Aromanian (also known as Macedo-romanian, Vlach, in Aromanian: Armăneashce or Vlăheshte) is a language in the eastern group of the Romance languages, spoken in the Balkans. It was formed after the Romanization of the Balkans and it is closely related to Romanian, being considered to be either a Romanian dialect or a separate language.

Geographic distribution

The language and the Aromanian people are officially recognized as a minority in the Republic of Macedonia, but large Aromanian communities are also found in: Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro as well as in Romania (some Aromanians having migrated there from the Balkans, after the destruction of the Aromanian settlements in Moscopole and Gramoste).

History

The language is similar to Romanian, but it does exhibit some differences, especially in vocabulary. There are fewer Slavic words in Aromanian vocabulary than in Romanian.

It is generally considered that sometime between 1200 and 800 years ago, Latin Balcanicum (the Vulgar Latin spoken in the Balcan provinces of the Roman Empire) was split into four languages: Daco-Romanian (today's Romanian), Aromanian, Istro-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian.They all contain the same common words with Albanian (considered to be of Dacian origin) and 70 early Slavic borrowings, but no Hungarian language words.

Greek influences are much stronger in Aromanian than in other East Romance languages, especially because Aromanian used Greek words to coin new words (neologisms), while Romanian based most of its neologisms on Italian and French.

Also, with the coming of the Turks in the Balkans, Aromanian received some Turkish words as well, getting its current shape.

Still the lexical composition remains mainly Romance. Just as in Romanian, the morphology is rather different from other descendants of Latin. For example, the article is appended to the end of the word, and both definite and indefinite articles can be declined. Nouns have common (or neuter) gender in addition to masculine and feminine genders. On the other hand, the sequence of tenses is absolutely absent.

Dialects

There are two major Aromanian dialects which are named after two respective places: the Moscopole dialect (from the town of Moscopole, also known as the "Aromanian Jerusalem") and the Gramustean dialect (from the Gramostea /Grammos region).

References

• Capidan, Theodor. Aromânii, dialectul Aromân, Academia Română, Studii şi cercetării, XX 1932.
• Rosetti, Alexandru. Istoria limbii române, 2 vols., Bucharest, 1965-1969.

External links

• Ethnologue report for Aromanian