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The Moldovan language (limba moldovenească, sometimes translated into English as Moldavian) is the official name of the state language of the Republic of Moldova as specified by its constitution, as well as of the disputed territory of Transnistria..
The Moldovan Constitution, names Moldovan the "national language" (limba de stat) of the country. In the unrecognized state of Transnistria, it is co-official with Ukrainian and Russian. The 1989 law on language of the Moldavian SSR, which still remains in effect in Moldova, asserts the existence of a "linguistic Moldo-Romanian identity".
Opinions vary on the status of Moldovan as a language. Most linguists consider standard Moldovan to be identical to standard Romanian, an Eastern Romance language, although one Moldovan linguist disputes this. There are, however, more differences between the colloquial spoken languages of Moldova and Romania, most significantly due to the influence of Russian in Moldova which was not present in Romania. The matter of whether or not Moldovan is a separate language is a contested political issue within and beyond the Republic of Moldova.
The number of Moldovan speakers depends on one's view of the status of Moldovan. If Moldovan is taken to mean Romanian spoken in Romania and Moldova and by the Romanian/Moldovan diaspora, then there may be as many as 29 million speakers.
"Moldovan" (graiul moldovenesc, in older sources limba moldovenească) can also refer to the speech of the historical region of Moldavia in Romania, one of the northern varieties or dialects of colloquial Romanian.
History and politics
Before 1812
References to a "Moldavian language" can be found in works as early as Grigore Ureche's "The Chronicles of the land of Moldavia", where it is noted that in actuality one language prevailed over the territory of Moldavia, Wallachia as well as Transylvania.
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 Romanian words had Dacian roots.
Language in imperial Russian Bessarabia
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, giving the justification: "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 the Russian Empire local speeches are not taught".
Language shift in Bessarabia
The linguistic situation in Bessarabia from 1812 to 1918 was the gradual development of bilingualism. Russian continued to develop as the official language of priviledge, whereas Romanian remained the principal vernacular. The evolution of this linguistic situation, and the development of Moldovan, can be divided into five phases.
Phase one: 1812 to 1828
The period from 1812 to 1828 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 Chişinău begins to produce religious books.
Phase two: 1828 to 1843
The period from 1828 to 1843 is one of partial diglossic bilingualism. 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 civil code. 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 publishedto meet the new need for bilingualism. Religious books and Sunday sermons remained the only monolingual public outlet for Romanian. By 1948, the removal of Romanian from public administration was complete.
Phase three: 1843 to 1871
The period from 1843 to 1871 was one of assimilation. Romanian continued to be a taught subject for some time — until 1866 at the Liceul Regional (high school), until 1867 at the Seminarul Teologic (Theological Seminary) and until 1871 at regional schools — until the teaching of the language was forbidden by law.
Phase four: 1871 to 1905
The period from 1871 to 1905 was one of official monolingualism 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 Russian Empire. In 1872, the priest Pavel Lebedev ordered that all church documents be written in Russian, and, in 1882, the press at Chişinău was closed by order of the holy synod.
Phase five: 1905 to 1917
The period from 1905 to 1917 was one of increasing linguistic conflict, with the re-awakening of Romanian national consciousness. In 1905 and 1906, the Bessarabian zemstvels 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".
The term Moldovan language ("limbă moldovenească") was newly employed to create a state-sponsored Ausbausprache 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. Artsimovich, official of the Education Department based in Odessa, wrote a letter, dated 11 February 1863, 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, mor 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 Artsimovich, 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".
Beginnings of the Moldovan language
The territory of Bessarabia which forms most of 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 a Russian territory until the October Revolution of 1917. In 1918, Bessarabia united with Romania.
With the creation in 1924 of the Moldavian ASSR within the Ukrainian SSR, the Soviet 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 transfers of the territory and the accompanying migration of the population, including deportations of the ethnic Romanians 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 Russian language 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 discussions between the supporters ("Romanizators" or "Romanists") and opponents ("Originalists") of the convergence of Moldavian and Romanian languages.
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 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) and some Moldovan communists visited Stalin, 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.
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 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 "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".
Moldavian in Soviet Moldova
In June 1940, twenty-two years after the union with Romania, 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 the territory between Dnestr and Bug rivers. 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.
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, the contemporary 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".
When in 1992 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).
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".
Linguistic view
The main debate surrounding the status of Moldovan is its status in relation to Romanian, specifically, whether it is a dialect of Romanian (or vice-versa), a separate language, or whether "Romanian" and "Moldovan" are in fact two different names for the same thing. This situation is roughly analogous to the situation of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian languages or Valencian and Catalan.
This debate is not scientific, however, since linguistics as a science considers all divisions of languages and dialects as arbitrary groupings of idiolects. There is a dialect continuum in Daco-Romanian; the only sharp break at the Prut River is the official name of the language, not how it is spoken.
However, in practice, it is sometimes necessary for linguists to designate separate "dialects" and "languages", despite the fact that 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 most of 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 necessarily by changing the word Moldovan into Romanian, but by adding that "Romanian and Moldovan are the same language".
Education Minister Valentin Beniuc said "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 cenus, about 40% of all respondents declared their language to be Romanian..
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. Only very rarely are "română" and derivatives are written using "î", and most people from either country will consider it to be incorrect usage.
Romanian sunt is written as sînt in Moldovan. However, in Moldovan Cyrillic, it is variably written сунт(sunt) or сынт(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.
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.
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).
Spoken language in Chişinău and its suburbs
The colloquial Moldovan of Chişinău 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.
Unlike in the villages or towns, where a more conservative form of the language is observed, the colloquial speech of the larger cities is, to some extent, an amalgamation of Romanian and Russian. Only some nationally-conscious members of the elite urban intelligentsia make any effort to purge Russian words from their everyday 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.
In some cases, Russian words take on Romanian inflectional paradigms (examples after D. Dyer ):
Original: "Maşina bucsuieşte"
Translation: "The car is skidding"
Explanation: "Bucsuieşte" is from the Russian root word буксовать (bucs-ova-ti), "to skid", and the Romanian inflectional suffix (i)-eşte, the 3rd person singular present tense ending for a 4th conjugation verb.
Original: "Pe Ion l-au sudit pe doi ani"
Translation: "John was sentenced to two years"
Explanation: "Sudit" is from the Russian verbal root суд (sud), "to judge" or "to sentence", and the Romanian inflectional suffix -t, the passive participle ending.
In other cases, sentences are patterned after Russian syntax:
Original: "La mine rochia'i nouă"
Translation: "I have a new dress"
Explanation: "La mine rochia" and the Russian "У меня ... платье" both mean literally "At me the dress", as opposed to the standard Romanian "Rochia mea", literally "my dress".
Original: "Ion lucrează şofer"
Translation: "Ion works as a driver"
Explanation: In Romanian, there is no instrumental case, so the preposition ca (as) or the phrase în calitate de (in the capacity of) is used instead. In Russian, the instrumental case is marked by the suffix -ом. Colloquial Moldovan extends the function of the nominative case to the function of instrumental case as well, thus eliminating the Romanian prepositional phrases. Unlike most Russian influence, this is beginning to appear in the literary language as well.
Comparison with Romanian
The sample below taken from the Constitutions of Moldova and Romania proves 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.
- Interview with Vasile Stati, Vremea
- World Bank, Reviews of National Policies for Education: Moldova, p. 51
- "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
- Kogan Page 2004, p 242
- Dyer 1999
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. Chişinău: Tipografia Centrală (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.
- Grigore Ureche, Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei
- Dyer, Donald Leroy. SEEJ, Vol. 43, No. 1 (1999): pp85-98
External links
- Conference presentation by Tamara Cărăuş, about identity issues in Moldova
- Text collected by Jesse Schuld
- Essay on Language in Moldavia by Diana Nissler
- Article by Attila Demkó
- Moldovan (Cyrillic) alphabet and pronunciation. The entry states that Moldovan is a dialect of Romanian.
- Constitutional Court of Transnistria site in Moldovan-Cyrillic (куртя конституционалэ)
- Columbia Encyclopedia: Article on the Romanian language, stating that it is spoken by 3 million people in Moldova
- Columbia Encyclopedia: Article on Moldova, stating that Moldovan is virtually indistinguishable from Romanian
| Eastern Romance languages |
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Vulgar Latin language Substratum Thraco-Roman culture |
| Romanian |
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| Aromanian |
| Megleno-Romanian |
| Istro-Romanian |