Religions and languages in Romania

The official language in Romania is Romanian. Statistics show that about 90% of the population today considers this their native language. Despite the fact that the Romanian language is recognized as the only state language, there is a paragraph in the Constitution that gives national minorities the right and freedom to choose not only a religious conviction, but also a linguistic group. In general, there are more than 30 million people who consider Romanian as their native language. Most of them, other than in Romania, are concentrated in Canada and the United States of America. Linguists believe that the Romanian language originated from the ancient Wallachian language. The first literary evidence of the existence of this dialect was recorded in the sixteenth century AD.

The Wallachian dialects were originally brought to the territory of modern Romania by Roman colonizers from the Balkans. Many linguists suggest that even such an ethnic unit as “Romanians” came from the word Roman. After all, these two linguistic constructions are extremely concordant. Historians also provided evidence of the existence of the Romanian language in the middle of the 16th century. Various political letters by the mayors at the time of the war with the Ottoman Empire were written in this language. Nevertheless, the first literary works belonging to fiction genre appeared in Romanian only at the beginning of the 18th century and at that time were written in Cyrillic characters. The Romanian alphabet was officially adopted only in the year 1860.

It is worth noting that the linguistic unit which was used in the middle of the 16th century differs from the classical Romanian language which is spoken in Romania today. Linguists note that its formation was influenced by such languages as Hungarian, Gypsy, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Serbian. In addition, the language borrowed many dialects from the citizens of neighboring countries. If to speak on a broader scope, the Romanian language today belongs to the Indo-European family of languages the Romans subtype. There is practically no division of the Romanian language into dialects on the territory of country. The small dialect is associated with the homogeneity of the local population. For example, the adverbs of the Romanian language in Maramures and the Transylvanian Romanian are almost the same, although there are some words and local phrases. Copyright www.orangesmile.com

The most peculiar dialects in Romania are the Moldovan and Hungarian dialects. They have not only phonetic, but also grammatical differences. These languages are especially actively used by the residents of the villages bordering Moldova. Often, their dialect is not understood by residents of other regions of Romania. The next language that is actively used in Romania is Hungarian, which accounts for about 6% of the population. In addition, there are ethnic groups of Roma, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Turks and Russians living in Romania, who speak their native language in their own communities. At the same time, schools stipulate compulsory study of the Romanian language, which is among the five most common linguistic units from the Roman group.

Religiously, the local population of Romania is almost homogeneous. According to the census, as of last year, about 88% of citizens consider themselves Orthodox. Thus, believers belong to the Romanian Orthodox Church. The Latin Rite Catholics account for about 4% of the local population, Protestants about 5%, and Greek Catholics less than 1%. About 70,000 of the people consider themselves Muslims. This religion is widespread only in the Dobrudja region, where the Turks live. Judaism is practiced in Romania by less than 6,000 people, and about 25,000 people consider themselves to be atheists.

Romania is considered a secular state, thus the republic is completely separated from religion. But, major religions, and first of all the Romanian Orthodox Church, today are supported by the state. Money from the state budget is allocated for the restoration of churches and holding various religious events. Orthodoxy originated in the country in the middle of the 19th century, just after the state was formed. In 1923, the Romanian Orthodox Church was even considered national, but the situation changed under communism. Today, there are extremely fierce relations between Greek Catholics and Romanian Orthodox. The first, advocate that the Orthodox give the temples and churches back to Greek Catholics, as during the communist regime they were illegally captured and handed over to the Orthodox.