The Romanian alphabet is a variant of the Latin alphabet and consists of 31 letters.
The letters Q (read kü or chiu), W (dublu ve), and Y (igrek=i Greek, or i grek) were officially introduced in 1982, but were unofficially used earlier.
They are only found in foreign words such as quasar, watt, and yacht. The letter K, although relatively older, is rarely used and is still considered foreign due to the fact that it only appears in nouns and international neologisms such as kilogram, broker, karate.
In cases where we have words which are borrowed directly from other languages and they are used diacritics ,the official spelling encourages their use. (München, Angoulême,etc but Istanbul instead of İstanbul).
| A, a | a |
| Ă, ă | ă |
| Â, â | â |
| B, b | be |
| C, c | ce |
| D, d | de |
| E, e | e |
| F, f | fe / ef |
| G, g | ghe / ge |
| H, h | ha / haş |
| I, i | i |
| Î, î | î , like Turkish ı |
| J, j | je , like zh |
| K, k | / kapa |
| L, l | le / el |
| M, m | me / em |
| N, n | ne / en |
| O, o | o |
| P, p | pe |
| Q, q | kü / chiu |
| R, r | re / er,ρ |
| S, s | se / es |
| Ș, ș / Ş, ş | șe / şe like sh |
| T, t | te |
| Ț, ț / Ţ, ţ | țe / ţe like ts |
| U, u | u |
| V, v | ve, |
| W, w | dublu ve |
| X, x | ics |
| Y, y | igrec / i grec |
| Z, z | ze / zet |
The Romanian language
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Romanian or Limba Romane (limba română) is a Romance language like Italian, French and Spanish but retains more archaic features of Latin that its other descendants have lost.
It was the native language of Vladimir Chepes aka Count Dracula or Vlad the Impaler. He was a bloodthirsty Bohemian of Wallachia and had a deadly hatred for the Turks. It is said that he had skewered over twenty thousand.
That's where the myths about Count Dracula drinking the blood of men came from.
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| Vlad Ţepes the Impaler or Count Dracula, voivod of Wallachia. |
Along with Istro-Romanic, Vlach (Armanic, Romance and Moghlenic) is a branch of the Balkan neo-Latin languages.It is spoken by 24-28 million people, mainly in Romania and, according to some, in Moldova.
Romanian in MoldovaIn Moldova, the language is called Limba Maldovanese.According to a significant part of the Moldovan population, Moldavian is a separate language.
The differences with Moldavian are real but not so significant that there is a major divergence.For more on this read about the Moldavian language.
Relationship of Romanian with Vlach (Armanic,Romance,Moglenitic) and Istro-Romanian.Some linguists,mainly Romanians,argue that Vlach and Istro-Romanian were split off from Romanian (Dacorumanian) ,but this is not true since both are autonomous neo-Latin languages,sister languages that originated from the Eastern Balkan Roman mother tongue.
It is speculated that the cradle of Eastern Balkan Roman is the Roman province of the Dardanian Administration, south of the Danube.
From there, the neo-Latin Balkan languages broke away and each followed its own path.
An important difference between them is their borrowed vocabulary; Romanian has many Slavic words, while Vlach has many Greek words.
They share a common Latin vocabulary which in many cases is rather more archaic in Vlach.In syntax and grammar they are similar but Vlach completely lacks infinitive ,a feature that places it clearly in the southern Balkans along with Greek.
The first part of the Balkans to be conquered by the Romans was Epirus.The region of Dacia (present-day Romania) was conquered a century later.So it is logical that Latin-speaking started from the south and then expanded northwards, not the other way round as Romanian linguists claim.
vocabulary
The vocabulary of Romanian has been heavily influenced by Slavic, with the percentage of Slavic loans reaching 30 percent. Old Romanian had even more Slavic words and phrases which were replaced by Romanian words and phrases. For example, the Slavic phrase i pak ,and so, was replaced with şi apoi.
60 percent are Latin words, while the rest are words from Turkish, Greek, etc.Of the Latin words, many are French.French is the most popular foreign language in Romania.
Is it hard to learn Romanian?
No, it isn't that hard . According to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) anyway.
Romanian is classified as a first Category language for English natives to learn regarding its difficulty.
In Category I there are the languages which are closely related to English.
While Romanian is a Romance language and English is a Germanic language Romanian can rather easily be learned because of the fact that English has a huge vocabulary of Latin origin ,about 60% or more,via Latin directly or Norman French.
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