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Moldovan language

History and politics

The history of the Moldovan language refers to the historical evolution of the glottonym Moldavian/Moldovan in Moldova and beyond, which is closely tied to the region's political status, with long periods of rule by Russia and the Soviet Union influencing the language's name and (when Cyrillic script was in use) orthography. From a linguistic perspective, this term is an alternative name for the Romanian language spoken in the Republic of Moldova (see History of the Romanian language).

The concept of the distinction of Moldovan from Romanian was explicitly stated only in the early 20th century, and accompanied the raising of national awareness among Moldovans, and the Soviet placing heavy emphasis on Moldavians vs Romanians as a reaction to this awareness.

Major recent developments include the passing to a Latin script from Cyrillic in 1989 and several changes in the statutory name of the language used in Moldova. At one point of particular confusion about identity in the 1990s, all references to geography in the name of the language were dropped, and it was officially known simply as limba de stat - "the state language".

Moldovan was assigned the code mo in ISO 639-1 and code mol in ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 but these have been deprecated in November 2008, leaving ro and ron (639-2/T) and rum (639-2/B) the current language identifiers to be used for the variant of the Romanian language also known as Moldavian and Moldovan in English, the ISO 639-2 Registration Authority said in the motivation of the decision.

Reversion to Latin script, and beyond

In 1989, the contemporary Romanian version of the Latin alphabet was made the official script of the Moldavian SSR.

In the Declaration of Independence of Moldova (27 August 1991), the official language was named "Romanian", but the 1994 constitution declared Moldovan the state language.

When in 1992 the Romanian Academy changed the official orthography of Romanian language, the Institute of Linguistics at the Academy of Sciences of Moldova did not make the changes, and the official orthography continued as before until 2001 when the changes introduced by the Romanian Academy were adopted by the Moldovan Academy .

A 1996 attempt by Moldovan president Mircea Snegur to change the official language to "Romanian" was dismissed by the Moldovan Parliament as promoting "Romanian expansionism".

In 2003, a Moldovan-Romanian dictionary (Dicţionar Moldovenesc-Românesc (2003), by Vasile Stati) was published. The linguists of the Romanian Academy in Romania declared that all the Moldovan words are also Romanian words, although some of its contents are disputed as being Russian loanwords. In Moldova, the head of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Linguistics, Ion Bărbuţă, described the dictionary as "an absurdity, serving political purposes". Stati, however, accused both of promoting "Romanian colonialism".

In the 2004 census, 16.5% (558,508) out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova declared Romanian as their mother tongue, whereas 60% declared Moldovan. While 40% of all urban Romanian/Moldovan speakers declared Romanian as their mother tongue, in the countryside barely a seventh of the Romanian/Moldovan speakers indicated Romanian as their mother tongue.National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova:
In October 2009, Vlad Filat, the new Prime Minister of Moldova, announced that he intends to propose changes in the Constitution regarding the name of the language, replacing "Moldovan" with "Romanian".

Linguistic aspects

There are, however, regional differences in the colloquial spoken language. The Moldovan dialect/variety is common in the Republic of Moldova, as well as in Chernivtsi Oblast and Budjak region of Ukraine, and in eight counties of Romania, territories that once made up the medieval Principality of Moldavia. The difference between the language spoken in Chişinău and Iaşi and the language spoken for example in Bucharest could be roughly compared to that between Standard British and Scottish or American English. Others have argued that these differences might be found within any linguistic territory.

According to a report issued by the Academy of science of the Republic of Moldova in 1994, the correct name of the language is Romanian.

In Moldova's schools, the discipline about the state language is called "Romanian language", though the Moldovan president Vladimir Voronin asked to be changed into "Moldovan language".

Controversy

Major varieties of the Romanian language

Demonstration in Chişinău, January 2002. The text on the inscription is "Romanian people -Romanian language"

The matter of whether or not "Moldovan" is a separate language is a contested political issue within and beyond the Republic of Moldova.

The 1989 Language Law of the Moldavian SSR, which is still in force in Moldova (according to the Constitution,) asserts the existence of a "linguistic Moldo-Romanian identity". Article 13 of the Moldovan Constitution, names it "the national language of the country" (the original uses the term limba de stat, which literally means the language of the state, or official language, thus avoiding the term national, whose sense is that of ethnicity).

In the breakaway region of Transnistria, it is co-official with Ukrainian and Russian.

Despite the official nomenclature, standard "Moldovan" is widely considered to be identical to the standard Romanian. Writing about "essential differences", Vasile Stati, supporter of Moldovenism, is obliged to concentrate almost exclusively on lexical rather than grammatical differences. Whatever language distinctions may once have existed, these have been decreasing rather than increasing: "... in the main, Moldovan in its standard form was more Romanian by the 1980s than at any point in its history".

In 2002, the Moldovan Minister of Justice, Ion Morei, said that Romanian and "Moldovan" are the same language and that the Constitution of Moldova should be amended, not necessarily by changing the word Moldovan into Romanian, but by adding that "Romanian and Moldovan are the same language". Education Minister Valentin Beniuc said, "I have stated more than once that the notion of a Moldovan language and a Romanian language reflects the same linguistic phenomenon in essence." The President of Moldova, Vladimir Voronin, acknowledged that the two languages are identical, but said that Moldovans should have the right to call their language "Moldovan".

In the 2004 census, out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova, 60% chose Moldovan as their mother tongue, whereas only 16.5% chose Romanian. While 37% of all urban Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose Romanian as their mother tongue, in the countryside barely one in seven Romanian/Moldovan speakers indicated Romanian as his mother tongue.
When reporting on EU Council deliberations regarding an agreement between the European Community and Moldova, the Romanian rapporteur Jean Marin Marinescu included a recommendation not to make references to the Moldovan language. This led to speculation in the Romanian press that supposedly the EU banned the usage of the term "Moldovan language." However, the European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, denied these allegations and stated that the Moldovan language is referred to in the 1998 Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Moldova and hence it is considered a part of the acquis, binding to all member states.

Orthography

The language was generally written in a Romanian Cyrillic alphabet (based on the Old Church Slavonic alphabet) before the 19th century. From then and until World War I, both Old Cyrillic and Latin were used, at which point the Old Cyrillic alphabet fell out of use. In the interwar period, Soviet authorities alternately used Latin or Cyrillic for writing the language, mirroring the political goals of the moment. Between 1940 and 1989, i.e. during the Soviet rule, the new Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet replaced Latin as the official alphabet in Moldova (then Moldavian SSR). In 1989, Latin script was adopted again, along with the orthographic rules used in Romania at the time.