Useful Romanian Words & Phrases for Travellers

Check out our list of essential basic Romanian words and phrases you need to learn, these are also easier than you might think to pick up and remember.

History of the Romanian Language

Despite its location as a country nestled in Eastern Europe, the Romanian language is a Romance language most closely related to French, Italian, Latin and Spanish.

In fact, it’s the only Romance language spoken in Eastern Europe (but that’s not to say that Romanian hasn’t, at least in part, been influenced by its Slavic language speaking neighbours.)

Today, the language is spoken by 24-26 million people, primarily based in Romania and Moldova.

Romanian is a direct descendant of the Vulgar Latin language, the primary language of the Roman empire around 2000 years ago. The existence of a Romance language in Romania can be traced back to the Dacians, who also lived around two millennia ago.

Known as Dacia in the Roman period, the land was actually taken over by the Romans from the year 106 AD and they had much impact on the land, as well as the people.

As a result, the Romanian language is estimated to be around 1700 years old. However, particularly interesting to note is that prior to 1860, Romanian was written in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet (which was in turn based on the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet).

In the late 19th-Century, changing fashions meant a trend towards the Latin alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet was replaced with the Latin alphabet.