Anyone know how similar this is to Russian? I was told that there is a fair amount of latin rooted in it but the language itself varies from west to east. Any input>?? Cheers :wink:
Printable View
Anyone know how similar this is to Russian? I was told that there is a fair amount of latin rooted in it but the language itself varies from west to east. Any input>?? Cheers :wink:
It is not similar to Russian. Moldavan is just Romanian (maybe with more or less local deviations from standard Romanian).
And Romanian is a Roman language i.e. it is closer to Italian or French than to Russian or any other Slavic language.
AFAIK, Moldova was annexed by USSR from Romania at the end of the Second World War, and the native language is basically just a dialect of Romanian, which is of course a romance language.
Cyrillic (n)ever used?
I am half Moldovan. In Moldova Russian and Romanian are spoken. There is a Moldovan alphabet with cryllic letters, but I don't think people use it. It is basically the same as Romanian. I suppose. My father was a Russian speaking moldovan so I can't say for sure.
Your AFAIK is wrong :wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by scotcher
It was annexed by Romania from Russia at the end of the First World War and returned back at the beginning of the Second World War (1940).
Actually, I knew that too, just didn't see any point in bringing in up. I'm sure you could find several other instances where it changed hands in the centuries before that too, doesn't have much baring on the local language though :)Quote:
Originally Posted by N
Local knowledge would be moreso Russian than a latin based language?
Moldavian is Roman language not Slavic as Russian is. I had been here a couple times ten years ago. People in cities speak or understand Russian well. In rural area they speak Moldovan and not as good in Russian as cityfolk.
There is a fellow on this forum from Moldava, why don't you ask him?
O-Zone were Moldovan.
The Soviets made Moldovans write their language in the Cyrillic alphabet. However in 1991, they immediately reverted back to latin.
Moldovan Cyrillic was crude and looked artificial (as it was), it was basically the language transliterated to Russian. Moldovan I was Ы, E was Э.
I have seen Moldovan books in Cyrillic. Moldova's current president is an ethnic Russian and is a bit weird, since he claims that Moldovan is a slavic language, when it is infact just Romanian, which is obviously a Romance language.
The same happened with Tatar. Tatar was written in Arabic script, then it changed to Latin I think, but then Stalin made them change to Cyrillic because he didn't want them communicating with their ethnic cousins, the Turks (also Latin alphabet). A couple of years agom I think the Tatars officially decided to change back to Latin. But Cyrillic is still more commonly used, or at least in official uses.
I have an English language book with Moldovan Legends. At the back this is written in Moldovan(There is some Russian above it)
Для младшего школьного возраста
Литературно-художественное издание
МОЛДАВСКИЕ ЛЕГЕНДЫ
(на английском языке)
Составитель Григоре Георгиевич Ботезату
Переводчик
Дмитрий Афанасьевич Меленчук
Художник
Филимон Алексеевич Хэмурару
Дат ла кулес 26.7.89. Бун де типар 24.01.90.
Формат 84x100. Хыртие офсет кретатэ.
Гаринтурэ литерарэ. Импримаре офсет.
Коль де типар конв. 11,76. Коль едиториале 7,06.
Импр. кром.-конв. 47,88. Тираж 7000.
Команда № 91229. Прецул 80 коп.
Едитура "Литература артистикэ"
277004, Кишинэу, пр. Ленит, 180.
Комбинатул полиграфик. 277004, Кишинэу, стр. Берзарин, 35.
Комитетул де Стат ал РСС Молдовенешть пентру едитурь,
полиграфие ши комерцул ку кэрць.
Кишинэу is the Capital of Moldova(In Russian: Кишинёв)
I have two friends from this same city. One is a native Russian speaker, the other is a Romanian native speaker.
Excuse me, you are wrong. It were the Soviets who for the first time made Moldovans write their language in the Latin alphabet (1932-39). Before the Revolution they wrote in Cyrillic alphabet.Quote:
Originally Posted by TATY
As far as I know,Quote:
Originally Posted by TATY
Romanian, being of course a Romance language, has many words of Slavic origin (I have read about 10-20%, but I'm not sure). However the grammar is not slavic at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by TATY
[quote=pisces]As far as I know,Quote:
Originally Posted by TATY
Ok, I think the time has come for me to intervene (and I guess I am the "fellow from Moldava" Pravit referred to.) :)
Whether Moldovan is a separate language or "just a dialect" of Romanian is a highly debated question here in Moldova (mostly for political reasons). If you want to know my opinion - it is a dialect: specific pronunciation, some differences in vocabulary (there are words absent in standard Romanian), some words have different meaning, loans from Russian and Ukrainian, etc). Still it remains, however, a language of the Romance family.
Cyrillic alphabet began to be used by the Romanians long before the Russians came to this region - it was an influence of Old Church Slavonic since the Romanians adopted Orthodox Christianity.
If want to know more details you can read an extract from an article "Moldova's language history" by an American Professor of Law John Quigley (I've posted it as a new topic because it's too big to be posted in this thread and, unfortunately, I couldn't find it on the internet, otherwise I would simply give the link). The article covers briefly Moldova's language history from pre-modern times to early 1990s. http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtopic.php?t=4805
Sorry TATY, that's incorrect. Though having a Russian name Vladimir Voronin is not an ethnic Russian. His native language is Moldovan and he speaks Russian with strong Moldovan accent. It's true though that he claims Moldovan to be a language separate from Romanian.Quote:
Moldova's current president is an ethnic Russian and is a bit weird, since he claims that Moldovan is a slavic language, when it is infact just Romanian, which is obviously a Romance language.
True. :) And so are Zdob si Zdub.Quote:
O-Zone were Moldovan.
That’s correct. It’s interesting that in Romanian language many words of Latin origin have synonyms of Slavic origin that sound very similar to Russian: oră – ceas, spirit – duh, sacrificiu – jertfă, cauză – pricină, speranţă – nădejdă, etcQuote:
Originally Posted by pisces
Triton- what is Dragostea Din Tei about? Someone told me love but I could only assume twas then about the ponciest love ever =))
Btw, what's Chisinau {forgive spelling} like? Overpopulated? Beautiful? Small?
Triton, what is the difference between Romanian and Moldovan language in using sunt/s
If I get it right from my dictionary, "ponce" means gay.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
Than that's not true. There is not even a hint at homosexuality in this song. It's just about love.
Tis the origin aye, but I mean the video. Means flamboyant {not flamboyantly gay, just plain old flamboyant} e.g. pink shirts and the aeroplane!Quote:
Originally Posted by pisces
And another (and not the last :)) question to Triton: how does it feel like for native Romanian speaker to read texts without diacritics (diacritics are often omitted in web pages)? I suppose that it should sometimes create ambiguity at word level. For an instance, when terminal "ă" changes to "a" to form a definite article ("casă" -> "casa"), the article will be lost.
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not a Romanian speaker. :) My native language is Russian and I'm not very good at Romanian. I mean, I understand what they say on TV and radio, I can read and I can support a simple conversation, but I wouldn't say that I really know Romanian. And you know what, even for me it's not that difficult to read without diacritics (though I would prefer a "normal" text, of course). So I guess for the native speakers there's no problem at all. In case of ambiguity the meaning of the word (and its grammatical form) can be understood from the context. Beginners, on the other hand, must experience huge troubles reading such texts.Quote:
Originally Posted by pisces
:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
Here's an English translation: http://www.catteacorner.com/dragosteadintei.htm
As you can see there's not too much sense in this song. And it's not that translation is bad (although there are some minor mistakes), it just doesn't make any more sense in Romanian either. Maybe it's about love. Maybe it's about linden trees. Or cellphones, for that matter. You decide. :)
There's nothing wrong with your spelling. It's okay to spell "Chisinau" in English. Chisinau is the only big city in Moldova. Officially estimated population size is 750-800 ths, but I think the real numbers are higher. Small if compared to the giants like Moscow or London, but a real megapolis by Moldova's standards. :) There are some nice buildings and parks, couple of churches and monuments, but frankly speaking Chisinau is not the place to be called a big tourist attraction.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
Here's a site about Chisinau in three languages (English, Russian and Romanian): http://www.kishinev.info/
And here are some more pictures of the city: http://www.travel-images.com/moldova.html
[quote=pisces]
what is the difference between Romanian and Moldovan language in using sunt/s
Hincesti- know where that is?? Cheers for all the info btw =))
It's in Moldova, 36 km from Chişinău. Once (or maybe more than once) I drank wine which was made in HQuote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
I do experience such troubles in fact :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Triton
Сочувствую. :cry: You should try to find the sites that use diacritics. There are some on the net, not too many of them unfortunately.
You're welcome :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
Pisces is right, HQuote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
Unless my age does come to prevent me, theres a chance I'd be doing a two week stint at an orphanage there. Is it all industrial? Poor? Btw, we only recently {end of January I fink} converted to kilometres, could you tell me the distance in miles per chance?? Do you like Moldova?
Moldova is probably the poorest country in Europe, bar none. Even Ukraine is rich by comparison.
I'm never one to dissuade people from going places (it's never as black as it's painted, as they say) - but do a lot of reading and research and get good information before you go. Oh I think 1 mile = 1.6km roughly. 36/1.6=23milesish
It is. Majority of the population lives below the poverty line. :(Quote:
Originally Posted by waxwing
I don't know much about Hincesti, but I can tell you for sure that it is poor, cos this can be said about any place in Moldova, and the smaller the place is the lower is the level of live there. In rural areas people are simply on the verge of surviving.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
The only place that is relatively "rich" is the capital, Chisinau, were most of the money resources and buisnesses are concentrated (and that's the typical situation for many former Soviet republics).
The only thing I know about "industry" in Hincesti is that there's a winery in the town.
No, I don't. Moldova is not really the best place to live in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
"Outreach Moldova"?Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
How did you know? Are they well known? Are they going to steal my money and sell me as a sex slave to a Bottajikwangostanian hermaphrodite?Quote:
Originally Posted by Triton