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I'm Italian and I can say there is no such thing as sg[i,e] to mean ʒ in the Italian language. In fact, ʒ is not even an Italian sound and simply cannot be written in Italian orthography, even though it is used in some loanwords from French (garage is the first one that comes to my mind). Does the sg[i,e] exist in Romanian, or was that someone who generalised too much? Orzetto 08:01, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
How do you pronounce Cretu? -- Vladko 18:59, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
A recent edit increased the claimed number of Romanian speakers, with no citations at all. I am inclined to revert; I would revert if there were citations for the old numbers, but one uncited number is not that much better than another. Still, I find it almost impossible to believe that there are three million Romanian-speakers in the U.S. As a person who lives in the U.S., has spent time in Romania, and reads Romanian decently, I've seen no evidence of there being more than a few hundred thousand Romanian-speakers in my country.
Could someone do some proper research and add some cited numbers? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:37, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
First of all the last American census shows 367.000 Romanian-Americans. Romanians are the 22nd minority in the USA. If there were 3 mil then that would mean 1% of the whole population and would put Romanians at the 4th of 5th position.
Second of all, where did the 1.019.000 Romanians in Russia come from? The CIA world factbook makes ref. to 0.7% "Maldavians/Romanians" in the Russian Federation but the data is really obsolete. It cites the 1989 census when the 0.7% was for the whole of the USSR outside Moldova not The Russian Federative Soviet Socialist Rep. . The CIA world factbook gives estimates on population even for Romania and states that 22.300.000 people live in Romania right now even though the census showed 21.697.000.The current number in Russia is more like 178.000( according to the last census of 2001). In Khazachstan about 20.000 and no more then 1000 in Tajikistan.
Someone should really change those numbers. ( User:Duca 18 May 2005)
This constant number juggling in the article is beginning to annoy me. I can assure you all that most Romanians don't give a ****, we just want accurate numbers here. Decius 14:46, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Again the numbers are out of proportion. For moldova we just have to look at the last census result 78.2% out of 3.388.071 people are Romanians. In the Transnistrian census the Romanians represent 34% out of the 580.000 people living there. Although this number is dubious beacause the Transnistrian census is not recongnized, its still the best we got. In the Russian census 178.000 people are of Romanian orgin( including what they call "Maldavian"). 1000.000 is way to much, considering that Tatarians are the second largest group in Russia with 3.5 mil. people. This would put Romanians third of fourth which they are certainly not. I am just interested if others have come across the same conclusions and if so then we should change these numbers so they can start to actually resemble reality. (May 22, 2005 User:Duca)
Just because a word in a language sounds similar to a word in another language does not mean it was borrowed. Slavic and Dacian are both Indo-European languages, thus they both descend from proto-IE. So it's to be expected that they will have some words in common, it doesn't mean one borrowed from the other. Besides, the idea that "da" is borrowed by Slavs doesn't make sense. The only words people borrow are words for things they do not have a name for. Words such as "yes" or "no" would exist already in every language so they would not be borrowed. The idea that a people do not have a word for "yes" in their language is inconceivable.
Changed info in the speakers-table, according to the data for the native speakers in each country's census. See links to the official census web sites in the article Hungarian language (at the beginning of the article) -- Danutz
There is no national data stating how many people speak one language native, the census in 2001 just says how many members of one national group (for example Romanians), speak the language of their national group, how many Ukrainian, how many Russian and how many another language.
For example in this page, one can find out that 258619 Moldovans live in Ukraine, out of whom 181,124 of them speak the language of their national group (officialy Moldovan), 27,775 speak Ukrainian, 22 speak Russian, and 45,607 speak another language as their mother tongue (most of those declared Romanian as their mother tongue, the number of those declaring another language than Romanian, Ukrainian or Russian should be no more than 100). So 181,124 + 45,500 ~ 226,000.
Also, 150,989 declared themselves Romanians, out of whom 138,522 declared Romanian as their mother tongue, 9,367 Ukrainian, 4 Russian, and another 2,297 another language (very few declared Moldovan).
Adding another 100 members of another nationalities, that declared Romanian as the mother tongue, we get: 226,000 + 138,522 + 100 ~ 364,600. -- Danutz (revised 15:22, 21 November 2005 (UTC))
Outside opinion: I think Jmabel's solution is the better choice: Node ue's version is not adding extra info and is in fact repeating info. This is not partisanship, just noting which version is better. Decius 29 June 2005 06:02 (UTC)
The sound change given for an example dos not display iotacism, it is the same change that occured in Spanish (herba → hierba) and French (where ie &rarrr /ɛ/). The correct changes here are /i/ → /ie/ and /e/ → /a/ before /r/. Circeus July 2, 2005 04:04 (UTC)
spoken natively by about 26 million people, most of them in Romania and Vojvodina - are there people in Moldova that declare they are Romanians and speak Romanian language or not ? adding Moldova to "most of them in Romania and Vojvodina" -- Criztu 8 July 2005 10:06 (UTC)
The manual of style here on wikipedia says that the first sentence should describe the topic. That is why "Romanian is an Eastern Romance language, spoken natively by about XX million people in XX" is a better description than "Romanian is considered to be identical to Moldovan".
Also, I see no point in putting the Romanian name of "Moldovan language" (limba moldovenească), it does not bring any information to the reader. This ought to be put in Moldovan language article. bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 8 July 2005 10:17 (UTC)
By the way, I found a clarification about the official use of "â din a" and "î din i" in Moldova on the website of the "Centrul Naţional de Terminologie - National Centre for Terminology"( [1])
What I find very important is that they say that none of the versions is incorrect. But, now there is a 54%-46% use of those two in Moldova (in favour of "â din a"). So they donnot make a difference. ( after Google, with the search of word ramane - rămâne - ramine - rămîne in websites from Moldova - site:.md ) The percentage for Romania is 83%-17% for the same word (in favour of couse of "â din a"). As Moldovans learn after textbooks from Romania, that are updated to the use of "â din a", it is obvious that people teached after 1995 (when new textbooks were introduced in Romania and Moldova) use "â din a", and elder people use "î din i".
Then, I must note that the article in the ro.wiki about Moldovan language was translated after that in en.wiki, and not en.wiki from ro.wiki . More... The Moldovan Minister of Justice said that Romanian and Moldovan are the same language and that the Constitution of Moldova should be amended, not necessarly by changing Moldovan in Romanian, but by adding that "Romanian and Moldovan are the same language". You can find the news here also. Again, a news taken by Ziua.net from www.flux.md states that another Moldovan official asked for the same ( [2]). Another article, this time in Gardianul states that the law that officialized the Moldovan language in Moldova (31th august 1989), and the law that changed the alphabet, both stated that Moldovan is identical to Romanian. So, in the Moldovan law it is stated that Moldovan is identical to Romanian.
Ethnologue says: Languages of Moldova
Moldova. 4,446,455. National or official language: Romanian (Moldovan). Capital: Chisinau ... So another source states Romanian as official language, and Moldovan only secundary, in brackets (I hope that is how you spell this () ).
Recently I also heard that an important American instution denied recognising Moldovan, and stated Romanian is the official language of Moldova. Does somebody know more? As far as I remember, it was the US Department of State. Was it?
Also on 31 august, Moldovans celebrate the national holiday of "Limba noastra cea romana" (Our language, the Romanian language - and not Moldovan). O-Zone has a song called Nu mă las de limba noastră. The lyrics say "Eu nu ma las de limba noastra, De limba noastra cea romana" (they come from Moldova, and had a big succes in all Europe last year).
Also, if you search Google for "moldoveneasca" (that also returns results for "moldovenească") and "romana" (that also returns results for "română") you'll find out that there are only 5,960 results for the first and 45,000 for the second. If you search moldovenească vs. română (so only results with diacritics) you find 3.440 for the first and 15.800 for the second. The search included only results from Moldova.
So Moldovan is the official language of Moldova, and that is by law identical to Romanian. I think it is NPOV enough to state Romanian is official in Moldova, and making a note (like I did before) explaining the official name is Moldovan, but that because of political reasons (quoting Ion Morei, minister of justice in 2004, stating "problema limbii oficiale in Republica Molodova a devenit un nod gordian fiind exagerata si, poate, intentionat politizata" - someone please translate this in English). Of course you can do the same in the article Moldovan language, but of course be NPOV stating in the note that Romania doesn't recognise the existence of Moldovan language (I pointed up that Moldova recognizes by law that Moldovan and Romanian are the same) and of course that Romanian in Moldova was renamed and not Moldovan in Romanian. Please be onest, and try to insert fair and correct information in Wikipedia. If you have something personal with Romanians (including me) that is another thing, I'm sorry if I offended you in any way, but I don't think that should affect our work on Wikipedia. Thank you.
Can somebody also please update the article Moldovan language with the information I put here, of course, quoting the sources? -- Danutz
My attempt at translation; if someone can do better, go for it. -- Jmabel | Talk July 8, 2005 23:25 (UTC)
"problema limbii oficiale in Republica Molodova a devenit un nod gordian fiind exagerata si, poate, intentionat politizata" ==> "The problem of official languages in the Republic of Moldova has become a Gordian knot, being exaggerated and, perhaps, intentionally politicized"
Romanian lang can be considered same as Moldovan lang only by experts, not by "most people". Is ROmanian lang considered same as Moldovan lang (by the international experts) ? yes. then "most people" has no place here --
"Most people" stands for the census in Romania (100%), the census in Moldova (2/3), and the census in Vojvodina (100%). -- Danutz
What are you suggesting in terms of the specific content of the article? john k 02:33, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Node, I allready explained that the new "â" is slowly imposed in Moldova also. Then: Swedish and Danish and Norwegian are all different, I learned a little bit of all. Serbian and Croatian are distinct. Serbo-croatian is considered a movement before separation of Yugoslavia, trying to apropiate Crotian to Serbian. Bosnian, is kind of Croatian + Serbian (it has two versions to a big amounth of words). You said yourself: "they are quite literally, identical". Moldovan is identical to Romanian even by law, so not "quite identical", just "identical". There is no Montenegrin language. Some push for American language, but that doesn't mean there is such a language. The â/î is not considered a difference, because both versions are in use both in Romania and Moldova. You should see the differences between Português do Portugal and Português do Brasil. Or the differences between Dutch in Holland, Belgium and Suriname, before the reform. -- Danutz
Yes, I would: Have a look here. I thought, that since it is a Wikipedia article, you are aware of it. Actually Croatian has three dialects, in fact they are verry different, so it cannot be usually called "Serbian". About, â/î: both are still in use in Romania. In fact (at least in Romania, in Moldova I don't know) you would not be charged in exams if you use the old spelling. As I told you, Bosnian is something like Sebian+Croatian, a transition language, as you can see in the article I have pointed. -- Danutz
But these are just differences in official languages (that's what the article is called, as a matter of fact): the people themselves use something somewhere in between much of the time. Similarly, there are differences between the __official language__ of Moldova and the current official language of Romania: i^ vs a^, and si^nt vs sunt. These, like in Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, are purely official and not reflected perfectly in the population (I believe someone said earlier that 60% of Moldovans prefer i^ and i^, and 80% of Romanians prefer a^ and i^; also people with less education are sometimes not good at spelling a^ vs i^ since you have to memorise it).
It also says in that article's first paragraph: "The various nuances aren't nearly as linguistically important as is the symbolic value that is assigned to them by their ethnically, religiously, socially and politically diverse group of speakers."
Also, nearly every single form on that page is considered acceptable in the other languages as well. For this reason, there is in addition to separate Wikipedias, a unified Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, where they use ^Stovakian dialect which is the basis for all three.
Also there is the difference in the scripts. While not written in Cyrillic officially anymore, it can still be found in Cyrillic, and all documents from the Soviet period use Cyrillic. Also, Transdniester still uses Cyrillic officially, and occasionally you can find translations of things into "Moldovan" using Cyrillic ("Chick Tracts" have a couple of Moldovan-cyrillic translations, there is one of an Asterix book, and various others; also there is a Moldovan-cyrillic version of the Constitutional Court of Moldova's official website, and it can be found in many informal contexts online, mixed with Romanian in Latin, and with Russian.)
-- 67.42.33.221 (node)
And what are we talking about now? Not about the regulated languages? Because if we are talking about the spoken language, than I cannot (sincerly) find any difference between the î and â...
Now let me clarify the use of â and î. I gived you the percentage and it was:
Moldova: 54% â - 46% î Romania: 83% â - 17% î
So the use of î is inferior in both cases. You said: "also people with less education are sometimes not good at spelling a^ vs i^ since you have to memorise it". Since you seem to not know how â and î work, I'll tell you: There is a rule, that everybody learns in first grade, so if you donnot know the rule is just like donnot know how to write. Then, the rule is simple. Words beginning and ending with the sound "î/â" are spelled with î (examples: "începe", "hotărî" and others). Words that are containing the sound "î/â" are spelled with â (examples: "râu", "câte", "atât" and others). Words that are formed with prefixes like "re-", "de-" from words that are starting with î, keep their î, even though, the sound is not situated at the beginning of the word: reîncepe (re-începe), deînmulţit (de-înmulţit). -- Danutz
Small differences in orthography do not amount to a different language. If it did, one would have to say that Americans speak a different language than anyone in the UK. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:52, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
Node, I'm sure you were not in Moldova, because I was many times, and people there used to speak Russian more than Romanian, but those speaking Romanian use the same language as in Romania. Peasents may have a different accent, simillar to that in Romanian Moldova, but the language is the same. What is that, that Moldovan uses more Slavic words? They don't. They use words, perfectly understandble in Romania, because I always understood what they say. Moldovan has no varieties, Romanian may have some, like the language spoken in Muntenia, the one in Banat, the one in Crişana, and the one in Moldova. But in Moldova, all people speak the same variety. Then, the language spoken in Moldova was always Romanian, and only according to one theory they formed themselves separatly (I guess that is what you by "ausbau", german for construction). But most Romanian language lingivsts in Romania and Moldova say they formed together. The sole questions is wether Romanian formed to the north or to the south of Danube (questioned by Roesler's theory) but not wether it has formed to the east or to the west of the river Nistru. -- Danutz
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I'm Italian and I can say there is no such thing as sg[i,e] to mean ʒ in the Italian language. In fact, ʒ is not even an Italian sound and simply cannot be written in Italian orthography, even though it is used in some loanwords from French (garage is the first one that comes to my mind). Does the sg[i,e] exist in Romanian, or was that someone who generalised too much? Orzetto 08:01, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
How do you pronounce Cretu? -- Vladko 18:59, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
A recent edit increased the claimed number of Romanian speakers, with no citations at all. I am inclined to revert; I would revert if there were citations for the old numbers, but one uncited number is not that much better than another. Still, I find it almost impossible to believe that there are three million Romanian-speakers in the U.S. As a person who lives in the U.S., has spent time in Romania, and reads Romanian decently, I've seen no evidence of there being more than a few hundred thousand Romanian-speakers in my country.
Could someone do some proper research and add some cited numbers? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:37, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
First of all the last American census shows 367.000 Romanian-Americans. Romanians are the 22nd minority in the USA. If there were 3 mil then that would mean 1% of the whole population and would put Romanians at the 4th of 5th position.
Second of all, where did the 1.019.000 Romanians in Russia come from? The CIA world factbook makes ref. to 0.7% "Maldavians/Romanians" in the Russian Federation but the data is really obsolete. It cites the 1989 census when the 0.7% was for the whole of the USSR outside Moldova not The Russian Federative Soviet Socialist Rep. . The CIA world factbook gives estimates on population even for Romania and states that 22.300.000 people live in Romania right now even though the census showed 21.697.000.The current number in Russia is more like 178.000( according to the last census of 2001). In Khazachstan about 20.000 and no more then 1000 in Tajikistan.
Someone should really change those numbers. ( User:Duca 18 May 2005)
This constant number juggling in the article is beginning to annoy me. I can assure you all that most Romanians don't give a ****, we just want accurate numbers here. Decius 14:46, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Again the numbers are out of proportion. For moldova we just have to look at the last census result 78.2% out of 3.388.071 people are Romanians. In the Transnistrian census the Romanians represent 34% out of the 580.000 people living there. Although this number is dubious beacause the Transnistrian census is not recongnized, its still the best we got. In the Russian census 178.000 people are of Romanian orgin( including what they call "Maldavian"). 1000.000 is way to much, considering that Tatarians are the second largest group in Russia with 3.5 mil. people. This would put Romanians third of fourth which they are certainly not. I am just interested if others have come across the same conclusions and if so then we should change these numbers so they can start to actually resemble reality. (May 22, 2005 User:Duca)
Just because a word in a language sounds similar to a word in another language does not mean it was borrowed. Slavic and Dacian are both Indo-European languages, thus they both descend from proto-IE. So it's to be expected that they will have some words in common, it doesn't mean one borrowed from the other. Besides, the idea that "da" is borrowed by Slavs doesn't make sense. The only words people borrow are words for things they do not have a name for. Words such as "yes" or "no" would exist already in every language so they would not be borrowed. The idea that a people do not have a word for "yes" in their language is inconceivable.
Changed info in the speakers-table, according to the data for the native speakers in each country's census. See links to the official census web sites in the article Hungarian language (at the beginning of the article) -- Danutz
There is no national data stating how many people speak one language native, the census in 2001 just says how many members of one national group (for example Romanians), speak the language of their national group, how many Ukrainian, how many Russian and how many another language.
For example in this page, one can find out that 258619 Moldovans live in Ukraine, out of whom 181,124 of them speak the language of their national group (officialy Moldovan), 27,775 speak Ukrainian, 22 speak Russian, and 45,607 speak another language as their mother tongue (most of those declared Romanian as their mother tongue, the number of those declaring another language than Romanian, Ukrainian or Russian should be no more than 100). So 181,124 + 45,500 ~ 226,000.
Also, 150,989 declared themselves Romanians, out of whom 138,522 declared Romanian as their mother tongue, 9,367 Ukrainian, 4 Russian, and another 2,297 another language (very few declared Moldovan).
Adding another 100 members of another nationalities, that declared Romanian as the mother tongue, we get: 226,000 + 138,522 + 100 ~ 364,600. -- Danutz (revised 15:22, 21 November 2005 (UTC))
Outside opinion: I think Jmabel's solution is the better choice: Node ue's version is not adding extra info and is in fact repeating info. This is not partisanship, just noting which version is better. Decius 29 June 2005 06:02 (UTC)
The sound change given for an example dos not display iotacism, it is the same change that occured in Spanish (herba → hierba) and French (where ie &rarrr /ɛ/). The correct changes here are /i/ → /ie/ and /e/ → /a/ before /r/. Circeus July 2, 2005 04:04 (UTC)
spoken natively by about 26 million people, most of them in Romania and Vojvodina - are there people in Moldova that declare they are Romanians and speak Romanian language or not ? adding Moldova to "most of them in Romania and Vojvodina" -- Criztu 8 July 2005 10:06 (UTC)
The manual of style here on wikipedia says that the first sentence should describe the topic. That is why "Romanian is an Eastern Romance language, spoken natively by about XX million people in XX" is a better description than "Romanian is considered to be identical to Moldovan".
Also, I see no point in putting the Romanian name of "Moldovan language" (limba moldovenească), it does not bring any information to the reader. This ought to be put in Moldovan language article. bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 8 July 2005 10:17 (UTC)
By the way, I found a clarification about the official use of "â din a" and "î din i" in Moldova on the website of the "Centrul Naţional de Terminologie - National Centre for Terminology"( [1])
What I find very important is that they say that none of the versions is incorrect. But, now there is a 54%-46% use of those two in Moldova (in favour of "â din a"). So they donnot make a difference. ( after Google, with the search of word ramane - rămâne - ramine - rămîne in websites from Moldova - site:.md ) The percentage for Romania is 83%-17% for the same word (in favour of couse of "â din a"). As Moldovans learn after textbooks from Romania, that are updated to the use of "â din a", it is obvious that people teached after 1995 (when new textbooks were introduced in Romania and Moldova) use "â din a", and elder people use "î din i".
Then, I must note that the article in the ro.wiki about Moldovan language was translated after that in en.wiki, and not en.wiki from ro.wiki . More... The Moldovan Minister of Justice said that Romanian and Moldovan are the same language and that the Constitution of Moldova should be amended, not necessarly by changing Moldovan in Romanian, but by adding that "Romanian and Moldovan are the same language". You can find the news here also. Again, a news taken by Ziua.net from www.flux.md states that another Moldovan official asked for the same ( [2]). Another article, this time in Gardianul states that the law that officialized the Moldovan language in Moldova (31th august 1989), and the law that changed the alphabet, both stated that Moldovan is identical to Romanian. So, in the Moldovan law it is stated that Moldovan is identical to Romanian.
Ethnologue says: Languages of Moldova
Moldova. 4,446,455. National or official language: Romanian (Moldovan). Capital: Chisinau ... So another source states Romanian as official language, and Moldovan only secundary, in brackets (I hope that is how you spell this () ).
Recently I also heard that an important American instution denied recognising Moldovan, and stated Romanian is the official language of Moldova. Does somebody know more? As far as I remember, it was the US Department of State. Was it?
Also on 31 august, Moldovans celebrate the national holiday of "Limba noastra cea romana" (Our language, the Romanian language - and not Moldovan). O-Zone has a song called Nu mă las de limba noastră. The lyrics say "Eu nu ma las de limba noastra, De limba noastra cea romana" (they come from Moldova, and had a big succes in all Europe last year).
Also, if you search Google for "moldoveneasca" (that also returns results for "moldovenească") and "romana" (that also returns results for "română") you'll find out that there are only 5,960 results for the first and 45,000 for the second. If you search moldovenească vs. română (so only results with diacritics) you find 3.440 for the first and 15.800 for the second. The search included only results from Moldova.
So Moldovan is the official language of Moldova, and that is by law identical to Romanian. I think it is NPOV enough to state Romanian is official in Moldova, and making a note (like I did before) explaining the official name is Moldovan, but that because of political reasons (quoting Ion Morei, minister of justice in 2004, stating "problema limbii oficiale in Republica Molodova a devenit un nod gordian fiind exagerata si, poate, intentionat politizata" - someone please translate this in English). Of course you can do the same in the article Moldovan language, but of course be NPOV stating in the note that Romania doesn't recognise the existence of Moldovan language (I pointed up that Moldova recognizes by law that Moldovan and Romanian are the same) and of course that Romanian in Moldova was renamed and not Moldovan in Romanian. Please be onest, and try to insert fair and correct information in Wikipedia. If you have something personal with Romanians (including me) that is another thing, I'm sorry if I offended you in any way, but I don't think that should affect our work on Wikipedia. Thank you.
Can somebody also please update the article Moldovan language with the information I put here, of course, quoting the sources? -- Danutz
My attempt at translation; if someone can do better, go for it. -- Jmabel | Talk July 8, 2005 23:25 (UTC)
"problema limbii oficiale in Republica Molodova a devenit un nod gordian fiind exagerata si, poate, intentionat politizata" ==> "The problem of official languages in the Republic of Moldova has become a Gordian knot, being exaggerated and, perhaps, intentionally politicized"
Romanian lang can be considered same as Moldovan lang only by experts, not by "most people". Is ROmanian lang considered same as Moldovan lang (by the international experts) ? yes. then "most people" has no place here --
"Most people" stands for the census in Romania (100%), the census in Moldova (2/3), and the census in Vojvodina (100%). -- Danutz
What are you suggesting in terms of the specific content of the article? john k 02:33, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Node, I allready explained that the new "â" is slowly imposed in Moldova also. Then: Swedish and Danish and Norwegian are all different, I learned a little bit of all. Serbian and Croatian are distinct. Serbo-croatian is considered a movement before separation of Yugoslavia, trying to apropiate Crotian to Serbian. Bosnian, is kind of Croatian + Serbian (it has two versions to a big amounth of words). You said yourself: "they are quite literally, identical". Moldovan is identical to Romanian even by law, so not "quite identical", just "identical". There is no Montenegrin language. Some push for American language, but that doesn't mean there is such a language. The â/î is not considered a difference, because both versions are in use both in Romania and Moldova. You should see the differences between Português do Portugal and Português do Brasil. Or the differences between Dutch in Holland, Belgium and Suriname, before the reform. -- Danutz
Yes, I would: Have a look here. I thought, that since it is a Wikipedia article, you are aware of it. Actually Croatian has three dialects, in fact they are verry different, so it cannot be usually called "Serbian". About, â/î: both are still in use in Romania. In fact (at least in Romania, in Moldova I don't know) you would not be charged in exams if you use the old spelling. As I told you, Bosnian is something like Sebian+Croatian, a transition language, as you can see in the article I have pointed. -- Danutz
But these are just differences in official languages (that's what the article is called, as a matter of fact): the people themselves use something somewhere in between much of the time. Similarly, there are differences between the __official language__ of Moldova and the current official language of Romania: i^ vs a^, and si^nt vs sunt. These, like in Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, are purely official and not reflected perfectly in the population (I believe someone said earlier that 60% of Moldovans prefer i^ and i^, and 80% of Romanians prefer a^ and i^; also people with less education are sometimes not good at spelling a^ vs i^ since you have to memorise it).
It also says in that article's first paragraph: "The various nuances aren't nearly as linguistically important as is the symbolic value that is assigned to them by their ethnically, religiously, socially and politically diverse group of speakers."
Also, nearly every single form on that page is considered acceptable in the other languages as well. For this reason, there is in addition to separate Wikipedias, a unified Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, where they use ^Stovakian dialect which is the basis for all three.
Also there is the difference in the scripts. While not written in Cyrillic officially anymore, it can still be found in Cyrillic, and all documents from the Soviet period use Cyrillic. Also, Transdniester still uses Cyrillic officially, and occasionally you can find translations of things into "Moldovan" using Cyrillic ("Chick Tracts" have a couple of Moldovan-cyrillic translations, there is one of an Asterix book, and various others; also there is a Moldovan-cyrillic version of the Constitutional Court of Moldova's official website, and it can be found in many informal contexts online, mixed with Romanian in Latin, and with Russian.)
-- 67.42.33.221 (node)
And what are we talking about now? Not about the regulated languages? Because if we are talking about the spoken language, than I cannot (sincerly) find any difference between the î and â...
Now let me clarify the use of â and î. I gived you the percentage and it was:
Moldova: 54% â - 46% î Romania: 83% â - 17% î
So the use of î is inferior in both cases. You said: "also people with less education are sometimes not good at spelling a^ vs i^ since you have to memorise it". Since you seem to not know how â and î work, I'll tell you: There is a rule, that everybody learns in first grade, so if you donnot know the rule is just like donnot know how to write. Then, the rule is simple. Words beginning and ending with the sound "î/â" are spelled with î (examples: "începe", "hotărî" and others). Words that are containing the sound "î/â" are spelled with â (examples: "râu", "câte", "atât" and others). Words that are formed with prefixes like "re-", "de-" from words that are starting with î, keep their î, even though, the sound is not situated at the beginning of the word: reîncepe (re-începe), deînmulţit (de-înmulţit). -- Danutz
Small differences in orthography do not amount to a different language. If it did, one would have to say that Americans speak a different language than anyone in the UK. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:52, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
Node, I'm sure you were not in Moldova, because I was many times, and people there used to speak Russian more than Romanian, but those speaking Romanian use the same language as in Romania. Peasents may have a different accent, simillar to that in Romanian Moldova, but the language is the same. What is that, that Moldovan uses more Slavic words? They don't. They use words, perfectly understandble in Romania, because I always understood what they say. Moldovan has no varieties, Romanian may have some, like the language spoken in Muntenia, the one in Banat, the one in Crişana, and the one in Moldova. But in Moldova, all people speak the same variety. Then, the language spoken in Moldova was always Romanian, and only according to one theory they formed themselves separatly (I guess that is what you by "ausbau", german for construction). But most Romanian language lingivsts in Romania and Moldova say they formed together. The sole questions is wether Romanian formed to the north or to the south of Danube (questioned by Roesler's theory) but not wether it has formed to the east or to the west of the river Nistru. -- Danutz