The Romanian Language: A Brief Introduction

Romania was admitted to the United Nations in the 1950’s and into the EU in 2007. Romanian is one of the official 23 EU languages and is spoken by approximately 24 million people. The population of Romania is only 21.5 million, the remaining 3 million or so speakers can be found in the independent state of Moldova, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, and Hungary. Moldova, in fact, used a version of the Cyrillic alphabet for Romanian until 1989, whereas in Romania itself the modern Latin based alphabet has been used since the late 18th century.

Since its admission to the EU there has been an obvious increase in the need for Romanian translations. The EU stipulates two main entitlements for the official member state languages; namely that documents can be received and subsequently replied to by EU Institutions in any of the official languages, and that EU regulations and other legislative documents are published in the official languages.

As with many European languages Romanian is a descendent of Latin. Being a romance language it has much in common with Italian and many Romanian speakers can understand some Italian when it is spoken. It does, of course, have its own features and has been influenced by many of the Slavic languages from surrounding areas. It is estimated that approximately 10% of the language is made up of Slavic derived words. There are also many borrowings from French, Italian and English.

Throughout its history, the Romanian language, or ‘limba română’, has been influenced by the languages it has come into contact with. As we enter into a new decade where multilingualism and cultural diversity are becoming more prominent Romanian, as long as it continues to be a living language, will continue to evolve to reflect the needs of the country and the history of the citizens it represents.

*Interesting fact: Did you know that Romanian has 9 vowels and 22 consonants?*

Rosetta Translation provides quality technical and legal translations across all major languages, including Romanian.