Ukraine; this was accompanied by fierce discussions between the “originalists” who defended the idea of a literary language based on the dialects of Transnistria, and the “Romanianizers” who focused on literary Romanian norms.
At the initial stage of language construction in the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, for a number of local political figures (for example, Pavel Kior), the creation of a separate Moldavian language was dictated not so much by ethnopolitical as class considerations. It was planned to create a “proletarian” Moldavian language on the basis of popular dialects as an antipode to the “bourgeois” Romanian language. In the future, this “national language” was planned to be used to incite a revolution not only in Bessarabia, but also in Romania. However, the first grammar and dictionary compiled in the MASSR by Gavriil Buciuccanu in 1925 and 1926, with the exception of the Cyrillic alphabet, differed little from most Romanian grammars of that time. In July 1927, the Moldavian Scientific Committee published spelling rules based on the "Moldavian Grammar" ("Grammar of Moldovan"), developed by Leonid Madan. These rules were based on local dialects and represented the most radical attempt to create an independent Moldovan language, completely different from Romanian. In addition to reproducing the folk dialect, it was planned to introduce into the language a huge number of neologisms composed of Moldavian or Russian roots.
An example of the text in Moldovan in the recording at that time:
Eun sektsyya istorichaski, Komitetu shtiintsynik sh'o pus zedaci sy altetuaski history Marxists a narodului moldovinesque. Yntiyu lukru shtiintsynik yn partea "vetseriy norodului moldovinesque a isy'n time di mai aproapi.
Eun sektsyya di "nvetsarya cerii: Din lukru "nsemnat dupe programs pen chi-s strynsy shi tiperiti "n cherts osegiti kyntichi shi zyketoari norodnichi moldovinesti. vetsar cerii.
According to the resolution of the Bureau of the Moldavian Regional Party Committee dated February 2, 1932, it was prescribed to switch to the Latin alphabet by the end of the year. Along with the transition to the Latin alphabet, the norms and rules of the Romanian language were adapted. In May 1938, the romanization campaign was stopped and the Cyrillic script was returned to the Moldovan language. The new norm of the Moldovan language remained quite close to the Romanian one.
In the Moldavian SSR
On August 31, 1989, the new government of the Moldavian SSR (at the request of participants in a demonstration organized by the nationalist Popular Front of Moldavia) abolished the Cyrillic alphabet on its territory and introduced Romanian spelling in the Latin alphabet for the Moldovan language. On the territory of the PMR, the Cyrillic alphabet was preserved and is still used today.
Spelling and alphabet
The main difference between the two Latin spellings (the use of letters â And î to indicate sound s ) was canceled by the publication of the "Spelling Dictionary of the Romanian Language" (developed by the Academy of Sciences of Moldova and recommended for use since November 15, 2000). Previously, in Moldovan Romanian it was recommended to use î wherever sound is made s , while Standard Romanian used both characters according to the etymological principle. However, many publications in Romanian in the Republic of Moldova have previously used â (“Flux”, “Accente”, “Ziarul de Garda”, “Timpul”, etc.), Also in Romania there are publications that use the old spelling, without â (Academia Caţavencu and others). The fact that the official orthography in force in Moldova required exclusive use î , is explained by the fact that at the moment when the Academy of Sciences of Moldova adopted the Latin alphabet (after the Soviet period, when Cyrillic was used), the Romanian Academy had not yet returned the symbol â (the â was completely abolished in 1953).
The Moldovan language in Transnistria is not considered identical to Romanian and continues to use the Cyrillic alphabet.
Numerals
Similarities with the Romance (Latin) group of languages:
| Number | Romanian / Moldavian | Spanish | Italian | French | Portuguese |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | unu/ unu | uno | uno | un | um |
| 2 | doi/ milk | dos | due | deux | dois |
| 3 | trei / tray | tres | tre | trois | três |
| 4 | patru/ patru | cuatro | quattro | quatre | quatro |
| 5 | cinci/ chinch | cinco | cinque | cinq | cinco |
| 6 | șase / shase | seis | sei | six | seis |
| 7 | șapte/ hat | siete | sette | sept | sete |
| 8 | opt/ wholesale | ocho | otto | huit | oito |
| 9 | nouă / noue | nueve | nove | neuf | nove |
| 10 | zece / zeche | diez | dieci | dix | dez |
Slavicisms
A characteristic feature of the Moldavian language is the presence of a significant Slavic layer in its composition. Of the 710 words related to agriculture, terms of Latin origin - 5.4%; words that originated among the Moldovan population - 53.3%; words of Slavic origin - 30.3%. Words of Slavic origin include: “plow” (Russian plow), “borane” (Russian harrow), “koase” (Russian scythe), “brazde” (Russian furrow), “sheaf” (Russian sheaf) , “stog” (Russian stack, stack), “kepitse” (Russian haystack), etc. In the terminology associated with the production of fabrics, about 200 terms are used in the dialects of the Moldovan language. Of these: words of Latin origin - 12.5%, East Slavic - 39% and South Slavic - 23%.
Linguistic ties between the Moldovans and the Eastern Slavs through everyday communication were established during the period of the Moldovans’ settlement in Bukovina and Moldova, and then in Bessarabia, probably from the 14th-15th centuries. There is a pronounced East Slavic influence in the Moldavian language: over 2,000 East Slavic borrowings in the main stock of the modern Moldavian language. Before 1812, many Russianisms from the Moldavian language entered the Wallachian language.
Current situation
Some Moldovan officials at the rank of ministers have repeatedly stated that “Moldovan and Romanian are the same language.” According to official data from the 2004 population census, in Moldova, 78.4% of Moldovans called Moldovan their native language, and 18.8% called Romanian their native language (in cities - 30.9%, in villages - 13.0%), but In answer to the question about nationality, they classified themselves as Moldovans; in these data M. N. Guboglo sees an indication of “the beginning of an internal split in Moldavian ethnopsychological life.” Discussion of the issue of naming the state language of Moldova “Moldavian” or “Romanian” currently always has a political connotation.
In schools and universities of modern Moldova there is no subject “Moldavian language”. The subject “Romanian language” is studied. This is also the name of the main language of instruction in educational institutions in Moldova. The subject “Moldavian language” (in Cyrillic) is taught only in universities and secondary educational institutions of Transnistria as an elective, starting from the first grade, along with the Ukrainian language.
The collective work "Moldavians", published in 2010 by Moldovan and Russian scholars in the series "Peoples and Cultures", includes Chapter 3 "The Moldovan Language", written mainly by Vasile Stati, who in 2003 published his own Moldovan-Romanian dictionary (English) Russian. In 2011, the expanded second edition of the dictionary was printed at the printing house of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Moldova. To justify the difference between Moldavian and Romanian, Stati cites the following arguments: the presence in Moldavian of significant Slavic borrowings, some of which are absent in Romanian; the presence of a number of gypsy borrowings in Romanian; specificity of the Moldovan dialects of the Left Bank of the Dniester; earlier fixation of the glottonym “Moldavian” compared to the glottonym “Romanian”. “Moldovan-Romanian Dictionary” by Vasile Stati caused both critical and positive reviews among Moldovan and Romanian linguists.
Although the Moldovan language was originally assigned ISO 639 codes: "mo" and "mol", these were abolished in the 2000s and the Moldovan language now does not have a separate ISO code. Also, the well-known reference book on the languages of the world - “Ethnologue: Languages of the World", which contains information on more than 7,000 living languages of the world - does not mention Moldavian as a separate language, but as an alternative name for Romanian.
The country's population uses both names. While the majority of rural residents indicated Moldovan as their native language during the last census, the majority of Chisinau residents and, according to surveys, people with higher education tend to call their language Romanian. The highest propensity to use the name “Romanian language” is observed among young people, people with higher education, urban residents and people with high incomes. The name “Moldavian language” is most often used by those residents of Moldova for whom this language is not their native language.
On the territory of Moldova there is a movement of Moldovenists, who believe that the name “Moldavian language” should be used for the state language of Moldova, in particular because it is more ancient than the linguonym “Romanian language”. According to a survey conducted in 2012, 65% of citizens support this opinion.
Romania is putting pressure on Moldova to change the state language: in 2012, it was reported that Romania would block Moldova’s accession to the European Union “if Chisinau does not abandon the historical name of its language - the Moldovan language - and does not recognize it as “Romanian””.
see also
Notes
- unrecognized state
- Article 12 of the Constitution of the PMR
- “Popov: No bilingualism in Kyiv”, Kyiv Post September 19, 2012
- Lukht L. I., Narumov B. P. Romanian language // Languages of the world. Romance languages. - M., Academia, Institute of Linguistics RAS, 2001 - P. 575
- eNews: “The Moldavian language is older than Romanian” - Interview with historian, author of the first Moldavian-Romanian dictionary Vasile Stati Archived copy dated July 21, 2015 on the Wayback Machine, December 5, 2013
- "Romanian language" in the Encyclopedia Britannica; Lukht L. I., Narumov B. P. Romanian language // Romance languages. M., 2001. P. 577.
- Problems of language in the global world. Monograph // Ed. Ganina E.V., Chumakova A.N. - 2015
- Toporov V. Research on etymology and semantics. Volume 2. Indo-European languages and Indo-European studies. Book 1 - 2006
- Chervinsky P., Nadel-Chervinskaya M. Explanatory and etymological dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language - Ternopil: Krok, 2012 - pp. 478-479
- Neroznak V. P. Balkan Studies // Great Russian Encyclopedia
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- King, Charles. Forging a Soviet Moldovan Nation// The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture. - Hoover Press, 2000. - P. 107-108. - 303 p. - ISBN 9780817997922.
- Art. 13 of the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova
- Law No. 3465 of 01.09.1989 on the functioning of languages on the territory of the Moldavian SSR: “The consolidation by the Constitution (Basic Law) of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic of the status of the Moldavian language as the state language is intended to contribute to the achievement of the full sovereignty of the republic and the creation of the necessary guarantees for its full and comprehensive implementation in all spheres of political, economic, social and cultural life. The Moldavian SSR supports the acquisition of education and satisfaction of their cultural needs in their native language by Moldovans living outside the republic, and taking into account reality of Moldovan-Romanian linguistic identity- and Romanians living on the territory of the USSR.”
- Lukht, Narumov, p. 575.
- The Constitutional Court of Moldova decided that the state language of the Republic of Moldova is Romanian, News Agency “Novosti-Moldova” (December 5, 2013). Archived from the original on December 7, 2013. Retrieved December 19, 2013.
- Romanian was recognized as the state language of Moldova, Lenta.ru (December 5, 2013). Retrieved December 19, 2013.
- Dissenting opinion of Judge Aurel Baiesu, stated on the basis of Article 27 para. (5) of the Law on the Constitutional Court and Article 67 of the Code of Constitutional Jurisdiction (undefined) .
- Russian Foreign Ministry: “According to the current Constitution of the Republic of Moldova, the state language is Moldovan”
- , With. 152.
- Repina T. A. Historical chronicles XVII - early. XVIII century// History of the Romanian language: textbook. - St. Petersburg. : St. Petersburg University Publishing House, 2002. - P. 64. - ISBN 5-288-02915-6.
- Tagliavini C. Una nuova lingua literaria. Il moldavo?//Communicazione letta al VIII Congresso di studii romanzi. Firenze, 3 - 8 April 1956//Foreign authors about the Moldavian language. - Chisinau, 1970.
- Stati V. Moldovans. eno-linguistic features. - Odessa. 2016. - p. 33
- Stati V. Moldovans. eno-linguistic features. - Odessa. 2016. - p. 41
- Johann Heinrich Alsted Thesaurus chronologiae
- Paskar Evgeniy. History of the names of the Moldovan language.
- Shornikov P. Linguistic dualism in the Moldavian principality of the XIV-XVII centuries. // Rusin, 2010, No. 2 (20) - Chisinau, 2010 - ISSN 1857-2685 - P. 68, 71, 72
- , With. 243.
- Slavic-Moldavian chronicles of the XV-XVI centuries. Comp. F. A. Grekul; Rep. ed. V. A. Buganov. - M.: Nauka, 1976.
- History of the Moldavian SSR. In two volumes T. I. Ed. 2nd. Rep. ed. L. V. Cherepnin. P. 272.
- Stati V. Moldovans are not Romanians, - 2013. P. 215