Vlach language (Serbia) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Vlach / Romanian
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...

(limba română in own designation, sometimes rumâneşte / rumâneşce; Влашки / Vlaški in Serbian

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

) are the terms used to designate the Romanian varieties spoken by the Vlachs (Romanians) of eastern Serbia.

Status

Serbian statistics list Vlach and Romanian languages separately depending of what people declared in census. This however, does not mean that Serbian government have official position whether Vlach and Romanian are separate languages. ISO

International Organization for Standardization

The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...

hadn't assigned it a separate language code in the ISO 639

ISO 639

ISO 639 is a set of standards by the International Organization for Standardization that is concerned with representation of names for language and language groups....

standard. In the 2002 census, 40,054 people in Serbia declared themselves ethnic Vlachs

Vlachs

Vlach is a blanket term covering several modern Latin peoples descending from the Latinised population in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. English variations on the name include: Walla, Wlachs, Wallachs, Vlahs, Olahs or Ulahs...

and 54,818 people declared themselves native speakers of the Vlach language. The language of the questionings was Serbian.

The Vlach language does not have any official status and it is not standardized, thus some members of Vlach community ask for official usage of standard Romanian in the areas inhabited by Vlachs until the standardization of the Vlach language.

For historical reasons connected with the multicultural region of Vojvodina

Vojvodina

Vojvodina, officially called Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province of Serbia. Its capital and largest city is Novi Sad...

, Romanian

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...

is listed as a separate language in latest Serbian census, the number of its speakers was 34,515, while 34,576 people declared themselves as ethnic Romanians

Romanians

The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....

. The declared Vlach speakers are mostly concentrated in eastern Serbia, mainly in the Timočka Krajina

Timočka Krajina

Timočka Krajina is a geographical region located in Serbia. It is situated in eastern Serbia around the Timok River. The population of Timočka Krajina is 284,112 .-Name:...

region and adjacent areas, while declared Romanian speakers are mostly concentrated in Vojvodina

Vojvodina

Vojvodina, officially called Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province of Serbia. Its capital and largest city is Novi Sad...

.

According to some sources in the media (among others BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, ProTV and Gardianul

Gardianul

Gardianul was a Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest. It claimed to have had an anti-corruption stance, investigating organized crime and high-level corruption....

), Serbia recognised Romanian as the native language of the Vlachs, through the act of confirmation of the National Council of the Vlach (Roumanian) National Minority in August 2007.

The "National Council of Vlachs (Roumanians) in Serbia" listed Romanian in its statute as the language of the Vlach minority.

Features

Its two main variants, Ungurean and Țăran, are subordonated forms of the Romanian varieties spoken in 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...

and Oltenia

Oltenia

Oltenia 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 ....

, respectively.

The speakers have been isolated from Romania and their speech did not keep up with the neologisms (for some abstract notions, as well as technological, political and scientific concepts) borrowed by the Romanian speakers on the other shore of the Danube from French and Italian and as such, they're using Serbian counterparts instead, as Serbian has been the language of education for nearly two centuries.

Name

The term "Vlach" is the English transcription of the Serbian term used to describe this language (vlaški), while "Romanian" or "Roumanian" is the English transcription of its Vlach/Romanian counterpart (român/rumân).

For example, the National Council representing Vlach minority is called:

Consiliul Naţional al Minorităţii Naţionale Rumâne in Vlach/Romanian,

Национални савет Влашке националне мањине, Nacionalni Savet Vlaške Nacionalne Manjine in Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

,

and National Council of Vlach (Roumanian) National Minority in English.

Further on, the Romanian/Vlach Democratic Party of Serbia is called in Romanian/Vlach Partidul Democrat al Rumânilor din Sârbia and Vlaška Demokratska Stranka (Влашка демократска странка) in Serbian. This happens also with the others institutions of the Vlach minority.

The term Vlach language(s) is also often used to refer to Eastern Romance languages

Eastern Romance languages

The Eastern Romance languages in their narrow conception, sometimes known as the Vlach languages, are a group of Romance languages that developed in Southeastern Europe from the local eastern variant of Vulgar Latin. Some classifications include the Italo-Dalmatian languages; when Italian is...

in general, which includes Romanian. There are considerable differences between these Vlach languages (the Greek, Macedonian and Albanian Vlachs, versus the Vlachs of Istria, versus the Vlachs of Eastern Serbia who are closest to Romanians) and untutored native speakers have difficulties understanding each other.

Usage in media

Radio Zaječar http://www.danas.rs/20070319/hronika3.html and Radio Pomoravlje http://radio.pomoravlje.net/ broadcasting programme in the Romanian (Vlach) language.

Status

Features

Name

Usage in media

See also