| Romanian | |
|---|---|
| Daco-Romanian | |
| limba română | |
| Native to | Romania, Moldova, Transnistria (Disputed region) Minority in: Israel, Serbia, Ukraine, Hungary, diaspora in Italy, Spain, Scotland, Portugal and other parts of Western Europe |
Native speakers | 24 million (2007) Second language: 4 million |
Early form | |
| Latin (Romanian alphabet) Romanian Braille Cyrillic Romanian Cyrillic alphabet | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Romania Moldova Vojvodina  European Union |
Recognised minority language in | |
| Regulated by | Academia Română Academy of Sciences of Moldova |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | ro |
| ISO 639-2 | rum (B) ron (T) |
| ISO 639-3 | ron |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAD-c (varieties: 51-AAD-ca to -ck) |
 Blue: region where Romanian is the dominant language. Green: areas with a notable minority of Romanian speakers. | |
The Romanian language is a Romance language, meaning it comes from Latin like French, Spanish and Italian. It has 66% Latin-based words and around 20-25% Slavic-based words. The rest are newer and come from Dacian, Turkish, Greek, or English. There are about 28 million speakers: 24 million who speak it as their mother tongue and 4 million who have learned it as their second language.
Romanian is also the most spoken language in Moldova, which is northeast of Romania. It is spoken there with some differences limited to phonetics and vocabulary. It used to be officially referred to in Moldova as the Moldovan language.
