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Languages in Romania


Languages in Romania

The official language of Romania is Romanian, limba română, which is a Romance language. It was formalized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a significant impute from French (as much as 40% of the modern Romanian vocabulary was borrowed directly from modern French). Aromanian is the closest living relative (and only other member of the Italo-Eastern subdivision of Italic languages) to Romanian. Aromanian is a minority language spoken in Macedonia, Greece and parts of Romania. In contrast to Romanian's heavy Slavic, German and Hungarian influences, Aromanian takes many words from Greek. Some 10% of the Romanian vocabulary is of Slavonic origin and less than 5% is from Turkish, Hungarian or German. Minority languages spoken in Romania are Hungarian, German, Turkish and Romany (the language of the Roma, or Gypsies), albeit most of these words have fallen out of use for a long time. Russian and Ukrainian can be heard in the Danube Delta as well. French used to be the second well-known language in Romania, since it used to be compulsory in every school; however, it has been mostly displaced by English. A well-educated Romanian who graduated from an average university can usually speak English and another European language, such as French, German, Italian, Spanish (about 8%) or Russian. If you leave the common touristic routes, Romanian is the only way to ask for information. That won't be such a problem; learn some basic words and ask them to write the answers. Although some might speak Russian due to Romania's past as a part of the Eastern Bloc, one should not count on it. About 7% of Romanians understand Russian but only about 4% are fluent in it. The chance of one doing so is very small, as the Ceauşescu administration and subsequent leaders made learning the language optional, rather than compulsory; and other languages (especially French, Italian or other Romance languages) took the place of Russian in schools. Most educated Romanians may be able to make some sense of other spoken Romance languages, such as French, Spanish, and Italian. Other Romanians may understand some Spanish and Italian because of popular TV soap operas from Italy and Latin America. If you want to find out some common phrases/words in Romanian, see the Romanian phrasebook.

The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Romania


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Romania Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.

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