An Indo-European language and a member of the Romance branch, spoken by c. 23 million people, mainly in the Republic of Romania, where it is the official language, as well as in nearby parts of Yugoslavia (notably in Voivodina, where it also has official status), Bulgaria, Moldova, Greece and Albania, and a substantial number of immigrants in Israel, the USA, Canada, Australia and other countries.
The earliest written traces date form the late 15th century. Originally spelt in the Cyrillic alphabet, the language adopted the Latin alphabet only in the late 19th century. It consists of 28 characters. Although derived from the Low Latin, its geographical separation from the other Romance languages has made Romanian very different, with many Slavic loan words and idiosyncratic grammatical features. The main dialect division of modern Romanian is between Muntenian in the south and Moldavian in the north and north-east. The modern literary language is based on Muntenian usage.
CLASSIFICATION = Indo-European family , SCRIPT = Latin
