Map of Balkans with regions inhabited by Romanians/Vlachs highlighted

The Eastern Romance languages, sometimes known as the Vlach languages, are a group of Romance languages that developed in Southeastern Europe from the local eastern variant of Vulgar Latin. Ethnic map of regions inhabited by Romanians/Vlachs. ... Vlachs (also called Wlachs, Wallachs, Olahs) are the Romanized population in Central and Eastern Europe, including Romanians, Aromanians, Istro-Romanians and Megleno-Romanians, but since the creation of the Romanian state, this term was mostly used for the Vlachs living south of the Danube river. ... Romance languages in the world: Blue – French; Green – Spanish; Orange – Portuguese; Yellow – Italian; Red – Romanian The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... The Balkans is the historic and geographic name used to describe southeastern Europe (see the Definitions and boundaries section below). ... Vulgar Latin, as in this political engraving at Pompeii, was the language of the ordinary people of the Roman Empire, distinct from the Classical Latin of literature. ...

History

From Vulgar Latin, several hundreds of years afterward, a language called Proto-Romanian was developed, which had already most of the features of modern Romanian. It is generally considered that sometime between 800 and 1,200 years ago, due to the foreign invasions (see Romania in the Dark Ages) and the migration of Vlach shepherds (see Vlachs#Wallachia), Proto-Romanian split into four separate languages: Daco-Romanian (today's Romanian), Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian. Common Romanian (also known as Proto-Romanian) is a hypothetical language considered to have been spoken by the Romanians after the breakdown of the Roman Empire and before it was broken into modern Balkan Romance languages and dialects: Romanian Aromanian Megleno-Romanian Istro-Romanian The place where this language was... The Dark Ages in Romania refer to the period starting with the withdrawal of the Roman administration and ending roughly in the 11th century - with the last phase of the Age of Migrations. ... White = Romanians Green = Istro-Romanians Yellow = Aromanians Orange = Megleno-Romanians Vlachs (also called Wallachians, Wlachs, Wallachs, Olahs or Ulahs) is a blanket term covering several modern Latin peoples descending from the Latinised population in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. ... Common Romanian (also known as Proto-Romanian) is a hypothetical language considered to have been spoken by the Romanians after the breakdown of the Roman Empire and before it was broken into modern Balkan Romance languages and dialects: Romanian Aromanian Megleno-Romanian Istro-Romanian The place where this language was... The Romanians (români in present-day Romanian and rumâni in historical contexts) are an ethnic group; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania and of Moldova (where they are also called Moldovans, a disputed term); each of these countries also have other significant ethnic minorities, and the Romanians... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Arvantovlaxika. ... Megleno-Romanian (known as Vlaheshte by speakers and Moglenitic, Meglenitic or Megleno-Romanian by non-speakers) is a Romance language, similar to Aromanian, spoken in the Moglená region, located in the Kilkis and Serres prefectures in Macedonia, Greece, as well as in the Republic of Macedonia. ... Istro-Romanian is a Romance language used in a few villages in the peninsula of Istria, on the northern part of the Adriatic Sea, in Croatia. ...

In addition, in the Soviet Union the Moldovan language was officially introduced, to draw a distinction between the Romanian and Moldovan nations, an attempt that had eventually failed. ^{[citation needed]} Moldovan is the official name for the Romanian language in the Republic of Moldova and in the territory of Transnistria. ...

Common features

Main article: Proto-Romanian

This group was one of the earliest to be isolated. As such, they contain a few words which were replaced with Germanic borrowings in Western Romance languages, for example, the word for white is derived from Latin "albus" instead of Germanic "blank". Common Romanian (also known as Proto-Romanian) is a hypothetical language considered to have been spoken by the Romanians after the breakdown of the Roman Empire and before it was broken into modern Balkan Romance languages and dialects: Romanian Aromanian Megleno-Romanian Istro-Romanian The place where this language was...

They also share a few sound changes with the western Romance languages: some with Italian, such as [kl] > [kj] (Lat. clarus > Rom. chiar, Ital. chiaro) and also a few with Dalmatian, such as [gn] > [mn] (Lat. cognatus > Rom. cumnat, Dalm. comnut). However, most of them are original, see: Latin to Romanian sound changes. Dalmatian is an extinct Romance language formerly spoken along the Dalmatian coast of Croatia and as far south as Kotor in Montenegro. ... This article presents the sound changes that happened from Latin to Romanian. ...

The languages that are part of this group have some features that differentiate them from the other Romance languages, notable being the grammatical features shared within the Balkan linguistic union as well as some semantic peculiarities, such as lume ("world") being derived from Latin lumen ("light"), inimă ("heart") being derived from Latin anima ("soul"), etc. Balkan linguistic union or Balkansprachbund is a name given to the similarities in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology found in the languages of the Balkans, which belong to various Indo-European branches, such as Albanian, Greek, Romance and Slavic. ...

They also contain a Paleo-Balkanic substrate of a few hundreds of words, shared with Albanian (considered to be of Dacian origin) and 70 early Slavic borrowings, but the Hungarian language words are found only in Romanian and Istro-Romanian. The Eastern Romance languages contain around 300 words considered by many linguists to be of substratum origin [1]. Including place-names and river-names, and most of the forms labelled as being of unknown etymology, the number of the substratum elements in Eastern Romance may surpass 500 basic roots. ...

Languages

• Romanian (known officially as Moldovan in the Republic of Moldova)
• Aromanian
• Megleno-Romanian
• Istro-Romanian

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Arvantovlaxika. ... Megleno-Romanian (known as Vlaheshte by speakers and Moglenitic, Meglenitic or Megleno-Romanian by non-speakers) is a Romance language, similar to Aromanian, spoken in the Moglená region, located in the Kilkis and Serres prefectures in Macedonia, Greece, as well as in the Republic of Macedonia. ... Istro-Romanian is a Romance language used in a few villages in the peninsula of Istria, on the northern part of the Adriatic Sea, in Croatia. ...

See also

• Romanian substratum words