ABSTRACT
The relative neglect of Balkan Romance by linguists in favour of the Western Romance languages is attributable in part to the geographical isolation of the country where most Rumanian speakers live. Rumania has a population of over 22 million, of which some 90 per cent have Rumanian as their first language. A further 2½ million speakers constitute about 60 per cent of the population of Moldova. Including speakers in other neighbouring countries brings the total number of speakers to about 23½ million. This failure of linguistic and national borders to coincide reflects the fluid political history of the Balkans. Rumania itself is host to several minority language groups, including Germanspeaking Saxons (though recent emigration to Germany has reduced their number from over half a million to under 50,000) and Hungarians (about one and a half million). Both these minorities are concentrated in Transylvania, the presence of so many Hungarian speakers resulting from the acquisition by Rumania of the province from Hungary at the end of the First World War. A number of features at all linguistic levels serve to highlight the differences between
Rumanian and the Western Romance languages, many being attributable to its membership of the Balkan Sprachbund. In each of the four main sections which follow, reference will be made to such features in describing the divergence of Rumanian from mainstream Romance evolution. The form of Balkan Romance to be discussed is Daco-Rumanian, so named because
it is associated with the Roman province of Dacia, on the north bank of the lower Danube (part of the Empire for a relatively short period from the first decade of the second century to AD 271). The wider term Balkan Romance includes three other varieties: Arumanian, spoken in northern Greece, Albania, Serbia and Macedonia; MeglenoRumanian, spoken in a small area to the north of Salonika; Istro-Rumanian, spoken in the Istrian peninsula of Croatia. All four varieties are deemed to have a common origin, with the initial split dating from the second half of the first millennium. Because the earliest extant Rumanian texts date from as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, the history of Balkan Romance involves a great deal of speculation (compare the dates of early extant texts for Old French).
