At the beginning of September 2024, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova stated that residents of Moldova are forced to speak Romanian, although the Moldovan language is older than Romanian. We decided to check whether this position is supported by scientific data.
Speaking at the international forum “Leaders of Eurasia” in the Moscow region, Zakharova said: “The degree of meanness and baseness that the West is trying to commit with the people of Moldova, in my opinion, is unprecedented. Even what was done with Ukraine, what is being done with other countries, it seems to me, is different from what is happening in Moldova. A real artificial Romanianization of Moldova is underway. There were Nazis who said that this font should not be used, newspapers should be published in such a way that the capital letters were like this, or, for example, when in Ukraine they said that the Russian language should be minimized, they changed the education system... All this is monstrous, beyond comprehension, based on the current landmarks and reference points created by the West. But this is still not what has happened to the Moldovan language now, when people turn on the TV and they are told: “By the way, now your language is not Moldavian, but Romanian.” This is despite the fact that the Moldovan language is older than Romanian. This has been proven historically."
In her speech, Zakharova refers to changes in Moldovan legislation that occurred in 2023. Then the parliament of the republic accepted a law according to which in the Constitution and regulations the name “Moldovan language” should be replaced by “Romanian language”. On March 22 of the same year, the country's President Maia Sandu on her Facebook page stated: “Today I signed a law that confirms a historical and indisputable truth: the state language of the Republic of Moldova is Romanian. I hope that the Romanian language will unite all of us who live here and love this land. We, along with more than 27 million people around the world, speak Romanian, one of the official languages of the European Union. Those who for decades have argued that we, citizens of the Republic of Moldova, speak “Moldovan” and not Romanian, had one goal: to divide us.” Shortly before this, the Constitutional Court of the country, having considered the appeal of several opposition deputies, admitted law consistent with the Constitution.
According to the generally accepted scientific point of view, which is also shared by Russian linguists, Romanian and Moldavian are two linguonyms, that is, two national names for the same language. So, in the encyclopedia "Languages of the world”, published by the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in an article about the Romanian language it says: “In Moldova, a literary language identical to the Romanian language of Romania functions under the name “Moldavian language”; attempts to create a separate literary norm were recognized as untenable. <…> In the last decade of the 20th century, due to the abandonment of the concept of the existence of a special “Moldavian language”, different from Romanian, and after the transition to the Latin script, the name “Romanian language” became increasingly widespread.” The article further clarifies that the identity of the Moldovan and Romanian languages was recognized back in 1989 (and not recently, as Zakharova claims).
Western linguists also share a similar point of view. Thus, Oxford University professor Martin Maiden calls Romanian and Moldovan are dialects of the same language, belonging to the Daco-Romance group of languages.
Before the territory of modern Moldova became part of the USSR in 1940, the terms “Moldovan language” and “Romanian language” were used as synonyms (for example, recorded in the results of the 1897 census of the Russian Empire). Priest and poet Alexey Mateevich, a native of Bessarabia (which at that time belonged to the Russian Empire), in 1917 spoke: “We don’t have two languages and not two literatures, but only one, the same as across the Prut” (that is, in Romania). The Constitution of the Moldavian SSR established the official status of two languages: Russian and Moldavian. Adopted on August 27, 1991 Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Moldova Romanian was declared the state language of the country, and Constitution of Moldova 1994 - Moldovan language based on Latin script. Both concepts continued to be used both in official documents and in everyday life (for example, as part of the 2014 population census, 55% of the country’s residents called their native language is Moldovan, and almost 23% are Romanian). The law passed and signed by Sandu in 2023 eliminated this confusion.
The statement by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry that the Moldovan language is older than Romanian probably goes back to the works of Vasile Stati, a Moldovan politician and historian, author of a Moldovan-Romanian dictionary. One of his interviews, published in Russian in 2013, is called “The Moldovan language is older than Romanian" However, this formulation does not quite correctly convey the position of the Stati stated in a conversation with a journalist. He, like specialists, speaks not about languages, but about linguonyms. “Romanian and Moldovan are not different languages, they have two linguonyms, the names of national languages - the Moldovan national language and the Romanian national language. The Romanian and Moldavian languages have a common literary form, common roots, a common basic vocabulary, and a common historical path of development. However, the linguonym “Moldovan language” is more ancient than the linguonym “Romanian language,” explains Stati. In his opinion, “a linguonym is a non-linguistic phenomenon, it is a sociocultural, ethnopsychological phenomenon, one of the fundamental indicators of the ethno-identification of any people.”
The name “Moldavian language” actually appeared earlier. For example, this phrase used Dmitry Cantemir, ruler of the Moldavian principality at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries, who subsequently received the princely title from Peter I. Linguonym "Romanian language" was secured in the middle of the 19th century, after the emergence of the state of Romania as a result of the merger of the Danube principalities. Previously, the language spoken by the inhabitants of these territories was called Moldavian or Wallachian.
The Moldovan scientific community is critical of the Stati's argumentation. In February 2023, the Academy of Sciences of Moldova spoke with a statement, in which she supported the initiative to replace the phrase “Moldovan language” with “Romanian language” in the text of the Constitution and other laws. “Restoring the correct name of our language in law would put an end to the endless and futile debate that has been going on around this issue for decades,” the statement said. “With its decisions of 1994 and 1996 of the Presidium and the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, in the framework of national and international scientific conferences, as well as in interviews that members of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova and its leadership gave on various occasions, our institution has repeatedly advocated the restoration of this scientific truth about the Romanian language.”
Thus, Zakharova’s statement cannot be called correct. Residents of Moldova are not forced to speak Romanian, they spoke and continue to speak their native language, because Romanian and Moldavian are two different names for the same language. The fact that the name “Romanian language” appeared later than the name “Moldavian language” does not give grounds to talk about two languages, one of which is older than the other.
Cover photo: Unsplash
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