Romanian language
Romanian (obsolete spelling: Roumanian; endonym: limba română [ˈlimba roˈmɨnə], or românește [romɨˈneʃte], lit. ‘in Romanian’) is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova. Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Western Romance languages in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries.1 To distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. It is also spoken as a minority language by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania (Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Ukraine), and by the large Romanian diaspora. In total, it is spoken by 22 million people as a first language.[
Romanian was also known as Moldovan in Moldova, although the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled in 2013 that “the official language of Moldova is Romanian”.2 On 16 March 2023, the Moldovan Parliament approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution. On 22 March, the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, promulgated the law.3
Printed 2026-07-09.
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Footnotes
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“Istoria limbii române” (“History of the Romanian Language”), II, Academia Română, Bucharest, 1969 ↩
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The constitution of the Republic of Moldova referred to the country’s language as Moldovan, whilst the 1991 Declaration of Independence named the official language Romanian. In December 2013, an official decision of the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the Declaration of Independence takes precedence over the Constitution and that the state language is therefore Romanian, not ‘Moldovan’. “Moldovan court rules official language is ‘Romanian,’ replacing Soviet-flavored ‘Moldovan’”. ↩
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“Președinta Maia Sandu a promulgat Legea care confirmă că limba de stat a Republicii Moldova este cea română” (in Romanian). Presidency of the Republic of Moldova. Astăzi am promulgat Legea care confirmă un adevăr istoric și incontestabil: limba de stat a Republicii Moldova este cea română. [Today I have promulgated the law that confirms a historical and indisputable truth: the state language of the Republic of Moldova is Romanian.] ↩