Misplaced Pages

Vlach language in Serbia

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Iadrian yu (talk | contribs) at 13:34, 23 April 2013 (Reverted 3 edits by Ljuboni (talk) to last revision by Strike Eagle. (TW)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 13:34, 23 April 2013 by Iadrian yu (talk | contribs) (Reverted 3 edits by Ljuboni (talk) to last revision by Strike Eagle. (TW))(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Vlach language in Serbia" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Eastern Romance languages
Vulgar Latin language
Substratum
Thraco-Roman culture
Romanian
Aromanian
Megleno-Romanian
Istro-Romanian
Major varieties (graiuri) of the Romanian language
Blue: Southern varieties
Red: Northern varieties

Vlach, Romanian, or Timok Romanian (autoglossonym: limba română, meaning "language of Romans", rumâneşte / rumâneşce, Template:Lang-ro; Template:Lang-sr) are the terms used to designate the Romanian varieties spoken by the Vlachs in 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 hadn't assigned it a separate language code in the ISO 639 standard. In the 2002 census, 40,054 people in Serbia declared themselves ethnic Vlachs and 54,818 people declared themselves native speakers of the Vlach language.

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, Romanian 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. The declared Vlach speakers are mostly concentrated in eastern Serbia, mainly in the Timočka Krajina region and adjacent areas, while declared Romanian speakers are mostly concentrated in Vojvodina.

According to some sources in the media (among others BBC, ProTV and Gardianul), Serbia recognised Romanian as the native language of the Vlachs, through the act of confirmation of the National Council of the Vlach National Minority in August 2007.

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

Features

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Its two main variants, Ungurean and Țăran, are subordonated forms of the Romanian varieties spoken in Banat and Oltenia, 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 for 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,
  • 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 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 and Radio Pomoravlje broadcasting programme in the Romanian (Vlach) language.

Maps

  • The Romanian vocabulary in Central Serbia. Researches made by Gustav Weigand:
  • The extent of Romanian The extent of Romanian
  • The extent of Banatian dialect in central Serbia The extent of Banatian dialect in central Serbia

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/romanian/news/story/2007/08/070817_vlahi_serbia_minoritate.shtml
  2. Website of the Federaţia Rumânilor din Serbie
  3. Gustav Weigand, Linguistischer Atlas des dacorumänischen Sprachgebiets, 1909, Leipzig: Barth
  4. Petru Neiescu, Eugen Beltechi, Nicolae Mocanu, Atlas lingvistic al regiunii Valea Timocului – Contribuţii la atlasul lingvistic al graiurilor româneşti dintre Morava, Dunăre şi Timoc, Cluj-Napoca, 2006
  5. Slavoljub Gacović, Od Rimljana i latinskog do Rumuna Timočana i rumunskog, Nacionalni savet vlaške nacionalne manjine, Bor, 2008
  6. ^ Danas "Svedeni smo na vlaško kolo", 19 March 2007
  7. ^ "Vlachs of Serbia recognised as a national minority" ("Vlahii din Serbia recunoscuţi ca minoritate naţională"), published by BBC on 17 August 2007: "Vlachs were finally recognised as a national minority and the Romanian language was accepted as their native language"
  8. Ştirile ProTV: "Romanian language recognised as native language in Serbia" ("Limba română recunoscută drept limbă maternă în Serbia"], news report made by Ştirile ProTV on 19 August 2007
  9. "Serbia recognised that the Vlachs of Timoc speak Romanian" ("Serbia a recunoscut că «vlahii» din Timoc vorbesc româneşte"), published in Gardianul, 3 August 2007
  10. Ziua.net
  11. Interview with Predrag Balašević, president of the Romanian/Vlach Democratic Party of Serbia: "We all know that we call ourselves in Romanian Romanians and in Serbian Vlachs."
  12. Website of the Consiliul Naţional al Minorităţii Naţionale Rumâne din Serbia
Romance languages (classification)
Major branches
Eastern
Italo-
Dalmatian
Central
Southern
Others
Western
Gallo-Italic
Gallo-
Romance
Langues
d'oïl
Ibero-
Romance

(West
Iberian
)
Asturleonese
Galician–Portuguese
Castilian
Pyrenean–Mozarabic
Others
  • Barranquenho (mixed Portuguese–Spanish)
  • Caló (mixed Romani–Ibero- and Occitano-Romance)
Occitano-
Romance
Rhaeto-
Romance
Others
Others
Reconstructed
Romanian language
Subdialects
Argots and speech forms
Dialects/related languages
Linguistics
Periods of historic evolutionClassical LatinVulgar LatinCommon RomanianOld RomanianRe-latinizationModern Romanian
Written form
Institutions and movements
Language contact
Speech communities
Others

Categories:
Vlach language in Serbia Add topic