Moldavian / Moldovan

Here's a letter that I received from Teodor, a Moldavian, explaining the language situation in Moldova quite well.

Dear Rad,

Even if in our constitution it is written that the official language of the country is Moldavian, it is actually the same as Romanian. As a matter of fact none of the educated people of Moldova will tell you that they speak "Moldavian". The Romanian language as a natural system is something quite flexible, and there are certainly some differences in pronunciation among its speakers. The Republic Moldova's pronunciation is very similar to the Romanian Moldova's people pronunciation, (as you probably know Romania is composed of 3 big Romanian principalities Transylvania, Walachia and Moldova, and modern Republic Moldova is just a part of the old Principality of Moldova established for the first time around 1400)...Modern R.M. was occupied by Soviets from 1944 to 1991. But I am sure that you could find all of this information on the Internet.

Basically if you have a Romanian translation of the things that you want to say you can call very much it "Moldavian" too;).

Also people who live in R. Moldova use a lot of the so called "Russisms", but they are aware of it, they use them in a rather special contexts, like jokes or something, and if they write then actually avoid them pretty well.

Nevertheless, something very interesting happened this month [July 2003], the first ever Moldavian-Romanian dictionary was published (by a "doctor in philosophy" V.Stati)... which became the big joke of this summer, and definitely increased the spirits of all Moldavians. On one side, many of them are astonished by what happened (the linguistic researchers) on the other side common folks... they just get into the libraries and ask for this new book, open it, and begin to laugh together with the librarians and other shoppers;) the sad thing is that the expenses were covered by public money. I am actually doing linguistic research lately and I can tell you many things about this topic. I am actually writing a paper for a class of mine on the language policy of URSS and present situation of Romanian Moldovian...if you are interested i could send it to you.

Well, as i was saying if you have already a Romanian translation of the things you wanted to translate, then it is absolutely the same as Moldavian. You know as a citizen of Moldova, i am really ashamed of what it is going on in my own country, as we say "Got, your world is so big, and full it is of fulls";)

Sincerely,

Teodor

Jancada has a good Moldavian/Moldovan foreign language page