Romanian language
Channel: the aleatoric learning channel
Date: 18/11/2021

The use of the denomination Romanian for the language and use of the demonym Romanians for speakers of this language predates the foundation of the modern Romanian state. Miron Costin, in his De neamul moldovenilor, while noting that Moldavians, Wallachians, and the Romanians living in the Kingdom of Hungary have the same origin, says that although people of Moldavia call themselves Moldavians, they name their language Romanian instead of Moldavian. The slow process of Romanian establishing itself as an official language, used in the public sphere, in literature and ecclesiastically, began in the late 15th century and ended in the early decades of the 18th century, by which time Romanian had begun to be regularly used by the Church. Romanian is spoken mostly in Central and the Balkan region of Southern Europe, although speakers of the language can be found all over the world, mostly due to emigration of Romanian nationals and the return of immigrants to Romania back to their original countries. The Romanian Language Institute, established by the Ministry of Education of Romania, promotes Romanian and supports people willing to study the language, working together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Department for Romanians Abroad.Since 2013, the Romanian Language Day is celebrated on every 31 August. In parts of Ukraine where Romanians constitute a significant share of the local population Romanian is taught in schools as a primary language and there are Romanian-language newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting. The Romanian Cultural Institute has since 1992 organised summer courses in Romanian for language teachers. Romanian has become popular in other countries through movies and songs performed in the Romanian language. A study conducted by Mario Pei in 1949 which analyzed the degree of differentiation of languages from their parental language produced the following percentages: Sardinian: 8% Italian: 12% Spanish: 20% Romanian: 23.5% Occitan: 25% Portuguese: 31% French: 44%The lexical similarity of Romanian with Italian has been estimated at 77%, followed by French at 75%, Sardinian 74%, Catalan 73%, Portuguese and Rhaeto-Romance 72%, Spanish 71%.The Romanian vocabulary became predominantly influenced by French and, to a lesser extent, Italian in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 18th century, Transylvanian scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted the Latin alphabet to the Romanian language, using some orthographic rules from Italian, recognized as Romanian's closest relative.