The Romanian Dialect of Moldova: A Study in Language and Politics

For half a century, Soviet linguists tried to drive a wedge between the Romanians of Moldova and their ethnic and linguistic kindred across the river in Romania. Attempts were made to create an independent literary language called ‘Moldavian', which according to Soviet linguistics and their followers was lexically, phonologically, even grammatically distinct from standard Romanian. These attempts failed, but for most of the Soviet period, the Romanian of Moldova.

The present work examines through a series of contemporary essays the history of Soviet language policy in Moldova. Special attentions is paid to the actual dialectal features of Moldovan Romanian, its borrowed lexical stock from Russian and the relationship between the Romanian of Moldova and other languages spoken in the region, such as Bulgarian and Gagauz. A special feature is a series of interviews in the appendices, with both politicians and academicians, including Mircea Snegur, President of Moldova.