Moldovan language
The Moldovan (autoglottony: limba moldovenească, лимба молдовеняскэ in Cyrillic script) is one of the two names that the Romanian language adopts in the Republic of Moldova, established in article 13 of the current Constitution. The other name, recognized by the Moldovan Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Court, is "Romanian".
The language spoken in Moldova has been identified by these two terms, Romanian and Moldovan, throughout its history; however, during the years of membership in the Soviet Union, in the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, the only officially allowed “Moldovan”.
From a linguistic perspective, the term “Moldovan” designates the dialect variety of the Romanian language spoken in the Republic of Moldova (see History of the Romanian language). The variety of Romanian spoken in Moldova is the Moldavian subdialect, which is also spoken in north-eastern Romania. The two countries share the same literary standard. Indeed, few differences can be found between the standard "Moldovan" of Moldova and the standard Romanian of Romania.
The word “Moldovan” is also used to refer, collectively, to the varieties of the Romanian language in northwestern Romania, scattered roughly across the former territories of the Principality of Moldova (now divided between Moldova and Romania). The Moldovan variety is considered one of the five most widely spoken varieties of Romanian. All five are written identically. The Prut River, which marks the political border between Romania and Moldova, does not imply any linguistic border. There is no difference between the way of speaking on one shore and the way of speaking on the opposite shore.
However, for political reasons, during the long periods in which Moldova was dominated by Russia and the Soviet Union, the authorities of the time insisted on calling the Romanian from Moldova Moldovan, as part of a process of separation of the Moldovans from the rest of the Romanians, in order to build a different nation. As part of this process, they insisted on writing Moldavian Romanian in the Cyrillic alphabet, and not in Latin characters. In 2003, a Moldovan-Romanian dictionary (Dicționar Moldovenesc–Românesc) was published, curated by Vasile Stati. Linguists from the Romanian Academy of Romania stated that all Moldovan words were also Romanian words, although some words were disputed as being Russian loanwords. In Moldova, the president of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences, Ion Bărbuță, declared the dictionary absurd, describing it as "ridiculous, [published] under political interests". Stati, however, accused the Romanian Academy and Bărbuță of promoting “Romanian colonialism”. Up to that point, a group of Romanian linguists adopted a resolution, stating that the promotion that there is a Moldovan language, other than Romanian, is an anti-scientific campaign. Writing about "essential differences", Vasile Stati, defender of Moldovanism, it has established almost exclusively lexical differences, rather than grammatical differences. If there were ever differences between languages, they have diminished rather than increased. King wrote in 2000 that "in conclusion, Moldavian, in its standard form, was more Romanian in the 1980s than at any point in its history."
Situation during the Soviet period (1940-1990)
Before 1918, during the interwar period, and after the union of Bessarabia with Romania, there was no consensus among scholars whether Moldovans and Romanians formed a single ethnic group. Moldovan peasants had grown up as one entity different and lost the years of creating a pan-Romanian national political consciousness. They self-identified as Moldovans speaking the "Moldovan" language. This caused reactions by pan-Romanian nationalists. The concept of the distinction between Moldovan and Romanian was explicitly declared only at the beginning of the 20th century. The beginning of the creation of a national consciousness among Moldovans was accompanied by Soviet policies, which emphasized the differences between Moldovans and Romanians.
Situation after the independence of Moldova (1990-present)
In 1989, one year before Moldova's declaration of independence, the Language Law of the Soviet Socialist Republic, which is still in force according to the Constitution, declared the "Moldovan-Romanian linguistic identity"; and in parallel, in that same year of 1989, the Latin alphabet was reintroduced.
Moldova's Declaration of Independence of August 27, 1991 identified the official language as “Romanian”. On the contrary, the 1994 constitution, approved under a government dominated by communists, who favored closer ties with Russia, changed the official status of the language and went on to designate it again as "Moldovan" in its article 13. In 1996, the Moldovan president at the time, Mircea Snegur, tried to change the official language back to “Romanian”. The communist-dominated Moldovan parliament scrapped the proposal as promoting "Romanian expansionism."
These ups and downs meant that, during the 1990s, to avoid controversy, people preferred not to use the gluttonys 'Moldovan' nor 'Romanian', opting to use at the official level an expression as ambiguous and neutral as 'limba de stat', that is, “state language”. In this same conciliatory line, in 2003, the parliament of the Republic of Moldova adopted a law that defined "Moldovan" and "Romanian" as valid "names" for the same language.
However, as progress is made in the s. In the 21st century, the use of the gluttony 'Romanian' is becoming more widespread, to the detriment of the gluttony 'Moldovan', or else the recognition that both terms serve to designate the same language. In 2002, the Moldovan Minister of Justice, Ion Morei, said that Romanian and Moldovan were the same language, and that the Constitution of Moldova should be amended to reflect that, not by replacing the word "Moldovan" with "Romanian", but by adding that “Romanian and Moldavian are the same language”. Moldovan 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." Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin admitted that the two languages were identical, but he said Moldovans have the right to call their language “Moldovan”.
When in 2007, the pro-Russian president Vladimir Voronin requested to change the term to "Moldovan language", public pressure against that decision meant that the term was not changed.
In the same year, in 2007, the Romanian reporter Jean Marin Marinescu, when reporting on the deliberations of the Council of the European Union about an agreement between the European Community and Moldova, included a recommendation to avoid formal references to the “language Moldovan". The Romanian press speculated that the European Union had banned the use of the expression "Moldovan language". However, the European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, denied these allegations and said that the Moldovan language is cited in the 1998 Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and Moldova and, thus, is considered part of community law (acquis communautaire), being the rule for all member states. Until November 2008, the Moldovan language had been designated with the code “mo” in ISO 639-1 and the code “mol” in ISO 639-3. As of that date, both codes were abandoned, leaving the codes "ro" and "ron" (639-2/T) and "rum" (639-2/B) as the language identifiers to be used as the variant of the language. Romanian language, also known as Moldavian.
In December 2013, the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the name “Romanian”, used in the 1991 Declaration of Independence to identify the official language, prevails over the name “Moldovan”, mentioned in article 13 of the Constitution of 1994. In this way, official status is given to the language known as "Romanian".
Spelling
Until the middle of the s. XIX, the language was written, generally, with the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, based on the Old Church Slavonic alphabet and different from the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. This Romanian Cyrillic alphabet was also used in the Principality of Moldavia and among the other speakers of the Moldovan/Wallach language before 1857.
Since the middle of the s. XIX until the First World War, Old Cyrillic and Latin were used, until Old Cyrillic fell into disuse.
In the interwar period, the Soviet authorities in the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic used the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets to write the language, due to the political goals of the time.
Between 1940 and 1989, during Soviet rule of the country, the new Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet replaced the Latin alphabet as the official alphabet of Moldova, as part of Stalin's policy to Russify the country.
In 1989, the Latin alphabet was re-adopted in Moldova, along with the orthographic rules used in Romania at the time.
When the Romanian Academy changed the official spelling of the Romanian language in 1992, the Institute of Linguistics at the Moldovan Academy of Sciences did not ratify those changes. However, in 2001, the Moldovan Academy finally adopted the changes introduced by the Romanian Academy.
Perception of the language among citizens
In the 2004 census, 16.5% (558,508) of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova declared Romanian as their native language, while 60% said Moldovan. Most of the urban population, especially in the capital Chişinau, declared that they spoke “Romanian”. By contrast, in rural areas, more than six out of seven respondents indicated that they spoke Moldovan (and not Romanian) as their native language, thus reflecting the historical conservatism of the countryside.
A 2008 study revealed that the existence of a Moldovan linguistic identity was highly entrenched, particularly among the rural population and the post-Soviet political class. In a survey conducted in four Moldovan villages close to the Romanian border, when the population was asked about their native language, the interviewees identified the following: 53% said they spoke Moldovan; 44% Romanian; 3%, Russian.
Again in 2013, a survey provided similar results: city dwellers, particularly those in the capital Chisinau, as well as people with a higher level of education, tended to name their language “Romanian”, while those who lived in the countryside and were less educated used to call their language Moldavian.
Despite political fluctuations, the term “Romanian language” is the one that has been widely used in Moldovan schools since independence.
Situation in Transnistria
The pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria continues to recognize “Moldovan” (not "Romanian") as one of its official languages, along with Russian and Ukrainian. They also continue to use the alphabet Cyrillic and not Latin.