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Moldovan (Latin alphabet: limba moldovenească, Cyrillic alphabet: лимба молдовеняскэ, also translated into English as "Moldavian" or "Moldovian") is an Eastern Romance language, the official language of Moldova and one of the official languages of the de-facto independent state of Transnistria.

Moldovan language, in its official form, is almost carbon copy of Romanian language. According to the most recent Moldovan census, 45.2% of all mother language speakers of Daco-Romanian declared their native language to be "Moldovan", while the remaining 53.8% declared their native language to be "Romanian".

"Moldovan" can also refer to the speech of the historical region of Moldavia in Romania.

History and Politics

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 held 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.

As concerning the education, Romanian was admitted as language of teaching only until 1842, after that being taught as a separate object. Thus, at the theological Seminar of Chişinău, Romanian language is found on the list of compulsory subjects, with 10 hours weekly, until 1863, when the department of Romanian was closed for good. At the highschool no. 1 from Chişinău the pupils had the right to choose between Romanian and German or between Romanian and Greek until 9 February 1866, when the state counselor of the Russian government forbidden 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 Besserabia", because "In Russian Empire are not taught local speeches".

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 the 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 Union in 1991.

With the creation in 1924 of the Moldavian ASSR within the Ukrainian SSR, the new 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 all this back and forth motion, along with 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, this being a prerequisite for 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 speeches.

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.

In February 1932 Moldovan communists recevied the directive from the Communist Party of Ukraine about switching of 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 that postulated 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 and 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 Moldavia and Romania will become one. Nevertheless, the resistance to Romanization persisted, and since 1933 a number of prominent "originalists" were repressed, their books destroyed, and their neologisms forbidden.

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").

The logic of the events is still to be understood, but in February 1938 the Moldavian communsits issued the declaration about transferring of the Moldavian writing to the Cyrillic alphabet, 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 said, in part, that the discussions of 1920-30s between the two tendencies were mostly non-scientific, since in the republic there were almost no linguists, and that the grammar and the basic lexicon of literary Romanian and Moldavian languages are identical, while differences are secondary and nonessential. Once again, the convergence of Romanian and Moldavian 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 name of the 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.

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 that is not the case since some of the words weren't even real words. 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.

Romanian vs. Moldovan

Owing to their relatively high level of mutual intelligibility, Romanian and Moldovan can essentially be thought of as one language from a linguistic perspective, however they both lie at different points along the dialect continuum. Due to their statuses in their respective countries, the two speech varieties are usually seen as languages based on political reasons. This situation is paralleled in other parts of the world such as India and Pakistan where Hindi and Urdu are essentially the same language but recognized as two languages for cultural, political, and religious reasons. Needless to say, this is a hotly debated issue by both Romanians and Moldovans alike.

The constitution of the Republic of Moldova refers to the country's language as Moldovan rather than Romanian although "Romanian" was once officially declared the official language between 1991 and 1994. However, in practice it is often called "Romanian" or "the language of the state".

The law that officialized the Moldovan language and the 1989 law that changed the alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin both state that Moldovan is identical to Romanian. 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 . Also, in 2004, 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".

Ethnologue's Moldova page and the U.S. Department of State both say that Romanian is the official language of Moldova, although this is inaccurate in the sense that, while many believe Romanian and Moldovan to be the same language, the constitution of Moldova specifies "Moldovan" as the official language rather than "Romanian".

The Moldavian chronicler, Grigore Ureche (1590 - 1647), established in his "Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei" (The Chronicles of the land of Moldavia) that the Moldavian and Wallachian dialects of the time were essentially the same language; and that Moldavians and Wallachians shared the same ethnicity.

Alphabet

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.

Spelling

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.

External links

• 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)

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.

• 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)

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

• 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

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, Татиьяна Павловна. Языковые контакты : на материале славиано-молдав, отношений. Moscow: "Наука" , 1970. (LCCN 78510414)
• Афтени, М.К., Батыр, Л.К., Богач, И.И. (1961). Молдавско-русский словарь. Moscow, USSR: Государственное издательство иностранных и национальных словарей. (LCCN 62045065)
• Ецко, И.И. (1987). Молдавско-русский словарь. Kishinev, Moldavian SSR: МСЭ . (LCCN 88112743)
• Баскаков, Н.А. (1973). Гагаузско-русско-молдавский словарь. Moscow, USSR: Unknown. (LCCN 73355147)
• 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.
• 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/
• Letopiseţul Ţărîi Moldovei

• Moldova
• Languages of Moldova
• Romanian language
• Soviet Union