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#REDIRECT ] |
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The '''history of the Moldovan language''' refers to the history of the ], the name sometimes used for the ] in the historical and political regions of ] and ]. |
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{{Rshell| |
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==Before 1812== |
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{{R to section}} |
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}} |
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The Polish chronicler, ], remarked as early as 1476 that Moldavians and Wallachians "share a language and customs" similar to their own.<ref></ref The Annals of Jan Długosz'' ISBN 1901019004, p. 593>Other references to a "Moldavian language" can be found in works as early as ]'s "The Chronicles of the land of Moldavia", where it is noted that in actuality one language prevailed over the territory of ], ] as well as ]. ], in his "De neamul moldovenilor" talks of a Romanian nation that lives in ], ], ] and the ] and says that although people of Moldavia call themselves "Moldavians", they name their language "Romanian" (''românéşte'') instead of Moldavian (''moldovenéşte''). The Moldavian scientist ] presented a theory in ] (] ]): that the Moldavians spoke the same language as Wallachians and ]ns. Cantemir also introduced the idea that some Romanian words had ] roots. |
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==Russification of the language in imperial Russian Bessarabia== |
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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 ], used along with ]. |
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Gradually the Russian language gained importance. According to the dates offered by the Department for ruling the Bessarabia from ], 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.{{ref|Heitamnn}} |
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Romanian was admitted as language of teaching only until ], after that being taught as a separate subject. Thus, at the ] of ], the Romanian language was found on the list of compulsory subjects, with 10 hours weekly, until ], when the Department of Romanian was closed. At High School No.1 in ] the pupils had the right to choose between Romanian, ], and ] until ] ], when the State Counselor of the Russian Empire forbade teaching of the Romanian language, giving the justification: "the pupils know this language in the practical mode, and its teaching follows other goals".{{ref|Heitamnn}} |
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Around ], the tsar published an '']'' "On the suspension of teaching the Romanian language in the schools from Bessarabia," because "in the Russian Empire local speeches are not taught". {{ref|Heitamnn}} |
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==Artificial evolution of Romanian to ''Moldovan''== |
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The linguistic situation in ] from ] to ] was the gradual development of ]. ] continued to develop as the official language of priviledge, whereas ] remained the principal vernacular. The evolution of this linguistic situation, and the development of ''Moldovan'', can be divided into five phases. {{ref|Lidia}} |
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===Phase one: 1812 to 1828=== |
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The period from ] to ] was on of neutral or functional bilingualism. Whereas Russian has official dominance, Romanian is not without influence, especially in the spheres of public administration, education (particularly religious education) and culture. In the years that immediately follow the annexation, loyalty to the Romanian language and customs becomes important. The Theological Seminary (''Seminarul Teologic'') and Lancaster Schools are opened in 1813 and 1824 respectively, Romanian grammar books are published, and the printing press at ] begins to produce religious books. {{ref|Lidia}} |
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===Phase two: 1828 to 1843=== |
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The period from ] to ] is one of partial ''diglossic'' ]. During this time, use of Romanian was forbidden in the sphere of administration. This was carried out by negative means: Romanian was imply excluded from the ]. Romanian continued to be used in education, but only as a separate subject. Bilingual manuals, such as the Russian-Romanian ''Bucoavne'' grammar of Iacob Ghinculov, were published to meet the new need for bilingualism. Religious books and Sunday ]s remained the only monolingual public outlet for Romanian. By ], the removal of Romanian from public administration was complete. {{ref|Lidia}} |
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===Phase three: 1843 to 1871=== |
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The period from ] to ] was one of assimilation. Romanian continued to be a taught subject for some time — until ] at the Liceul Regional (]), until ] at the Seminarul Teologic (Theological Seminary) and until ] at regional schools — until the teaching of the language was forbidden by law. {{ref|Lidia}} |
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===Phase four: 1871 to 1905=== |
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The period from ] to ] was one of official ] in Russian. All public use of Romanian was phased out, and substituted with Russian. Romanian continued to be used as the colloquial language of home and family. This was the era of the highest level of assimilation in the ]. In ], the priest Pavel Lebedev ordered that all church documents be written in Russian, and, in ], the press at Chişinău was closed by order of the holy ]. {{ref|Lidia}} |
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===Phase five: 1905 to 1917=== |
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The period from ] to ] was one of increasing linguistic conflict, with the re-awakening of Romanian national consciousness. In 1905 and 1906, the Bessarabian '']'' asked for the re-introduction of Romanian in schools as a "compulsory language", and the "liberty to teach in the mother language (Romanian langauge)". At the same time, the first Romanian-language newspapers and journals began to appear: ''Basarabia'' (1906), ''Viaţa Basarabiei'' (1907), ''Moldovanul'' (1907), ''Luminătorul'' (1908), ''Cuvînt moldovenesc'' (1913), ''Glasul Basarabiei'' (1913). From 1913, the synod permitted that "the churches in Besserabia use the Romanian language". {{ref|Lidia}} |
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The term ''Moldovan language'' ("limbă moldovenească") was newly employed to create a state-sponsored '']'' to distinguish it from Romanian Romanian. Thus, Şt. Margeală, in 1827, states that the aim of his book is to "offer the 800,000 Romanians who live in Besserabia,...as well as to the millions of Romanians from the other part of Prut, the possibility of knowing the Russian language, and also for the Russians who want to study the Romanian language". In 1865 Ioan Doncev, editing his Romanian primer and grammar, affirmed that Moldovan is ''valaho-româno'', or Romanian. However, after this date, the label ''Romanian language'' appears only sporadically in the correspondance of the educational authorities. Gradually, ''Moldovan'' became the sole label for the language: a situation that proved useful to those who wished for a cultural separation of Bessarabia from Romania. Although referring to another historical period, Kl. Heitmann stated that the "theory of two languages — Romanian and Moldovan — was served both in Moscow as well as in Chişinău to combat the nationalistic veleities of the Republic of Moldova, being, in fact, an action against Romanian nationalism". (Heitmann, 1965). The objective of the Russian glotopolitics in Besserabia was the ''dialectization'' of the Romanian language. A. Arţimovici, official of the Education Department based in ], wrote a letter, dated ] ], to the Minister of Public Instructions stating: "I have the opinion that it will be hard to stop the Romanian population of Besserabia using the language of the neighbouring principalities, where the concentrated Romanian population may develop the language based on its Latin elements, not good for Slavic language. The government's directions pertaining to this case aim to make a new dialect in Besserabia, more closely based on Slavic language, will be, as it will be seen, of no use: we cannot direct the teachers to teach a language that will soon be dead in Moldova and Wallachia...parents will not want their children to learn a different language to the one they currently speak". Although some clerks, like Arţimovici, realised that the creation of a dialect apart from the Romanian spoken in the United Principalities could never be truly effective, most of them "with the aim of fulfilling governmental policy, tendentiously called the majority language ''Moldovan'', even in the context where ''Romanian'' had always been used previously". {{ref|Lidia}} |
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== Beginnings of the Moldovan language== |
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] |
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The territory of ] which forms most of the present-day Republic of Moldova, historically the eastern part of the principality of ], was annexed from the ] by ] in ] and remained a Russian territory until the ] of ]. In ], Bessarabia united with ]. |
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With the creation in ] of the ] within the ], 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. {{ref|ASSRM}} The ] which had been used for writing the language for the past 80 years was changed to a version of the ] 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: ]) |
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As a result of the transfers of the territory and the accompanying migration of the population, including ] and 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 ] as a prerequisite for access to higher education, social status and political power. All this contributed to proliferation of Russian loanwords in spoken Moldovan. |
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== Romanizators and Originalists == |
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At these times there were discussions between the supporters ("Romanizators" or "Romanists") and opponents ("Originalists") of the convergence of Moldavian and Romanian languages. |
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In particular, Originalists strove to base the literary Moldavian language on local dialects. Neologisms were created to cover technical areas that had no native Moldavian equivalent. As a result, the textbooks, e.g., in ] or ] were barely readable to the uninitiated. |
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In ] Moldovan communists received a directive from the Communist Party of Ukraine to switch Moldovan writing to the ]. 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 ] postulating the convergence to a single world language, expected to be a means of communication in the future classless society (]). This directive was passively sabotaged by the "originalist" majority, until ] (] of the Ukrainian Communist Party) and some Moldovan communists visited ], who reportedly insisted on faster latinization with the ultimate goal 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 after 1933 a number of prominent "originalists" were repressed, their books destroyed, and their neologisms banned. |
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After the infamous February-March (1937) ] ] ], which escalated the ], both Romanizators and Originalists were declared "imperialist spies": Originalists, because they sabotaged the Latinization, and Romanizators, because they were "agents of ] Romania" ("Боярская Румыния"). |
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In February ] the Moldavian communists issued a declaration transferring Moldavian writing to the Cyrillic alphabet once again, which in August 1939 was made into the law of the republic. The motivation was that the Latinization was used by "]-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". |
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==Moldavian in Soviet Moldova == |
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In June ], twenty-two years after the union with Romania, the ] annexed Bessarabia. A year later, in ], Romania invaded the Soviet Union as part of ] and retook Bessarabia, along with the territory between Dnestr and ] rivers. These territories were taken back by the Soviet Union 3 years later in ], and remained under Soviet administration until the ] in ]. |
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In 1956, during the ] 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 ]. |
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== Reversion to Latin script, and beyond == |
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In ], the contemporary Romanian version of the Latin alphabet was made the ] of the Moldavian SSR. |
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After the independence of ] in ], "Romanian" was declared the official language, but the 1994 constitution changed the name of the language to "Moldovan". |
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When in ] the Romanian Academy changed the official orthography of Romania, the Institute of Linguistics at the ASM did not make the same changes, and the official orthography continued as before (for more detail, see below). |
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A ] attempt by Moldovan president ] to change the official language to "Romanian" was dismissed by the Moldovan Parliament as promoting Romanian expansionism. |
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In ], 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 ] and other major cities. They were largely attended by students and youths {{fact}}. Just as the population of Russian-speakers in the Baltic States has been declining over the past 15 years, so as that of Moldova. |
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In ], a Romanian-Moldovan dictionary (Stati 2003) was published. The linguists of the ] 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 ]' Institute of Linguistics, ], described the dictionary as "an absurdity, serving political purposes". Stati, however, accused both of promoting "Romanian colonialism". |
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On the ] 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. |
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==Notes== |
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*{{note|Heitmann}} Heitmann, K., 1989, Moldauisch. In Holtus, G., Metzeltin, M. and Schmitt, C. (eds), Lexicon der Romanschinen Linguistik, Tübingen, vol 3. 508-21. |
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*{{note|Lidia}} Colesnic-Codreanca, Lidia. ''Limba Română în Basarabia. Studiu sociolingvistic pe baza materialelor de arhivă (1812–1918)'' ("The Romanian language in Bessarabia. A sociolinguistic study based on archival materials (1812-1918)"). Chişinău: Editorial Museum, 2003. |
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*{{note|ASSRM}} Grenoble 2003, pp 89-93 |
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==Footnotes== |
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==References== |
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* ], ''The Annals of Jan Długosz'' ISBN 1901019004 |
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* Grenoble, Lenore A (2003) ''Language Policy in the Soviet Union'', ], ISBN 1402012985 |
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* ]. '''' |
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* ]. '''' |
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] |
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] |
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<!--]--> |
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]</ref> |
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