Romanian Language
Romanian belongs to the family of Romance languages (including French, Italian, Portuguese, Spain), being its most Eastern branch. For instance, Romanian has the same four groups of verbs as Latin. Romanian has also kept the neuter gender from Latin alongside masculine and feminine unlike the other Romance languages (nouns of this gender use the masculine form for the singular and the feminine form for the plural). As in Italian, pronouns are generally omitted in Romanian for the verb ending usually provides information about the subject.
One peculiarity of Romanian is that it is the only Romance language that has the definite article attached to the end of the noun (as in Swedish) instead of being a separate word in front.
There are also some Slavonic influences, both on the phonetic level and on the lexical level - for example, since Latin does not have a word for yes, Romanian took the Slavonic da. Also Romanian is the only Romance language with /h/.
Most words in the Romanian vocabulary (about 75%) are of Latin origin, the percentage being even higher as regards the basic vocabulary. It also contains many words borrowed from Slavonic tribes and subsequent neighbours, as well as borrowings from German, Hungarian, Turkish.
The 19th century marked a new stage as significant borrowings from French and Italian in particular strengthened the elements of a Romance language.
That is why Romanian is considered by many to be “an island of Latinity in the midst of a Slav ocean”.
|
Important Romanian newspapers
Jurnalul Naţional (politic, reportage, observer, interviews)
|
Romanian TV stations
|
|
Gândul - politics, economy, education and sport.
|
|
|
Theatres in Bucharest
|
Romanian Radio stations |
