Strigoi in Romanian mythology are troubled spirits that are said to have risen from the grave. They are attributed with the abilities to transform into an animal , become invisible , and to gain vitality from the blood of their victims. Bram Stoker 's Dracula may be a modern interpretation of the Strigoi through their historic links with vampirism .
84-534: Strigòi is a Romanian word that originated from a root related to the Latin terms strix or striga with the addition of the augmentative suffix "-oi" (feminine "-oaie"). Otila Hedeşan notes that the same augmentative suffix appears in the related terms moroi and bosorcoi ( borrowed from Hungarian boszorka ) and considers this parallel derivation to indicate membership in the same "mythological micro-system." The "-oi" suffix notably converts feminine terms to
168-488: A lexicon of over 150,000 words in its contemporary form, Romanian showed a high degree of lexical permeability, reflecting contact with Thraco-Dacian , Slavic languages (including Old Slavic , Serbian , Bulgarian , Ukrainian , and Russian ), Greek , Hungarian , German , Turkish , and to languages that served as cultural models during and after the Age of Enlightenment , in particular French . This lexical permeability
252-627: A "regional language" alongside Ukrainian as per the 2012 legislation on languages in Ukraine . Romanian is an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations, such as the Latin Union and the European Union . Romanian is also one of the five languages in which religious services are performed in the autonomous monastic state of Mount Athos , spoken in the monastic communities of Prodromos and Lakkoskiti . In
336-720: A bird-woman who sucks the blood of children. Jules Verne used the term "stryges" in Chapter II of his novel The Castle of the Carpathians , published in 1892. The Greek word Strix , Polish strzyga , Hungarian sztriga , and the Albanian word shtriga are also cognate. In the late Roman period the word became associated with witches or a type of ill-omened nocturnal flying creature. A strix ( Late Latin striga , Greek στρίγξ), referred to night-time entities that craved human flesh and blood, particularly infants'. It
420-837: A diplomatic bridge between the United States and Romania. He advised Edward Kennedy on matters of the Balkans , and also served as the press liaison for the White House during the state visit of President Richard Nixon in 1969 in Romania. In 1986, Florescu became the Director of the East European Research Center at Boston College and remained in that position until his retirement in 2008. In that function, he organized symposiums on themes varying from
504-678: A foreign language, for example the Nicolae Bălcescu High-school in Gyula , Hungary. Romanian is taught as a foreign language in tertiary institutions, mostly in European countries such as Germany, France and Italy, and the Netherlands, as well as in the United States. Overall, it is taught as a foreign language in 43 countries around the world. Romanian has become popular in other countries through movies and songs performed in
588-411: A living man, born under certain conditions: The strigoi are said to be bald on top of the head, do not eat garlic and onions, avoid incense, and towards the feast of Saint Andrew they sleep outdoors. Their spine is elongated in the shape of a tail, covered with hair. If there is a drought in a village, it means that there is a strigoi that prevents the rains. If it rains with stones (hail), God punishes
672-530: A name that was extended to the literature and writers around this time such as Vasile Alecsandri , Grigore Alexandrescu , Nicolae Bălcescu , Timotei Cipariu . Between 1830 and 1860 "transitional alphabets" were used, adding Latin letters to the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet . The Latin alphabet became official at different dates in Wallachia and Transylvania - 1860, and Moldova -1862. Following
756-579: A scholarship to study history (BA, MA) at Christ Church , Oxford . He moved to Indiana University Bloomington in the United States for his doctorate. With one child, Nicholas, born in Austin , Texas, Radu Florescu moved east and began his academic career as a Professor of history at Boston College. In the Boston area, he will have 3 more children: John (1954), Radu (1961), and Alexandra (1963). At Boston College , he joined forces with Raymond T. McNally , and
840-578: A significant share of the local population (districts in Chernivtsi , Odesa and Zakarpattia oblasts ) Romanian is taught in schools as a primary language and there are Romanian-language newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting. The University of Chernivtsi in western Ukraine trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics. In Hertsa Raion of Ukraine as well as in other villages of Chernivtsi Oblast and Zakarpattia Oblast , Romanian has been declared
924-463: A traditional test for witchcraft – as a method of identifying a striga. An 1865 article on Transylvanian folklore by Wilhelm Schmidt describes the strigoi as nocturnal creatures that preyed on infants. He reports a tradition in which, upon the birth of a child, one tosses a stone behind oneself and exclaims "This into the mouth of the strigoi !" In 1909, Franz Hartmann mentioned in his book An Authenticated Vampire Story that peasant children from
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#17327906786041008-423: A vampire hunting group made up of several family members. After drinking some alcohol, they dug up the coffin of Petre Toma, made an incision in his chest, and tore the heart out. After removal of the heart, the body was burned and the ashes were mixed in water and drunk by Toma's niece, believing that this would put an end to the haunting. Dolj County police later arrested six of the family members who participated in
1092-471: A vampire was to place a 7-year-old boy dressed in white on a white horse near the graveyard at midday. It was believed that the horse would stop at the grave of the suspected vampire. In 1887, French geographer Élisée Reclus details burials in Romania: "If the deceased has red hair, he is very concerned that he was back in the form of dog, frog, flea or bedbug, and that it enters into houses at night to suck
1176-559: A village in the Carpathian Mountains started to die mysteriously. The villagers began to suspect a recently deceased count was a vampire, dwelling in his old fortress. Frightened villagers burned the castle to stop the deaths. In his book In Search of Dracula, The History of Dracula and Vampires , Radu Florescu mentions an event in 1969 in the city of Căpățâneni , where after the death of an old man, several family members began to die in suspicious circumstances. Unearthed,
1260-424: Is also spoken within communities of Romanian and Moldovan immigrants in the United States, Canada and Australia, although they do not make up a large homogeneous community statewide. Many are Moldavians who were deported Data only for the districts on the right bank of Dniester (without Transnistria and the city of Tighina). In Moldova, it is sometimes referred to as the " Moldovan language " In Transnistria, it
1344-494: Is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian , Megleno-Romanian , and Istro-Romanian . It is also spoken as a minority language by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania ( Bulgaria , Hungary , Serbia and Ukraine ), and by the large Romanian diaspora . In total, it is spoken by 25 million people as a first language . Romanian was also known as Moldovan in Moldova, although
1428-616: Is continuing today with the introduction of English words. Yet while the overall lexis was enriched with foreign words and internal constructs, in accordance with the history and development of the society and the diversification in semantic fields, the fundamental lexicon—the core vocabulary used in everyday conversation—remains governed by inherited elements from the Latin spoken in the Roman provinces bordering Danube , without which no coherent sentence can be made. Romanian descended from
1512-485: Is distinguished by the activity of Romanian literature classics in its early decades: Mihai Eminescu , Ion Luca Caragiale , Ion Creangă , Ioan Slavici . The current orthography, with minor reforms to this day and using Latin letters, was fully implemented in 1881, regulated by the Romanian Academy on a fundamentally phonological principle, with few morpho-syntactic exceptions. The first Romanian grammar
1596-597: Is official only in the villages of Vojvodinci ( Voivodinț ), Markovac ( Marcovăț ), Straža ( Straja ), Mali Žam ( Jamu Mic ), Malo Središte ( Srediștea Mică ), Mesić ( Mesici ), Jablanka ( Iablanca ), Sočica ( Sălcița ), Ritiševo ( Râtișor ), Orešac ( Oreșaț ) and Kuštilj ( Coștei ). In the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1.5% of Vojvodinians stated Romanian as their native language. The Vlachs of Serbia are considered to speak Romanian as well. In parts of Ukraine where Romanians constitute
1680-666: Is officially called " Moldovan language " and is written in Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet . Officially divided into Vlachs and Romanians Most in Northern Bukovina and Southern Bessarabia; according to a Moldova Noastră study (based on the latest Ukrainian census). According to the Constitution of Romania of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic. Romania mandates
1764-546: Is related to the Romanian verb a striga , which means "to scream". One of the earliest mentions of a historical strigoi is the story of Jure Grando Alilović (1579–1656) from the region of Istria . The villager is believed to have been the first real person described as a vampire because he was referred to as a strigoi , štrigon or štrigun in contemporary local records. Grando is supposed to have terrorized his former village sixteen years after his death. Eventually he
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#17327906786041848-606: Is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova . Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages , a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Western Romance languages in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries. To distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it
1932-558: The Cannes Film Festival ). Also some artists wrote songs dedicated to the Romanian language. The multi-platinum pop trio O-Zone (originally from Moldova) released a song called "Nu mă las de limba noastră" ("I won't forsake our language"). The final verse of this song, "Eu nu mă las de limba noastră, de limba noastră cea română" , is translated in English as "I won't forsake our language, our Romanian language". Also,
2016-558: The Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled in 2013 that "the official language of Moldova is Romanian". On 16 March 2023, the Moldovan Parliament approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution. On 22 March, the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu , promulgated the law. The history of the Romanian language started in the Roman provinces north of
2100-586: The Jireček Line in Classical antiquity but there are 3 main hypotheses about its exact territory: the autochthony thesis (it developed in left-Danube Dacia only), the discontinuation thesis (it developed in right-Danube provinces only), and the "as-well-as" thesis that supports the language development on both sides of the Danube. Between the 6th and 8th century, following the accumulated tendencies inherited from
2184-717: The Revolution of 1989 . After the Revolution of 1989, he also organized visits of Romanian presidents, and members of the Romanian Royal House to Harvard University , The John F. Kennedy library and Boston City Hall . He was Emeritus Honorary Consul. In his retirement from France and Poiana Brașov , Florescu repurposed the East European Research Centre to create an annual scholarship for several gifted Romanian teenagers to study in
2268-467: The Romanian Academy . The third phase of the modern age of Romanian language, starting from 1880 and continuing to this day, is characterized by the prevalence of the supradialectal form of the language, standardized with the express contribution of the school system and Romanian Academy, bringing a close to the process of literary language modernization and development of literary styles. It
2352-552: The Vulgar Latin spoken in the Roman provinces of Southeastern Europe north of the Jireček Line (a hypothetical boundary between the dominance of Latin and Greek influences). Most scholars agree that two major dialects developed from Common Romanian by the 10th century. Daco-Romanian (the official language of Romania and Moldova) and Istro-Romanian (a language spoken by no more than 2,000 people in Istria ) descended from
2436-435: The unification of Moldavia and Wallachia further studies on the language were made, culminating with the founding of Societatea Literară Română on 1 April 1866 on the initiative of C. A. Rosetti , an academic society that had the purpose of standardizing the orthography, formalizing the grammar and (via a dictionary) vocabulary of the language, and promoting literary and scientific publications. This institution later became
2520-492: The "liberty to teach in the mother language (Romanian language)". At the same time, Romanian-language newspapers and journals began to appear, such as Basarabia (1906), Viața Basarabiei (1907), Moldovanul (1907), Luminătorul (1908), Cuvînt moldovenesc (1913), Glasul Basarabiei (1913). From 1913, the synod permitted that "the churches in Bessarabia use the Romanian language". Romanian finally became
2604-490: The 16th century, by various foreign travelers into the Carpathian Romance-speaking space, as well as in other historical documents written in Romanian at that time such as Cronicile Țării Moldovei [ ro ] ( The Chronicles of the land of Moldova ) by Grigore Ureche . The few allusions to the use of Romanian in writing as well as common words, anthroponyms, and toponyms preserved in
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2688-606: The 6th and 16th century, entire stages from its history are re-constructed by researchers, often with proposed relative chronologies and loose limits. From the 12th or 13th century, official documents and religious texts were written in Old Church Slavonic , a language that had a similar role to Medieval Latin in Western Europe. The oldest dated text in Romanian is a letter written in 1521 with Cyrillic letters , and until late 18th century, including during
2772-541: The Assembly, the Executive Council and the provincial administrative bodies. The Romanian language and script are officially used in eight municipalities: Alibunar , Bela Crkva ( Biserica Albă ), Žitište ( Sângeorgiu de Bega ), Zrenjanin ( Becicherecu Mare ), Kovačica ( Covăcița ), Kovin ( Cuvin ), Plandište ( Plandiște ) and Sečanj ( Seceani ). In the municipality of Vršac ( Vârșeț ), Romanian
2856-602: The Boston area during summer months. These scholarships still continue to this day. His son, John M. Florescu, serves on the board of Educational Enrichment for Romanian Children. Florescu died on May 18, 2014, in Mougins , France from complications of pneumonia. Upon his death, the Romanian royal family released a statement of condolences and recognition for Florescu's work. In his bestseller In Search of Dracula (1972), co-authored with Raymond T. McNally, he claimed that
2940-591: The Cyrillic script, and the Latin script as stipulated by the law, the Croat , Hungarian , Slovak , Romanian and Rusyn languages and their scripts, as well as languages and scripts of other nationalities, shall simultaneously be officially used in the work of the bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in the manner established by the law. The bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are:
3024-566: The East European Research Center at Boston College, Florescu was also a philanthropist and an adviser to Edward Kennedy on Balkan and Eastern European affairs. At the time of his death, Radu Florescu was considered the patriarch of the Florescu family [ ro ] . Florescu was born in Bucharest to an aristocratic Florescu family [ ro ] , one of the oldest of the extant Romanian Boyar families. He left Romania at
3108-579: The Moldovan autonomies of Gagauzia and Transnistria . Romanian is also an official language of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia along with five other languages. Romanian minorities are encountered in Serbia ( Timok Valley ), Ukraine ( Chernivtsi and Odesa oblasts ), and Hungary ( Gyula ). Large immigrant communities are found in Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal. In 1995,
3192-449: The Moldovan musicians Doina and Ion Aldea Teodorovici performed a song called "The Romanian language". Romanian is also called Daco-Romanian in comparative linguistics to distinguish from the other dialects of Common Romanian : Aromanian , Megleno-Romanian , and Istro-Romanian . The origin of the term "Daco-Romanian" can be traced back to the first printed book of Romanian grammar in 1780, by Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Șincai . There,
3276-472: The Old Church Slavonic religious writings and chancellery documents, attested prior to the 16th century, along with the analysis of graphemes show that the writing of Romanian with the Cyrillic alphabet started in the second half of the 15th century. The oldest extant document in Romanian precisely dated is Neacșu's letter (1521) and was written using the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet , which
3360-606: The Romanian dialect spoken north of the Danube is called lingua Daco-Romana to emphasize its origin and its area of use, which includes the former Roman province of Dacia , although it is spoken also south of the Danube, in Dobruja , the Timok Valley and northern Bulgaria. This article deals with the Romanian (i.e. Daco-Romanian) language, and thus only its dialectal variations are discussed here. The differences between
3444-773: The Romanian language. Examples of Romanian acts that had a great success in non-Romanophone countries are the bands O-Zone (with their No. 1 single Dragostea Din Tei , also known as Numa Numa , across the world in 2003–2004), Akcent (popular in the Netherlands, Poland and other European countries), Activ (successful in some Eastern European countries), DJ Project (popular as clubbing music) SunStroke Project (known by viral video " Epic Sax Guy ") and Alexandra Stan (worldwide no.1 hit with " Mr. Saxobeat ") and Inna as well as high-rated movies like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days , The Death of Mr. Lazarescu , 12:08 East of Bucharest or California Dreamin' (all of them with awards at
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3528-480: The Romanian neuter became a mixture of masculine and feminine. The verb morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compound perfect and future tense as the other Romance languages. Compared with the other Romance languages , during its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin tense system. Romanian is spoken mostly in Central , South-Eastern , and Eastern Europe , although speakers of
3612-606: The apartment of the Conducător with braids of garlic. This is a traditional remedy against the strigoi. In February 2004, a woman from the village of Marotinu de Sus in Dolj County , claimed that she had been visited by her late uncle, a 76-year-old Romanian man named Petre Toma who had died in December the previous year. Fearing the deceased might have become a strigoi , the woman's brother-in-law, Gheorghe Marinescu, organized
3696-447: The beginning of devoicing of asyllabic [u] after consonants. Text analysis revealed words that are now lost from modern vocabulary or used only in local varieties. These words were of various provenience for example: Latin ( cure - to run, mâneca - to leave), Old Church Slavonic ( drăghicame - gem, precious stone, prilăsti - to trick, to cheat), Hungarian ( bizăntui - to bear witness). The modern age of Romanian starts in 1780 with
3780-422: The blood of beautiful young girls. So it is prudent to nail the coffin heavily, or, better yet, a stake through the chest of the corpse." Simeon Florea Marian in Înmormântarea la români (1892) describes another preventive method, unearthing and beheading, then re-interring the corpse and head face-down. The Dracula Scrapbook by Peter Haining , published by New English Library editions in 1976, reported that
3864-455: The brutal Vlad III , voivod of the principality of Wallachia , was the inspiration for Bram Stoker 's Dracula . Vlad was a member of the House of Drăculești, and Stoker's novel took place in real locations such as Transylvania and Tihuța Pass , including even correct rail lines. For this reason, Florescu concluded that the main character must also be inspired by facts. Vlad Țepeș, known for
3948-422: The colloquial speech and writing. Outside the political arena the language is most often called "Romanian". In the breakaway territory of Transnistria, it is co-official with Ukrainian and Russian. In the 2014 census , out of the 2,804,801 people living in Moldova, 24% (652,394) stated Romanian as their most common language, whereas 56% stated Moldovan. While in the urban centers speakers are split evenly between
4032-470: The corpse did not show signs of decomposition, his eyes were wide open, and his face was red and twisted. The corpse was burned to save his soul. During the Romanian Revolution of 1989 , the corpse of Nicolae Ceaușescu did not receive a proper burial. This made the ghost of the former dictator a threat in the minds of superstitious Romanians. A revolutionary activist, Gelu Voican , carpeted
4116-552: The country Moldovan . In December 2013, a decision of the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the Declaration of Independence took precedence over the Constitution and the state language should be called Romanian. In 2023, the Moldovan parliament passed a law officially adopting the designation "Romanian" in all legal instruments, implementing the 2013 court decision. Scholars agree that Moldovan and Romanian are
4200-469: The development of printing, the same alphabet was used. The period after 1780, starting with the writing of its first grammar books, represents the modern age of the language, during which time the Latin alphabet became official, the literary language was standardized, and a large number of words from Modern Latin and other Romance languages entered the lexis. In the process of language evolution from fewer than 2500 attested words from Late Antiquity to
4284-480: The differences as 'accents' or 'speeches' (in Romanian: accent or grai ). Radu Florescu Radu Florescu (23 October 1925 – 18 May 2014) was a Romanian academic who held the position of Emeritus Professor of History at Boston College . His work on Vlad Dracula includes a series of bestselling books that he co-authored with his colleague Raymond T. McNally . Along with serving as Director of
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#17327906786044368-492: The diffusion of Thracian culture in antiquity to the rise of antisemitism in interwar Romania. From 1996 to 2004, Florescu served as Honorary Consul for New England by the Romanian Foreign Ministry , the first person to hold such a position in the United States. His first job as honorary consul was to oversee voting by Boston-area Romanian citizens in one of the first democratic Romanian elections since
4452-413: The first Romanian school, and Ion Heliade Rădulescu . The end of this period is marked by the first printing of magazines and newspapers in Romanian, in particular Curierul Românesc and Albina Românească . Starting from 1831 and lasting until 1880 the modern phase is characterized by the development of literary styles: scientific, administrative, and belletristic . It quickly reached a high point with
4536-479: The gradual development of bilingualism . Russian continued to develop as the official language of privilege, whereas Romanian remained the principal vernacular. The period from 1905 to 1917 was one of increasing linguistic conflict spurred by an increase in Romanian nationalism. In 1905 and 1906, the Bessarabian zemstva asked for the re-introduction of Romanian in schools as a "compulsory language", and
4620-603: The grave of the supposed strigoi is searched and the order is read to him by the priests and an oak, yew or ash branch is struck in his heart, it is pierced with a nail or a knife, to remain bound of the coffin and not being able to go out to do mischief. Tudor Pamfile in his book Mitologie românească compiles all appellations of strigoi in Romania strâgoi , Moroi in western Transylvania , Wallachia and Oltenia , vidmă in Bucovina , vârcolacul , Cel-rau , or vampire. The types described are: A common way used to identify
4704-607: The influence of the Mukacheve eparchy in Ukraine. The language spoken during this period had a phonological system of seven vowels and twenty-nine consonants. Particular to Old Romanian are the distribution of /z/, as the allophone of /dz/ from Common Romanian , in the Wallachian and south-east Transylvanian varieties, the presence of palatal sonorants /ʎ/ and /ɲ/, nowadays preserved only regionally in Banat and Oltenia , and
4788-460: The language and use of the demonym Romanians ( Români ) for speakers of this language predates the foundation of the modern Romanian state. Romanians always used the general term rumân / român or regional terms like ardeleni (or ungureni ), moldoveni or munteni to designate themselves. Both the name of rumână or rumâniască for the Romanian language and the self-designation rumân/român are attested as early as
4872-514: The language can be found all over the world, mostly due to emigration of Romanian nationals and the return of immigrants to Romania back to their original countries. Romanian speakers account for 0.5% of the world's population, and 4% of the Romance-speaking population of the world. Romanian is the single official and national language in Romania and Moldova, although it shares the official status at regional level with other languages in
4956-545: The language, working together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Department for Romanians Abroad. Since 2013, the Romanian Language Day is celebrated on every 31 August . Romanian is the official language of the Republic of Moldova. The 1991 Declaration of Independence named the official language Romanian, and the Constitution of Moldova as originally adopted in 1994 named the state language of
5040-608: The largest Romanian-speaking community in the Middle East was found in Israel, where Romanian was spoken by 5% of the population. Romanian is also spoken as a second language by people from Arabic-speaking countries who have studied in Romania. It is estimated that almost half a million Middle Eastern Arabs studied in Romania during the 1980s. Small Romanian-speaking communities are to be found in Kazakhstan and Russia. Romanian
5124-658: The late 15th century and ended in the early decades of the 18th century, by which time Romanian had begun to be regularly used by the Church. The oldest Romanian texts of a literary nature are religious manuscripts ( Codicele Voronețean , Psaltirea Scheiană ), translations of essential Christian texts. These are considered either propagandistic results of confessional rivalries, for instance between Lutheranism and Calvinism , or as initiatives by Romanian monks stationed at Peri Monastery in Maramureș to distance themselves from
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#17327906786045208-586: The masculine gender as well as often investing it with a complex mixture of augmentation and pejoration. The root has been related particularly to owls. Cognates are found throughout the Romance languages , such as the Italian words strega or the Venetian word strìga which mean "witch". The Italian stregone even has the parallel cognate augmentative suffix and means "sorcerer." In French, stryge means
5292-604: The meat of a pig killed on the 17 October, the feast day of Saint Ignatius , was a good way to guard against vampires, according to Romanian legend. Strigoiulu (the Strigoi) was the name of a Romanian-language satirical magazine published briefly in 1862 in Pest . Romanian language Romanian (obsolete spelling: Roumanian ; endonym : limba română [ˈlimba roˈmɨnə] , or românește [romɨˈneʃte] , lit. ' in Romanian ' )
5376-408: The media regarding the forgery of the census results. The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia determines that in the regions of the Republic of Serbia inhabited by national minorities, their own languages and scripts shall be officially used as well, in the manner established by law. The Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina determines that, together with the Serbian language and
5460-409: The northern dialect. Two other languages, Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian , developed from the southern version of Common Romanian. These two languages are now spoken in lands to the south of the Jireček Line . Of the features that individualize Common Romanian, inherited from Latin or subsequently developed, of particular importance are: The use of the denomination Romanian ( română ) for
5544-427: The official language with the Constitution of 1923 . Romanian has preserved a part of the Latin declension , but whereas Latin had six cases , from a morphological viewpoint, Romanian has only three: the nominative / accusative , genitive / dative , and marginally the vocative . Romanian nouns also preserve the neuter gender , although instead of functioning as a separate gender with its own forms in adjectives,
5628-480: The outbreak of World War II and moved to London, as his father, a pro- Allied diplomat who served under Romanian Minister Viorel Tilea to the United Kingdom, defied a recall order from the pro- Axis government of Ion Antonescu . In protest of Romania's new alliance with Nazi Germany, Florescu's father resigned his post and joined the Free Rumanian Committee in opposition to the fascist Antonescu regime. After leaving St. Edward's School, Oxford , Florescu received
5712-418: The printing in 1780 of Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae , the pre-modern phase was characterized by the publishing of school textbooks, appearance of first normative works in Romanian, numerous translations, and the beginning of a conscious stage of re-latinization of the language. Notable contributions, besides that of the Transylvanian School , are the activities of Gheorghe Lazăr , founder of
5796-606: The printing in Vienna of a very important grammar book titled Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae . The author of the book, Samuil Micu-Klein , and the revisor, Gheorghe Șincai , both members of the Transylvanian School , chose to use Latin as the language of the text and presented the phonetical and grammatical features of Romanian in comparison to its ancestor. The Modern age of Romanian language can be further divided into three phases: pre-modern or modernizing between 1780 and 1830, modern phase between 1831 and 1880, and contemporary from 1880 onwards. Beginning with
5880-465: The printing of Dacia Literară , a journal founded by Mihail Kogălniceanu and representing a literary society, which together with other publications like Propășirea and Gazeta de Transilvania spread the ideas of Romantic nationalism and later contributed to the formation of other societies that took part in the Revolutions of 1848 . Their members and those that shared their views are collectively known in Romania as "of '48"( pașoptiști ),
5964-472: The regional varieties are small, limited to regular phonetic changes, few grammar aspects, and lexical particularities. There is a single written and spoken standard (literary) Romanian language used by all speakers, regardless of region. Like most natural languages, Romanian dialects are part of a dialect continuum . The dialects of Romanian are also referred to as 'sub-dialects' and are distinguished primarily by phonetic differences. Romanians themselves speak of
6048-524: The ritual, charging them with "disturbing the peace of the dead". They were sentenced to six months' imprisonment and ordered to pay damages to the family of the deceased. Since then, in the nearby village of Amărăştii de Sus, people drive a fire-hardened stake through the heart or belly of the dead as a "preventive measure". The encyclopedist Dimitrie Cantemir and the folklorist Teodor Burada in his book Datinile Poporului român la înmormântări published in 1882 refer to cases of strigoism. The strigoi can be
6132-553: The same language, with the glottonym "Moldovan" used in certain political contexts. It has been the sole official language since the adoption of the Law on State Language of the Moldavian SSR in 1989. This law mandates the use of Moldovan in all the political, economic, cultural and social spheres, as well as asserting the existence of a "linguistic Moldo-Romanian identity". It is also used in schools, mass media, education and in
6216-435: The slaughter of many Saxons and Ottomans , with a penchant for impaling his enemies on stakes, was the logical choice as the model for Dracula. The book was translated into 15 languages and boosted the Romanian tourism industry as young Westerners flocked to Romania to trace the footsteps of the historical Dracula. Florescu also wrote about literary creations like Frankenstein with In Search of Frankenstein (1975) and
6300-464: The strigoi who does not let "clean rain fall", and if it rains with sun, it is believed that one of the strigoi has been killed. The strigoi take the milk from the cows, take the manna of the wheat, the strength of the people, stop the rains, bring hail and bring death among men and cattle. On Saint George's day (April 23), the boys water the girls so that they don't suffer from strigoi, but also so that they don't turn into these creatures. To kill them,
6384-561: The two began their research on Vlad the Impaler . Then with McNally and Matei Cazacu , of the Paris Institut des Hautes Etudes , Florescu will go on to write six books on Vlad the Impaler 's life. Alongside his work on Vlad the Impaler , Florescu would write seven more books on East European History and on the history of Romania such as The Struggle Against Russia in the Romanian principalities, 1821–1854 . Radu Florescu created
6468-478: The two names (with the capital Chișinău showing a strong preference for the name "Romanian", i.e. 3:2), in the countryside hardly a quarter of Romanian/Moldovan speakers indicated Romanian as their native language. Unofficial results of this census first showed a stronger preference for the name Romanian, however the initial reports were later dismissed by the Institute for Statistics, which led to speculations in
6552-495: The unrecognised state of Transnistria , Moldovan is one of the official languages. However, unlike all other dialects of Romanian, this variety of Moldovan is written in Cyrillic script . Romanian is taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such as Vojvodina in Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary. The Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) has since 1992 organised summer courses in Romanian for language teachers. There are also non-Romanians who study Romanian as
6636-428: The use of Romanian in official government publications, public education and legal contracts. Advertisements as well as other public messages must bear a translation of foreign words, while trade signs and logos shall be written predominantly in Romanian. The Romanian Language Institute (Institutul Limbii Române), established by the Ministry of Education of Romania, promotes Romanian and supports people willing to study
6720-545: The vernacular spoken in this large area and, to a much smaller degree, the influences from native dialects , and in the context of a lessened power of the Roman central authority the language evolved into Common Romanian . This proto-language then came into close contact with the Slavic languages and subsequently divided into Aromanian , Megleno-Romanian , Istro-Romanian , and Daco-Romanian. Due to limited attestation between
6804-533: Was decapitated by the local priest and villagers. The Carniolan scientist Johann Weikhard von Valvasor wrote about Jure Grando Alilović's life and afterlife in his extensive work The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola when he visited Kringa during his travels. This was the first written document on vampires. Grando was also mentioned in writings by Erasmus Francisci and Johann Joseph von Goerres ( La mystique divine, naturelle, et diabolique , Paris 1855), whose story
6888-682: Was much more elaborate, full of fantastic details to make the story more interesting and sensational. In modern times, the Croatian writer Boris Perić has researched the legend and written a book ( The Vampire ) on the story. Striga are mentioned by the Moldavian statesman and soldier Dimitrie Cantemir in his work Descriptio Moldaviae (1714–1716). He thought that the striga were mostly Moldavian and Transylvanian beliefs. However, he associated them with witches or warlocks rather than blood-drinking undead vampires. The book mentions dunking –
6972-478: Was published in Vienna in 1780. Following the annexation of Bessarabia by Russia in 1812, Moldavian was established as an official language in the governmental institutions of Bessarabia , used along with Russian, The publishing works established by Archbishop Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni were able to produce books and liturgical works in Moldavian between 1815 and 1820. Bessarabia during the 1812–1918 era witnessed
7056-478: Was used until the late 19th century. The letter is the oldest testimony of Romanian epistolary style and uses a prevalent lexis of Latin origin. However, dating by watermarks has shown the Hurmuzaki Psalter is a copy from around the turn of the 16th century. The slow process of Romanian establishing itself as an official language, used in the public sphere, in literature and ecclesiastically, began in
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