Varieties of the Romanian language
Encyclopedia
The Romanian subdialect
s (subdialecte or graiuri) are the several varieties
of the Romanian language
, more specifically of its Daco-Romanian
dialect. All linguists seem to agree on classifying the subdialects into two types, northern and southern, but further taxonomy is less clear, so that the number of subdialects varies between two and five, occasionally twenty. Most recent works seem to favor a number of three clear subdialects, corresponding to the regions of Wallachia
, Moldavia
, and Banat
(all of which actually extend into Transylvania
), and an additional group of varieties covering the remainder of Transylvania, two of which are more clearly distinguished, in Crișana
and Maramureș
, that is, a total of five.
The main criteria used in their classification are the phonetic features. Of less importance are the morphological, syntactical, and lexical particularities, as these are too small to provide clear distinctions.
All Romanian subdialects are mutually intelligible.
, Aromanian
, Megleno-Romanian
, and Istro-Romanian
; these, according to other linguists, are separate languages. The second reason is that, in Romanian, the term dialect is used in its narrow sense of large group of speech varieties that show considerable differences compared to the reference language (standard Romanian in this case), while other terms are used for smaller, more similar divisions. Unlike other Romance languages
, all Daco-Romanian varieties are very similar to each other, so that usually they are called subdialects.
The publication of a linguistic atlas of Romanian by Gustav Weigand
in 1908 and later, in the interwar period, of a series of dialectal atlases by a team of Romanian linguists, containing detailed and systematic data gathered across the areas inhabited by Romanians, allowed researchers to elaborate more reliable dialectal descriptions of the language.
The criteria given the most weight in establishing the dialectal classification were the regular phonetic features, in particular phenomena such as palatalization
, monophthong
ization, vowel changes, etc. Only secondarily were morphological particularities used, especially where the phonetic features proved to be insufficient. Lexical particularities were the least relied upon.
For ease of presentation, some of the phonetic features above are described by taking the standard Romanian pronunciation as reference, even though in dialectal characterizations such a reference is not necessary and etymologically speaking the process might have had the opposite direction. A criterion such as "closing of word-final [ə] to [ɨ]" should be understood to mean that some Romanian subdialects have [ɨ] in word-final positions where others have [ə] (compare, for instance, Moldavian [ˈmamɨ] vs Wallachian [ˈmamə], both meaning "mother").
The most important phonetic process that helps in distinguishing the Romanian subdialects concerns the consonants pronounced in standard Romanian as the affricates [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ]:
Most modern classifications divide the Romanian subdialects into two types, southern and northern, further divided as follows:
Subdialect
Subdialect - is a subdivision of dialect. Subdialects can be divided further, ultimately down to idiolects.Normally subdialects of one dialect are quite close to each other, differing mainly in pronunciation and certain local words....
s (subdialecte or graiuri) are the several varieties
Variety (linguistics)
In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself...
of the Romanian language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, more specifically of its Daco-Romanian
Daco-Romanian
Daco-Romanian is the term used to identify the Romanian language in contexts where distinction needs to be made between the various Eastern Romance languages...
dialect. All linguists seem to agree on classifying the subdialects into two types, northern and southern, but further taxonomy is less clear, so that the number of subdialects varies between two and five, occasionally twenty. Most recent works seem to favor a number of three clear subdialects, corresponding to the regions of Wallachia
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
, Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
, and Banat
Banat
The Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
(all of which actually extend into Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
), and an additional group of varieties covering the remainder of Transylvania, two of which are more clearly distinguished, in Crișana
Crisana
Crișana is a geographical and historical region divided today between Romania and Hungary, named after the Criș River and its three tributaries: the Crișul Alb, Crișul Negru and Crișul Repede....
and Maramureș
Maramures
Maramureș may refer to the following:*Maramureș, a geographical, historical, and ethno-cultural region in present-day Romania and Ukraine, that occupies the Maramureș Depression and Maramureș Mountains, a mountain range in North East Carpathians...
, that is, a total of five.
The main criteria used in their classification are the phonetic features. Of less importance are the morphological, syntactical, and lexical particularities, as these are too small to provide clear distinctions.
All Romanian subdialects are mutually intelligible.
Terminology
The term dialect is often avoided when speaking about the Daco-Romanian varieties, especially by Romanian linguists, for two main reasons. First, according to many linguists, the Romanian language (in the wider sense) is already divided into four dialects: Daco-RomanianDaco-Romanian
Daco-Romanian is the term used to identify the Romanian language in contexts where distinction needs to be made between the various Eastern Romance languages...
, Aromanian
Aromanian language
Aromanian , also known as Macedo-Romanian, Arumanian or Vlach is an Eastern Romance language spoken in Southeastern Europe...
, Megleno-Romanian
Megleno-Romanian language
Megleno-Romanian is a Romance language, similar to Aromanian and Romanian, or a dialect of the Romanian language...
, and Istro-Romanian
Istro-Romanian
Istro-Romanian may refer to:*Istro-Romanians*Istro-Romanian language*Istro-Romanian grammar...
; these, according to other linguists, are separate languages. The second reason is that, in Romanian, the term dialect is used in its narrow sense of large group of speech varieties that show considerable differences compared to the reference language (standard Romanian in this case), while other terms are used for smaller, more similar divisions. Unlike other Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
, all Daco-Romanian varieties are very similar to each other, so that usually they are called subdialects.
Criteria
Early dialectal studies of Romanian tended to divide the language according to administrative regions, which in turn were usually based on historical provinces. This led sometimes to divisions into three varieties, Wallachian, Moldavian, and Transylvanian, or four, adding one for Banat. Such classifications came to be made obsolete by the later, more rigorous studies, based on a more thorough knowledge of linguistic facts.The publication of a linguistic atlas of Romanian by Gustav Weigand
Gustav Weigand
Gustav Weigand , was a German linguist and specialist in Balkan languages, especially Rumanian and Aromanian. He is known for his seminal contributions to the dialectology of the Romance languages of the Balkans and to the study of the relationships between the languages of the Balkan...
in 1908 and later, in the interwar period, of a series of dialectal atlases by a team of Romanian linguists, containing detailed and systematic data gathered across the areas inhabited by Romanians, allowed researchers to elaborate more reliable dialectal descriptions of the language.
The criteria given the most weight in establishing the dialectal classification were the regular phonetic features, in particular phenomena such as palatalization
Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
, monophthong
Monophthong
A monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation....
ization, vowel changes, etc. Only secondarily were morphological particularities used, especially where the phonetic features proved to be insufficient. Lexical particularities were the least relied upon.
Phonetic criteria
Only the most systematic phonetic features have been considered in dialectal classifications, such as the following.- fricatization and palatalization of the affricates [t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ];
- closing of the unstressed non-initial [e] to [i];
- closing of word-final [ə] to [ɨ];
- opening of pre-stress [ə] to [a];
- monophthongization of [e̯a] to [e] or [ɛ] when the next syllable contains [e];
- pronunciation of [e] and [i] after fricatives [s z ʃ ʒ] and affricate [t͡s];
- pronunciation of [e] after labials;
- pronunciation of the words cîine, mîine, pîine with [ɨj] or [ɨ].
- presence of a final whispered [u];
- the degree of palatalization of labials;
- the degree of palatalization of dentals;
- palatalization of the fricatives [s z] and the affricate [t͡s];
- palatalization of fricatives [ʃ ʒ].
For ease of presentation, some of the phonetic features above are described by taking the standard Romanian pronunciation as reference, even though in dialectal characterizations such a reference is not necessary and etymologically speaking the process might have had the opposite direction. A criterion such as "closing of word-final [ə] to [ɨ]" should be understood to mean that some Romanian subdialects have [ɨ] in word-final positions where others have [ə] (compare, for instance, Moldavian [ˈmamɨ] vs Wallachian [ˈmamə], both meaning "mother").
The most important phonetic process that helps in distinguishing the Romanian subdialects concerns the consonants pronounced in standard Romanian as the affricates [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ]:
- In the Wallachian subdialect they remain affricates.
- In the Moldavian subdialect they become the fricatives [ʃ, ʒ].
- In the Banat subdialect they become the palatal fricatives [ʃʲ, ʒʲ].
- In the Transylvanian varieties they diverge: [t͡ʃ] remains an affricate, whereas [d͡ʒ] becomes [ʒ].
Classification
The Romanian subdialects have proven hard to classify and are highly debated. Various authors, considering various classification criteria, arrived at different classifications and divided the language into two to five subdialects, but occasionally as many as twenty:- 2 subdialects: Wallachian, Moldavian;
- 3 subdialects: Wallachian, Moldavian, Banat;
- 4 subdialects: Wallachian, Moldavian, Banat, Crișana;
- 4 subdialects: Wallachian, Moldavian, Banat–Hunedoara, northern Transylvania;
- 5 subdialects: Wallachian, Moldavian, Banat, Crișana, Maramureș.
- 20 subdialects.
Most modern classifications divide the Romanian subdialects into two types, southern and northern, further divided as follows:
- The southern type has only one member:
- the Wallachian subdialectWallachian subdialect of RomanianThe Wallachian subdialect is one of the several subdialects of the Romanian language, specifically of the Daco-Romanian dialect. Its geographic distribution covers approximately the historical region of Wallachia, occupying the southern part of Romania, roughly between the Danube and the Southern...
(subdialectul muntean or graiul muntean), spoken in the southern part of RomaniaRomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, in the historical regions of MunteniaMunteniaMuntenia is a historical province of Romania, usually considered Wallachia-proper . It is situated between the Danube , the Carpathian Mountains and Moldavia , and the Olt River to the west...
, OlteniaOlteniaOltenia is a historical province and geographical region of Romania, in western Wallachia. It is situated between the Danube, the Southern Carpathians and the Olt river ....
, DobrujaDobrujaDobruja is a historical region shared by Bulgaria and Romania, located between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, including the Danube Delta, Romanian coast and the northernmost part of the Bulgarian coast...
(the southern part), but also extending in the southern parts of TransylvaniaTransylvaniaTransylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
. The orthoepyOrthoepyOrthoepy means the doctrine of correct pronunciation within a specific oral tradition. The term is from the Greek ὀρθοέπεια, from ὀρθός orthos "correct" and ἔπος epos "speech." The antonym is cacoepy "bad or wrong pronunciation"...
of the standard Romanian is largely based on this subdialect.
- the Wallachian subdialect
- The northern type consists of several subdialects:
- the Moldavian subdialectMoldavian subdialect of RomanianThe Moldavian subdialect is one of the several subdialects of the Romanian language...
(subdialectul moldovean or graiul moldovean), spoken in the historical region of MoldaviaMoldaviaMoldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
, now split among RomaniaRomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, the Republic of Moldova, and UkraineUkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
(BukovinaBukovinaBukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
and BessarabiaBessarabiaBessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
), as well as northern DobrujaDobrujaDobruja is a historical region shared by Bulgaria and Romania, located between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, including the Danube Delta, Romanian coast and the northernmost part of the Bulgarian coast...
; - the Banat subdialectBanat subdialect of RomanianThe Banat subdialect is one of the several subdialects of the Romanian language, specifically of the Daco-Romanian dialect...
(subdialectul bănățean or graiul bănățean), spoken in the historical region of BanatBanatThe Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
, including parts of SerbiaSerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
; - a group of Transylvanian varietiesTransylvanian varieties of RomanianThe Transylvanian varieties of Romanian are a grouping of speech varieties of the Romanian language, specifically of the Daco-Romanian dialect...
(graiuri transilvănene), among which two or three varieties are often distinguished, those of CrișanaCrişana subdialect of RomanianThe Crișana subdialect is one of the several varieties of the Romanian language, specifically of the Daco-Romanian dialect...
(graiul crișean), MaramureșMaramureş subdialect of RomanianThe Maramureş subdialect is one of the several varieties of the Romanian language, specifically of the Daco-Romanian dialect...
(graiul maramureșean), and sometimes OașOas CountryOaş Country is an etnographic region of Romania located in the North-East part of Satu Mare County, 50 km from the city of Satu Mare...
(graiul oșean). This distinction, however, is more difficult to make than for the other subdialects, since the Transylvanian varieties are much more finely divided and show features that prove them to be transition varieties of the neighboring subdialects.
- the Moldavian subdialect