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 in the Republic of Macedonia, but large Aromanian communities are also found in: Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro as well as
in Romania which makes an insignificant population, which migrated 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.
It is generally considered that Aromanian dialects split from the main Romanian language around 1200 years ago. It contains
the same common words with Albanian as Romanian (considered
to be of Dacian origin) and 70 early Slavic borrowings, but no Hungarian language words.
Greek influences are much stronger 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 great town
of Moscopole, also known as the "Aromanian Jerusalem") and the Gramustean dialect
(from the Gramostea region).
External links
|
