ABSTRACT
Romanian – also sometimes termed Rumanian – belongs to the Italic branch of the Indo-European family. It is directly descended from spoken or vulgar Latin, and in this sense is a sister language to French, Spanish, Italian and the other Romance languages. However, its eastern location and long development in isolation from its (Western Romance) relatives have given this sole representative of the Eastern Romance sub-group its own distinctive characteristics, mainly in grammatical structure and in its vocabulary, which shows appreciable Slavonic influence. The language is spoken by at least 25 million people in Romania, while 2.5 million speak the morphologically identical, phonologically slightly divergent form known as Moldovan in the neighbouring state of Moldova. Other forms of Romanian, spoken by small numbers of people, are Aromanian in Greece and Albania, Megleno-Romanian in the southern border areas and Istro-Romanian in Istria.
