Why learn Romanian?

If we are talking about the Romanian language, it is even more important to treat it seriously as it is not at all an easy language as it seems.

You cannot get bored in Romania and one of the aspects that make you enjoy the Romanian atmosphere is the Romanian language. Romanian has survived all the influences from outside, borrowing words from other languages to a certain measure.

Romanian is a Romanic language that kept the grammar structure from Latin, has Latin-origin words, but at the same time borrowed a series of words of Slav, Greek, Turkish, Hungarian, French and more recently English origin.

It is a language that forms words pretty easily and expresses words that other languages cannot express so deeply. Romanian has a certain melody that was transposed in many poems and novels and a pretty complicated grammar inherited from Latin.

The Romanian courses will help you not only discover the beauty of this foreign language but also understand it, go deeper in the Romanian culture and thus understand the people and history of this nation.

Origin and development of Romanian

Prestigious Romanian and foreign linguistics, historians and archaeologists have highlighted along the time language data and documents stating the origin and character of the Romanian language.

Following the wars between the Dacians and Romans, Dacia was transformed in Roman territory and will remain under Roman occupation for 165 years (106-271). The Romanization of the native population took place rather rapidly and slowly. There are over 2600 inscriptions in Latin found on the territory of Romania that prove this fact.

Among the factors that contributed to the process of Romanization, we can mention:

a) the military service where the young people enrolled
b) the marriage of the Romanian veteran soldiers with the Dacian women, their children receiving afterwards Romanian citizenship

c) the Christianism spread in Latin; as a proof we have the basic words of the Christian religion that can be found in Romanian by direct inheritance of certain terms from Latin: Dumnezeu – God (from domine deus), creştin – christian (from christianus), biseriă – church (from basilica), botez – baptism (from baptism), rugăciune - pray (from rogationem), preot - priest (from presbiterius), cruce – cross (from crucem), pacat – sin (from pecatum), înger – angel (from duiangelus), etc.

The influence of the arrival of handicraftsmen, farmers, merchants from Dacia even before the conquest of Traian can be felt event today through the terms that were kept from Latin: sat – village (fossatum, a place reinforced by a ditch), a ara – to plough (arare), a semăna – to sow (seminare), grâu – wheat (granum), secară – rye (secale), orz – barley (hordeum), legume – vegetables (legumen), cânepă – hemp (canepa), in – flax (linum), aur – gold (aurum), argint – silver (argentum), sare – salt (salem), cal – horse (caballus), vacă -  cow (vaca), vie – vineyard (vinea), viţă - vine (vitea), poamă – strawberries (poma), etc.
We can talk of a bilingual period when the 2 languages are used simultaneous – the Geto-Dacian and Latin until the later one, the Latin finally imposed itself.

In "Dacia felix" the Romanization process is still continued also after the official leave of the Roman army and administration in 271, by the intense spreading of Latin among the big rural populations.

The Romanian languages comes from popular spoken Latin or vulgar Latin (lat. vulagaris=spoken by people).
This aspect of Latin represents the base also for the other Roman languages: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Southern French, Provencal, Roumansh, Reto-Roman language and French. There was also a 10^th language, Dalmatian, but it stopped to be used in the 19^th century.

The formation process of the Romanian language ends in the 7^th century. The invasions of the migratory populations: Goths, Gepids, Huns, Avars, Slavs, etc. influenced the language without changing its basic content of words and its grammar originating from Latin.

The morphology of the Romanian language inherits in big percentage the reality of the popular Latin. The majority of the morphologic categories, irrespective of the inflectional variation, are inherited from Latin: the noun with the declensions; the article, the adjective with the comparison degrees; the pronoun; the numeral, the verb with the four conjugations.

The Romanian syntax simplifies the tenses and the moods, changes the word order that used the verb at the end, prefers the coordination instead of the subordination, etc. but the basis is still the popular Latin.

The basic content of Romanian words is of 60-66% of Latin origin and it is inherited. Additionally, there are also other words inherited from the Geto-Dacians – 100 isolated words (abur - steam, brad – fir, barză - stork, brusture - bur, cătun - hamlet, gălbează - fluke, guşă - gizzard) and 2200 proper names (Arges, Cris, Dunare, Motru, Mures, Olt, Prut, Somes, Timis, Tisa). All the other people that passed through our country left influences also in the basic content of words. For example: from the Slav language we have: (approximately 20-22% of the basic content of words) cleşte - tongs, boală - disease, milă - mercy, cocoş - cock, deal - hill, a iubi – to love, muncă - work, noroc – luck; from Magyar language: chip - face, fel - kind, gând - thought, oraş - city; from Turkish: alai - pomp, cişmea - fountain, ciulama – a dish type, ciubuc - tip; from Neo-Greek: cărămidă - brick, a pedepsi – to punish, prosop - towel; and from French: bancnota - banknote, a defini – to define, geniu - genius, stil – style, etc. (German and Latin – Scoala Ardeleana).

    The first known document written in Romanian is a short letter from 1521 “The letter of Neacsu de la Campulung”. After this date, there are more letters, sell and buy documents, papers attesting dowry, notes, etc.; and after 1540 there are also books, most of them printed in Brasov. They are religious translations from Slav language. The first were translated in Maramures where the manuscripts were found. From here they got to the deacon Coresi, a well known print house owner who printed them during several years. At Orastia the first part of the Old Testament was printed between 1581-1582.

After the 16^th century religious books have always been published. Even if there were also legendary books and even popular novels translated, and after 1600 there are memorials about the history of Romanians written directly in Romanian. They were not printed but copied at hand and put in circulation in more copies.

   The dialects of Romanian are: Daco-Romanian (spoken at the North of Danube), Aromanian (spoken in Macedonia), Meglano-Romanian (spoken in Meglania), Istro-Romanian (spoken in the Instrian Peninsula that no longer exists today).