Romanian language

] [, IPA|/i/, IPA|/o/, IPA|/u/, IPA|/ə/, and IPA|/ɨ/. Additionally, IPA|/ø/ and IPA|/y/ may appear in some words.

In final positions after consonants (rarely within words) a short non-syllabic IPA|/i/ can occur, which is IPA2|ʲ and is produced as a palatalization of the preceding consonant. A similar sound, the voiceless ending "u", existed in old Romanian but has disappeared from the standard language.

There are also four semivowels and twenty consonants.

Diphthongs

Descending diphthongs: ai, au, ei, eu, ii, iu, oi, ou, ui, ăi, ău, îi, îu.

Ascending diphthongs: ea, eo, ia, ie, io, iu, oa, ua, uă.

Triphthongs

Pattern S-V-S (main vowel between two semivowels): eai, eau, iai, iau, iei, ieu, ioi, iou, oai.

Pattern S-S-V (two-semivowel glide before the main vowel): eoa, ioa.

Phonetic changes

Due to its isolation from the other Romance languages, the phonetic evolution of Romanian was quite different, but does share a few changes with Italian, such as [kl] > [kj] (Lat. clarus > Rom. chiar, Ital. chiaro) and also a few with Dalmatian, such as /gn/ (probably phonetically [ŋn] ) > [mn] (Lat. cognatus > Rom. cumnat, Dalm. comnut).

Among the notable phonetic changes are:
* diphthongization of e and o:* Lat. cera > Rom. ceară (wax):* Lat. sole > Rom. soare (sun)
* iotacism [e] → [ie] in the beginning of the word:* Lat. herba > Rom. iarbă (grass, herb)
* velar [k] , [g] → labial [p] , [b] , [m] before alveolar consonants::* Lat. octo > Rom. opt (eight):* Lat. quattuor > Rom. patru (four):* Lat. lingua > Rom. limbă (tongue, language):* Lat. signum > Rom. semn (sign):* Lat. coxa > Rom. coapsă (thigh)
* rhotacism [l] → [r] between vowels:* Lat. caelum > Rom. cer (sky)
* Alveolars [d] and [t] palatalized to [dz] / [z] and [ts] when before short [e] or long [i] :* Lat. deus > Rom. zeu (god):* Lat. tenem > Rom. ţine (hold)

On the other hand, it (along with French) has "lost" the /kw/ (qu) sound from original Latin, turning it either into p ("patru", "four"; cf. It. "quattro") or a hard or soft c ("când", "when"; "calitate", "quality").

Writing system

The first written record of a Romanic language spoken in the Middle Ages in the Balkans was written by the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes Confessor in the 6th century about a military expedition against the Avars from 587, when a Vlach muleteer accompanying the Byzantine army noticed that the load was falling from one of the animals and shouted to a companion "Torna, torna fratre" (meaning "Return, return brother!").

The oldest written text in Romanian is a letter from late June 1521, in which Neacşu of Câmpulung wrote to the mayor of Braşov about an imminent attack of the Turks. It was written using the Cyrillic alphabet, like most early Romanian writings. The earliest writing in Latin script was a late 16th century Transylvanian text which was written with the Hungarian alphabet conventions.

In the late 1700s, Transylvanian scholars noted the Latin origin of Romanian and adapted the Latin alphabet to the Romanian language, using some rules from Italian, recognized as Romanian's closest relative. The Cyrillic alphabet remained in (gradually decreasing) use until 1860, when Romanian writing was first officially regulated.

In the Soviet Republic of Moldova, a special version of the Cyrillic alphabet derived from the Russian version was used, until 1989, when it returned to the Romanian Latin alphabet.

Romanian alphabet

The Romanian alphabet is as follows:

:A, a (a); Ă, ă (ă); Â, â (â din a); 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 din i); J, j (je), K, k (ka de la kilogram), L, l (le / el); M, m (me / em); N, n (ne / en); O, o (o); P, p (pe); Q (chiu); R, r, (re / er); S, s (se / es); polytonic|Ș polytonic|ș (polytonic|șe); T, t (te); polytonic|Ț polytonic|ț (polytonic|țe); U, u (u); V, v (ve); W (dublu ve); X, x (ics); Y (i grec); Z, z (ze / zet).

K, Q, W and Y are not part of the native alphabet, were officially introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982 and are mostly used to write loanwoards like "kilogram", "quasar", "watt", and "yoga".

The Romanian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and has five additional letters (these are not diacriticals, but letters in their own right). Initially, there were as many as 12 additional letters, but some of them disappeared in subsequent reforms. Also, until the early 20th century, a short vowel marker was used.

Today, the Romanian alphabet is largely phonemic. However, the letters "â" (used inside the words) and "î" (used at the beginning or the end; it can also be used in the middle of a composite word) both represent the same close central unrounded vowel IPA|/ɨ/.

Another exception from a completely phonetic writing system is the fact that vowels and their respective semivowels are not distinguished in writing. In dictionaries the distinction is marked by separating the entry word into syllables for the words containing a hiatus that might be mispronounced as a diphthong or a triphthong.

Stressed vowels also are not marked in writing, except very rarely in cases where by misplacing the stress a word might change its meaning and if the meaning is not obvious from the context. For example "trei copíi" means "three children" while "trei cópii" means "three copies".

Pronunciation

* "h" is not silent like in other Romance languages such as Spanish and French, but represents the phoneme IPA|/h/, except in the groups "ch" and "gh" (see below)
* "j" represents IPA|/ʒ/, as in French or Portuguese.
* There are two letters with a comma below, latinx|Ș and latinx|Ț, which represent the sounds IPA|/ʃ/ and IPA|/ʦ/. However, the allographs with a cedilla instead of a comma, "Ş" and "Ţ", became widespread when pre-Unicode and early Unicode character sets did not include the standard form.
* A final orthographical "i" after a consonant often represents the palatalization of the consonant (e. g. "lup" IPA|/lup/ "wolf" vs. "lupi" IPA|/lupʲ/ "wolves") -- it is "not" pronounced like Italian "lupi" (which also means "wolves"), and is indeed an example of the Slavic influence on Romanian.
* "ă" represents the schwa, IPA|/ə/.
* "î" and "â" represent IPA|/ɨ/.
* The letter "e" is generally pronounced as the diphthong "ie" IPA|/je/ when it is in the beginning of a form of the verb "a fi" "to be", e. g. "este" IPA|/jeste/ "is". This rule also applies to personal pronouns beginning with "e", e. g. "el" IPA|/jel/ "he". This also shows the Slavic influence on the language.
* "x" represents either the phoneme IPA|/ks/ as in "expresie" = expression, or IPA|/gz/ as in "exemplu" = example, as in English.
* As in Italian, the letters "c" and "g" represent the affricates IPA|/ʧ/ and IPA|/ʤ/ before "i" and "e", and IPA|/k/ and IPA|/g/ elsewhere. When IPA|/k/ and IPA|/g/ are followed by vowels IPA|/e/ and IPA|/i/ (or their corresponding semivowels or the final IPA|/ʲ/) the digraphs "ch" and "gh" are used instead of "c" and "g", as shown in the table below.

Punctuation and capitalization

The main particularities Romanian has relative to other languages using the Latin alphabet are:
* The quotation marks use the Polish format in the format „quote «inside» quote”, that is, 99 down and 99 up for normal quotations, with the addition of non-French double angle quotes without space for inside quotation when necessary.
* Proper quotations which span multiple paragraphs don't start each paragraph with the quotation marks; one single pair of quotation marks is always used, regardless of how many paragraphs are quoted;
* Dialogues are identified with quotation dashes;
* The Oxford comma before "and" is considered incorrect ("red, yellow and blue" is the proper format);
* Punctuation signs which follow a text in parentheses always follow the final bracket;
* In titles, only the first letter of the first word is capitalized, the rest of the title using sentence capitalization (with all its rules: proper names are capitalized as usual, etc.).
* Names of months and days are not capitalized ("ianuarie" "January", "joi" "Thursday")
* Adjectives derived from proper names are not capitalized ("Germania" "Germany", but "german" "German")

Language sample

English text:: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.::"(Universal Declaration of Human Rights)"

Contemporary Romanian - highlighted words are French or Italian loanwords:: Toate fiinţele umane se nasc libere şi egale în demnitate şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu raţiune şi conştiinţă şi trebuie să se comporte unele faţă de altele în spiritul fraternităţii.

Romanian, excluding French and Italian loanwords - highlighted words are Slavic loanwords:: Toate fiinţele omeneşti se nasc slobode şi deopotrivă în destoinicie şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu înţelegere şi cuget şi trebuie să se poarte unele faţă de altele în duh de frăţietate.

Romanian, excluding loanwords:: Toate fiinţele omeneşti se nasc nesupuse şi asemenea în preţuire şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu înţelegere şi cuget şi se cuvine să se poarte unele faţă de altele după firea frăţiei.

See also

* Romanian vocabulary
* Romanianization
* Neacşu, author of the oldest surviving document written in Romanian
* Latin Europe

Notes

References

* Rosetti, Alexandru, "Istoria limbii române", 2 vols., Bucharest, 1965-1969.
* Uwe, Hinrichs (ed.), "Handbuch der Südosteuropa-Linguistik", Wiesbaden, 1999.
* [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508587/Romanian-language Encyclopedia Britannica]

External links

Learning Romanian

* [http://www.romanianlessons.com/ Romanian Lessons]
* [http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/stand_alone_romanian.pdf Romanian Reference Grammar, by Dana Cojocaru, University of Bucharest (183 pages) - 4.6 MB - pdf]

Phrasebooks

* [http://wikitravel.org/en/Romanian_phrasebook Romanian phrasebook] on Wikitravel
* [http://www.unilang.org/resources/vocab/basicwords.ro.html Romanian Basic Words]

Dictionaries

* [http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?l=Romanian Romanian bilingual dictionaries]

Miscellaneous

* [http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/rom-uni.htm SAMPA for Romanian]
* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ron Ethnologue report for Romanian]