Moldavian dialect


The Moldavian dialect is one of several dialects of the Romanian language. It is spoken across the approximate area of the historical region of Moldavia, now split between the Republic of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. The Moldavian dialect is one of the main regional varieties of the Daco-Romanian grouping of dialects, with consistent phonetic, lexical, and syntactic features that distinguish it from other dialects, including the Wallachian variety upon which the modern Romanian literary standard is based. Though largely mutually intelligible with other Romanian dialects, Moldavian retains both archaic elements and regional innovations that may or may not be shared with other dialects.
The Moldavian dialect can be considered a vernacular or 'speech' when contrasted with a standardized variety of the language existing within a particular social and economic context. In this case, Moldavian has increasingly approached such a classification since the promotion of the Wallachian dialect as the standard variety of formal and literary Romanian, leading to a reduction of urban Moldavian varieties to primarily informal forms, and, for some speakers, to the level of merely an accent. However, Moldavian has historically evolved to the point of being a dialect, hence its present classification, and would remain that way or diverge more otherwise. This dialect has not been consistently written, except in specific historical and artistic contexts. In this instance, the Romanian orthography is generally used, or the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet.

Classification

The Moldavian dialect is the representative of the northern grouping of Daco-Romanian dialects and has influenced the Romanian spoken over large areas of Transylvania. The name of the dialect reflects the historical region of Moldavia, which encompasses regions including and beyond the Republic of Moldova.
While the Moldavian dialect had been considered mostly as equal as the other dialects for much of its history, the rise of a standardized literary Romanian, based on the Wallachian variety with Latin neologisms, first promoted with the rise of Romanian nationalism in the 19th century and later institutionalized, gradually reduced the prestige of regional varieties like Moldavian in formal and public contexts. Writers from the Moldavian region since the 16th century had been heavily influenced by the liturgical language of the time, which was Church Slavonic, and a mix of Greek and Latin as well as regional vernaculars or dialects. Standardization by the 20th century led to fluctuating but increasing levels of code-switching, particularly in urban centers such as Chișinău, where speakers often shift between the regional dialect and the standard language depending on formality and perceived social correctness. Over time, this has contributed to the perception of Moldavian as an informal 'speech' or accent, especially among younger and urban populations. Nonetheless, the dialect preserves a certain structure which is internally consistent, and functions like any other dialect that is mostly based in a rural environment. Newer or more scientific vocabulary usually keeps the original standard Romanian pronunciation, the process functioning in a similar way to 19th century learned borrowings from Latin.
The Moldavian dialect is not synonymous with the Moldovan language, which had once been an attempt to standardize the Moldavian dialect, though by the late 80s could be considered simply a renaming of the standard Romanian language, also found in Bucharest. The dialect itself has never been successfully standardized in its existence and has almost never been found in academic or administrative settings.
The Moldavian and the Wallachian dialects are the only two that have been consistently identified and recognized by linguists. They are clearly distinct in dialect classifications made by Heimann Tiktin, Mozes Gaster, Gustav Weigand, Sextil Pușcariu, Sever Pop, Emil Petrovici, Romulus Todoran, Ion Coteanu, Alexandru Philippide, Iorgu Iordan, Emanuel Vasiliu, and others, whereas the other dialects have been considerably more controversial and difficult to classify due to unclear boundaries and shifting social contexts.
The border between Romania and the Republic of Moldova does not correspond to any significant isoglosses to justify a dialectal division; phonology and morphology are identical across the border, whereas lexical differences are minimal. In fact, larger differences in phonology can be found between the northern and southern regions of the Republic of Moldova.

Geographic distribution

The Moldavian dialect is spoken in the northeastern part of Romania, the Republic of Moldova, and small areas of Ukraine. It is the only Romance variety spoken east of the Eastern Carpathians. In detail, its distribution area covers the following administrative or historical regions:
Transitional varieties of the Moldavian dialect are found in areas of contact with the other dialects. As such, Moldavian features often occur outside the historical Moldavia: in northern Dobruja, in northeastern Muntenia, and in north-east Transylvania.

Phonology

The soft alveolar consonants and the palatal consonants are considered to be allophones of one another, with the former being realised at the end of words. The soft labial consonants and the palatal consonants would be identical, depending on the region the dialect is spoken in and the phonological context.
There are also the standard Romanian diphthongs, though these are largely undifferentiated from the equivalent vowel-glide combinations.

Particularities

Phonetic features

The Moldavian dialect has the following phonetic particularities that contrast it with the other Romanian dialects:
;Consonants
The dialect has a tendency to innovate and amplify more changes compared to standard Romanian, like heavy palatalization and labialization, simplifying affricates, as well as a trend of more frequent lenition and cluster simplification, while still retaining some archaic qualities.
  • The postalveolar affricates become the fricatives : for standard ceapă, cină, gene. As a consequence, the affricate and the fricative merge into the latter: for joc, sânĝe. However, the Atlasul lingvistic român and other field works record examples of pronunciations showing that, while the merger covers most of the dialect area, it is not systematic and sometimes found in free variation. In parts of the south-western and north-eastern Moldova the distinction is preserved.
  • After the sibilants , a vowel shift occurs that changes into, into, and into : for sĕmn, sîngur, séră, ḑer, ḑid, ḑémă, șàle, rășină, jale, țes, țeapăn, reci. In the same phonetic contexts, the phoneme, which is generally responsible for indicating the plural in nouns and adjectives or the second person in verbs, is no longer realized: . As a consequence, the number distinction is completely lost in some nouns and adjectives, such as moș, leneș, colț, ursuz.
  • The labials receive a palatalized pronunciation when followed by front vowels and become, respectively: for copil, bine, miel. So, in the Moldavian dialect, copil becomes cochil and sounds like or , piept becomes "chept" or "chiapt" or "cheapt", "piatră" becomes "chetră", "Petre" becomes "Chetre", "pilos" becomes "chilos", "pili" becomes "chili", "piuar" becomes "chiuar", "pitic" becomes "chitic", "pirandă" becomes "chirandă", "pizdă" becomes "chizdă", "piper" becomes "chiper". It corresponds with Aromanian where Slavic borrowing *kopylъ became "cochil", Latin "pectus" became "cheptu", Latin "petra" became "cheatrã".
  • Similarly, the palatalization of the labio-dentals occurs, but in two different ways. In the southern half of the dialect area they become, respectively, whereas in the northern half they become : for fierbe, vițel.
  • All non-palatal consonants become labialized before the vowel, especially in monosyllabic words: for boli, zori.
  • The dentals are left unchanged before :. However, there is a tendency for affrication to occur due to the frequent palatalization of stop consonants before front vowels.
  • The voiceless plosives are more frequently becoming unreleased at the end of utterances and in stop clusters across word boundaries and in middle positions.
  • The affricate occurs, as in, as in the Banat dialect, the Maramureș dialect and the Aromanian language, whereas it evolved to in the Wallachian dialect, the Criș dialect, and standard Romanian: for zic.
  • In the northern part, followed by changes into : holbură, hulpe, hultan.
;Vowels
The dialect tends to simplify and reduce unstressed vowels and diphthongs, much like in European Portuguese. Vowel hiatus is also restricted by adding a glide between conflicting vowels. New vowel-glide sequences also come about from the frequent palatalization and labialization. There can be considerable syncopation in polysyllabic words.
  • After the labial, changes into and into : for lovesc, să lovească.
  • Word-final becomes : for mamă, casă. Sometimes can become unvoiced, when there is strong stress placed on the first syllable, and it may labialize the preceding consonant.
  • Unstressed closes to : for acoperit.
  • The diphthong is often realized as : for soare, boală.
  • The diphthong becomes for almost all speakers, and most do not distinguish between the two.
  • Unstressed in middle and final positions closes to : for lapte, desfac.
  • In the northern areas, the vowel immediately before the stress opens to : for măgar, bătrân, tăcut, pădure.
  • The diphthong becomes : for băiat, încuiat.
  • Etymologic is preserved in the words for câine, mâine, mâini, pâine.
  • The diphthong in final positions becomes the monophthong : for avea, spunea.
  • Asyllabic versions of and occur in word-final positions: for pădurar, cojocar.