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Moldovan (Latin alphabet: limba moldovenească, Cyrillic alphabet: лимба молдовеняскэ, sometimes translated into English as "Moldavian") is an Eastern Romance language, the official language of Moldova and one of the official languages of Transnistria.

Moldovan, in its official form, is considered by certain experts to be nearly identical to the Romanian language, although others dispute this. The classification of Moldovan as a language independent of Romanian by Soviet linguists, and the ongoing debate over whether this distinction in language standards should be discarded, are both closely tied to regional politics.

"Moldovan" (limba moldovenească or graiul moldovenesc) can also refer to the speech of the historical region of Moldavia in Romania.

History and Politics

Pre-1812

References to a "Moldavian language" can be found in works as early as Grigore Ureche's "Chronicles of the Moldovan Nation", where it is noted that Moldavian and Wallachian are very closely related.

The Moldavian scientist Dimitrie Cantemir presented a theory in Descriptio Moldaviae (Berlin 1714) that the Moldavians spoke the same language as Wallachians and Transylvanians. Cantemir also introduced the idea that some Moldavian words have Dacian origins.

Romanian language in Imperial Russia

In the first years of Russian occupation (after 1812), because 95% of the population were Romanians who only knew their mother tongue, Romanian was admitted as an official language in the institutions of Bessarabia, used along with Russian.

Gradually the Russian language gained importance. According to the dates offered by the Department for ruling the Bessarabia from 1828, the papers from bureau were published only in Russian, and around 1835 it is established a term of 7 years time in which the state institutions would still accept acts in Romanian language.

Romanian was admitted as language of teaching only until 1842, after that being taught as a separate subject. Thus, at the seminary of Chişinău, the Romanian language was found on the list of compulsory subjects, with 10 hours weekly, until 1863, when the Department of Romanian was closed. At High School No.1 in Chişinău the pupils had the right to choose between Romanian, German, and Greek until 9 February 1866, when the State Counselor of the Russian Empire forbade teaching of the Romanian language because the pupils "know this language in the practical mode, and its teaching follows other goals".

Around 1871, the tsar published an ukase "On the suspension of teaching the Romanian language in the schools from Bessarabia", because "In Russian Empire local speeches are not taught".

Beginnings of the Moldovan language

The territory of Bessarabia, which forms the present-day Republic of Moldova, historically the eastern part of the principality of Moldavia, was annexed from the Ottoman Empire by Imperial Russia in 1812 and remained its part until the Russian October revolution of 1917. In 1918 Bessarabia was united with Romania. Twenty-two years later, in 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia. A year later, in 1941, Romania invaded the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa and retook Bessarabia (along with a large portion of Ukraine). These territories were taken back by the Soviet Union 3 years later in 1944, and remained under Soviet administration until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

With the creation in 1924 of the Moldavian ASSR within the Ukrainian SSR, the authorities declared the variety spoken by the majority of Moldavians to be "Moldavian language", allegedly for the purpose of giving the region its own identity separate from Romania. The Latin alphabet which had been used for writing the language for the past 80 years was changed to a version of the Cyrillic alphabet derived from the Russian variant. To justify this, the government noted that up until just 80 years prior, the language was usually written in Cyrillic. (See: Moldovan alphabet)

As a result of the tansfers of the territory and the accompanying migration of the population, including deportations of the ethnic Romanians and the encouraged migration from the rest of the USSR, by the mid-20th century Bessarabia acquired large communities of Russian speakers, among the Moldovan natives. Also, during Soviet rule, Moldovan speakers were encouraged to learn the Russian language, and thay had to do this as a prerequisite for access to higher education, social status and political power. All this contributed to proliferation of Russian loanwords in spoken Moldovan.

Romanizators and Originalists

At these times there were discusions between the supporters ("Romanizators" or "Romanists") and opponents ("Originalists") of the convergence of Moldavian and Romanian languages.

In particular, Originalists strived to base the literary Moldavian language on local dialects. Missing technical and other special terminology was covered by neologisms. As a result, the textbooks, e.g., in botany or physics were barely readable to the uninitiated.

In February 1932 Moldovan communists received a directive from the Communist Party of Ukraine to switch Moldovan writing to the Latin alphabet. This was part of the massive campaign in the USSR of latinization of the alphabets of lesser nationalities, based on the theory of Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr postulating the convergence to a single world language, expected to be a means of communication in the future classless society (communism). This directive was passively sabotaged by the "originalist" majority, until Stanislav Kosior (General Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party) with some Moldovan communists visited Stalin, who reportedly Stalin insisted on the faster latinization with the purpose of the convergence of Moldavian and Romanian cultures, hinting at the possibility that in future Moldova and Romania would be reunited. Nevertheless, the resistance to Romanization persisted, and since 1933 a number of prominent "originalists" were repressed, their books destroyed, and their neologisms banned.

After the infamous February-March (1937) VKP(b) Central Committee Plenum, which escalated the Great Purge, both Romanizators and Originalists were declared "imperialist spies": Originalists, because they sabotaged the Latinization, and Romanizators, because they were "agents of boyar Romania" ("Боярская Румыния").

In February 1938 the Moldavian communists issued the declaration about transferring of the Moldavian writing to the Cyrillic alphabet once again, which in August 1939 was evolved into the law of the republic. The motivation was that the Latinization was used by "bourgeois-nationalist elements" to "distantance the Moldavian populace from the Ukrainian and Russian ones, with the ultimate goal of the separation of Soviet Moldavia from the USSR".

In 1956, during the rehabilitation of the victims of Stalinist repression, a special report was issued about the state of the Moldavian language, which stated, in part, that the discussions of 1920-30s between the two tendencies were mostly non-scientific, since in the republic there were very few linguists, and that the grammar and the basic lexicon of literary Romanian and Moldovan languages are identical, while differences are secondary and nonessential. Once again, the planned convergence of the Romanian and Moldovan languages was approved, bearing in mind the political situation in the People's Republic of Romania.

Reversion to Latin script, and beyond

In 1989, and the pre-1992 Romanian version of the Latin alphabet was made the official script of the Moldavian SSR.

After the independence of Moldova in 1991, "Romanian" was declared the official language, but the 1994 constitution changed the official language to "Moldovan".

A 1996 attempt by Moldovan president Mircea Snegur to change the official language to "Romanian" was dismissed by the Moldovan Parliament as promoting Romanian expansionism.

In 2002, the government of Moldova gave the Russian language the same privileges as Moldovan, since after Soviet rule and the massive Russian and Ukrainian settlement it invited, a significant proportion of the population were mother-tongue speakers of Russian. It was declared to be a mandatory foreign language in schools. This created a wave of indignation among the Moldovan-speaking majority of the population, and rallies against this decision were organized in Chişinău and other major cities. They were largely attended by students and youths . Just as the population of Russian-speakers in the Baltic States has been declining over the past 15 years, so as that of Moldova.

In 2003, a Romanian-Moldovan dictionary (Stati 2003) was published. The linguists of the Romanian Academy in Romania declared that all the Moldovan words are also Romanian words, although some of its contents are disputed as being neologism resulting from Russification. In Moldova, the head of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Linguistics, Ion Bărbuţă, described the dictionary as "an absurdity, serving political purposes". Supporters of Stati, however, accused both of promoting "Romanian colonialism".

On the 2004 census, about two thirds of the Romanian-Moldovans, which are the majority population in the Republic of Moldova, declared their mother tongue to be "Romanian", and one third "Moldovan", which is, according to the press, why the release of the official census results was delayed.

Linguistic view

Moldovan meets the univerally-accepted definition of a language, namely, it is a system of lexemes and the rules by which they are manipulated.

The main debate surrounding the status of Moldovan is its status in relation to Romanian, specifically: is it a dialect of Romanian (or vice-versa), a separate language, or are the two in fact different names for the same thing?

This debate is not scientific, however, since linguistics as a science considers all divisions of languages and dialects as arbitrary groupings of idiolects.

However, in practice, it is sometimes necessary for linguists to designate "dialects" and "languages", although there are no widely agreed-upon criteria for doing so. The Ethnologue classifies Moldovan as a Romanian dialect, and states that the official and primary language of Moldova is Romanian.

The spoken language in Moldova is part of the Moldavian dialect of Romanian, also spoken in Eastern Romania.

Official view

The constitution of the Republic of Moldova refers to the country's language as Moldovan rather than Romanian, although "Romanian" was the official language between 1991 and 1994. In practice, however, it is often referred to as "Romanian" or "the language of the state".

In schools, the language is called Romanian, and textbooks from Romania are used significantly in the Moldovan education system. The Academy of Sciences of Moldova calls the language Romanian . Additionally, several government departments call the language Romanian, and their websites are offered in Romanian, Russian and often English, but not "Moldovan". These include the Ministry of Education , the Ministry of Justice , the Ministry of Transport and Roads , the Ministry of Internal Affairs , the Office of Statistics and the Department of Migration .

There is a growing international recognition that Moldovan language is in fact Romanian. In particular, in factsheets by US Department of State and in documents of some other countries Romanian is listed as the official language of Moldova.

In 2002, the Moldovan Minister of Justice, Ion Morei, said that Romanian and Moldovan are the same language and that the Constitution of Moldova should be amended, not necessarly by changing the word Moldovan into Romanian, but by adding that "Romanian and Moldovan are the same language". Another government official which stated (in 2004) that Moldovan and Romanian are the same language is Education Minister Valentin Beniuc, who said that, "I have stated more than once that the notion of a Moldovan language and a Romanian language reflects the same lingustic phenomenon in essence.". Additionally, Tatiana Mlecico, continually referred to the language as Romanian during a press conference when she was the chief of the Department of Interethnic Relations..

According to newspaper reports about the most recent Moldovan census, about 45% of all mother language speakers of Daco-Romanian declared their native language to be "Moldovan", while 55% declared their native language to be "Romanian". There is no official statement from the Moldovan center of statistics yet.

Alphabet and spelling

Cyrillic was replaced by Latin as the official alphabet for the Moldovan language in 1989. Nearly all urban Moldovans can read the Latin alphabet, although many over 30 are more comfortable writing in Cyrillic, as it was compulsorily script of their education. In the countryside, many people over 30 — especially peasants — prefer Cyrillic, but may write in the Latin alphabet, though with difficulty.

The Romanian characters â and î are both written as î in Moldovan. Although â and î sound identical in speech, the Romanian justification for using these two characters is to bring Romanian closer orthographically to other Romance languages, and that etymologically, â and î are separate. In the Moldovan language, only the word "română" (Romanian) and "România" (Romania) are written with â, officially.

Romanian sunt is written as sînt in Moldovan. However, in Moldovan Cyrillic, it is variably written sunt or sînt. Although it is actually pronounced sînt in both languages, the Romanian justification for writing sunt is that it is etymologically correct and that it brings Romanian closer orthographically to other Romance languages. Many Moldovans who use "î/â" spellings write sânt, which is not an officially accepted spelling in either country.

It must be noted that, before the 1990s, Romanian used the same orthography as Moldovan (with just the character î and sînt). The decision to change the orthography to the â/î/sunt format was made by the Romanian Academy in 1993.

However, in both countries, the official versions are not always respected. For example, some Romanian newspapers use the "î"/"sînt" spelling (Academia Caţavencu among others), while some Moldovan newspapers use "î/â/sunt" spelling. (Accente, Garda, Timpul etc).

Only very rarely are "română" and derivatives are written using "î", and most people from either country will consider it to be incorrect usage.

Spoken language

The colloquial Moldovan of Chisinau and its suburbs tends to use a much higher number of Russian and Ukrainian loanwords than in Romania, though such words are generally avoided in formal situations. Residents of rural areas tend to use less slang and foreign words, and their speech is reported to be more conservative than that of residents of urban areas.

In Chişinău, most strangers, even ethnic Moldovans, address one another in Russian, despite the fact that Moldovan is official language. In the autonomous regions of Gagauzia and Transnistria, Russian predominates while Moldovan is spoken by a minority.

The spoken language of the cities is an amalgamation of Romanian and Russian, which has been called a "jargon" by some, although it could perhaps be called a creole since it is the native variety for some. Only some nationally-conscious members of the elite urban intelligentsia make any effort to purge Russian words from their speech. In the countryside, Russian linguistic influences tend to be far fewer, excepting the regions of Gagauzia and Transnistria. Speakers of Moldovan tend to code-switch their language with Russian.

Among younger speakers, situational code switching is common, especially among people of Russian and Ukrainian heritage, and even moreso among the children of mixed marriages. It is also common in situations where one person's native language is Moldovan/Romanian and the other person's native language is Russian, for each person to speak in his native language even though the other person responds in the other language. This often results in some degree of intentional grammatical simplification (or "foreigner talk", as it is sometimes known due to intentional grammatical simplification often used when speaking to foreigners), and a higher frequency of borrowing words from the other language than in normal discourse.

Examples of bilingual code switching or other contact linguistic phenomena (what is occurring here is debatable); Romanian words in italics, Russian words in bold:

Latin: Vseo eu m'am dus!

Cyrillic: Всё еу м'ам дус!

Latin: Vină încoace cac deneoc proşel...

Cyrillic: Винэ ынкоаче как денёк прошел...

Such phenomena are rarely found in formal writing, though they can sometimes be found in SMS, IM, and chat.

Comparison Romanian/Moldovan

The sample below taken from the Constitutions of Moldova and Romania demonstrates that a formal text in Romanian and Moldovan may be identical. The colloquial languages show more difference, which varies over the area.

Moldova File:FlagOfMoldova.png	Romania	English
TITLUL I: Principii Generale	TITLUL I: Principii Generale	FIRST TITLE: General Principles
Articolul 1 Statul Republica Moldova	Articolul 1 Statul român	Article 1 (Romanian/Republic of Moldova State)
(1) Republica Moldova este un stat suveran şi independent, unitar şi indivizibil.	(1) România este stat naţional, suveran şi independent, unitar şi indivizibil.	(1) Romania/Republic of Moldova is a national, independent, united, and indivisible state.
(2) Forma de guvernămînt a statului este republica.	(2) Forma de guvernământ a statului român este republica.	(2) The form of government of the state is republican.
(3) Republica Moldova este un stat de drept, democratic, în care demnitatea omului, drepturile şi libertăţile ...	(3) România este stat de drept, democratic şi social, în care demnitatea omului, drepturile şi libertăţile ...	Romania/Republic of Moldova is a state of law, democratic and social, in which the human dignity, rights and liberties...
		Links to the official page of Constitution for both countries

Notes

• The Cyrillic script has not been in official use in the Republic of Moldova since independence 1989, but is official in Transnistria, and is still used by smaller groups elsewhere.

• Ethnologue report for Moldova

• World Bank, Reviews of National Policies for Education: Moldova, p. 51

• The Moldovan Ministry of Education: Gaining Moldovan citizenship (in Romanian)

• The Moldovan Ministry of Education: Pre-universitary education (in Romanian)

• "Bessarabian teachers perfect themselves in Galaţi, from Viaţa Liberă a Galaţi-based weekly (in Romanian)

• Ion Morei: The Moldovan langage is identical to the Romanian language, Moldova Azi, 10 September 2002

• Din nou fără burse, Jurnal de Chişinău, 25 May 2004

• Academy of Sciences of Moldova website

• Language in Moldova - observations in streets and houses in the Republic of Moldova by Diana Nissler

• Grenoble 2003, pp 89-93

• Kogan Page 2004, p 291 ; IHT, 16 June 2000, p. 2 ; Dyer 1999 , 2005

• Stati 2003

• Simpson 2003

• Misplaced Pages article: Language

References

• Grenoble, Lenore A (2003) Language Policy in the Soviet Union, Springer, ISBN 1402012985
• Dyer, D. (1999). The Romanian Dialect of Moldova: A Study in Language and Politics. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. (ISBN 0773480374)
• Dyer, Donald Leroy, ed. Studies in Moldovan. New York: Columbia University Press (East European Monographs), 1996. (ISBN 0880333510)
• Stati, V.N. Dicţionar moldovenesc-românesc. Chisinau: Tipografia Centrala (Biblioteca Pro Moldova), 2003. (ISBN 9975782485)
• Ильяшенко, Татьяна Павловна. Языковые контакты : на материале славиано-молдав, отношений. Moscow: "Наука" , 1970. (LCCN 78510414)
• Bruchis, M. (1982). One Step Back, Two Steps Forward. New York: Columbia University Press (East European Monographs). (ISBN 0880330023)
• Bruchis, M. (1984). Nations, Nationalities, Peoples. New York: Columbia University Press (East European Monographs). (ISBN 0880330570)
• Bruchis, M. (1988). USSR Language and Realities. New York: Columbia University Press (East European Monographs). (ISBN 088033147X)
• Dumbrava, V. (2004). Sprachkonflikt Und Sprachbewusstsein In Der Republik Moldova: Eine Empirische Studie In Gemischtethnischen Familien (Sprache, Mehrsprachigkeit Und Sozialer Wandel). Bern: Peter Lang Publishing. (ISBN 3631507283)
• Movileanu N. Din istoria Transnistriei (1924-1940), Revista de istorie a Moldovei, 1993, #2.
• Negru E. Introducerea si interzicerea grafiei latine in R.A.S.S.M, 1999, Revista de istorie a Moldovei, #3-4.
• (2004). Europe Review 2003/2004. Kogan Page.
• Donald Dyer to Mark Williamson, November 2005; Personal Correspondence
• Grigore Ureche, Летописецул Църѫй Молдовей (Latin transliteration: Letopisecul Cʺryj Moldovej)

External links

• http://www.contrafort.md/2002/90-91/338_7.html
• http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/europe/moldavia.html
• http://www.east-west-wg.org/cst/cst-mold/
• Moldovan (Cyrillic) alphabet and pronunciation
• Few audio examples of amalgamation of Romanian and Russian or so called "jargon" (MP3)
• Constitutional Court of Transnistria site in Moldovan-Cyrillic (куртя конституционалэ)

• Moldova
• Languages of Moldova
• Romanian language