Coleșă or mămăligă, baraboi or cartofi or picioici (all words for polenta or potatoes), different accents or a certain fluency of speech are already labels of the area we come from. And let us not forget the perennial amazement of those who hear Transylvanians say they are “buying slippers” or “I’m leaving right away… I’m just putting on my slippers” (an idiom for getting ready to go). We have probably made you smile already, because you may have a Transylvanian friend with whom the mystery of the “slippers” has been discussed endlessly.
Are we talking about dialects of the Romanian language, or about regional speech varieties? A short clarification can be found below.
Most Romanian-language linguists consider that there are four dialects of Romanian: Daco-Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian.
The Romanian language was formed both north and south of the lower Danube, before the arrival of the Slavic tribes in the area. The Romanian spoken north of the Danube, in Romania and the Republic of Moldova, is often called Daco-Romanian, to distinguish it from the three other Eastern Romance languages. It developed into contemporary Romanian, the state language of Romania.
The graduate philologists and authorized translators at Syncro Translation Services help us clarify what dialects are.
Aromanian, or Macedo-Romanian, we learn, is spoken over relatively wide areas of Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania, where there are important Aromanian communities.
Megleno-Romanian is spoken over a relatively small area in the Meglen region of the southern Balkan Peninsula.
Istro-Romanian is spoken in a few villages in the north-east of the Istrian peninsula in Croatia, an area geographically much closer to Italy than to Romania.
The philologists of the Syncro Translation Services translation agency give us an example of what a dialect is.
For instance, if we go to an Aromanian community, we can understand the locals in simple everyday language and recognize many similar words, in popular forms or “somewhat as in fairy tales”, because that dialect did not follow the same linguistic evolution. What matters is that we can understand each other on the basis of very common vocabulary.
Regional speech varieties, by contrast, are the forms in which Romanian is used in certain geographic areas of the country. The varieties we are talking about on Romanian territory derive from the Daco-Romanian dialect, which has the largest number of speakers (over 25 million) and is the only one that has become a literary language with a supra-regional norm and an official language.
So the “way of speaking” in different parts of the country is scientifically called a “regional variety” (grai), not a dialect. Each variety includes various regionalisms and idiomatic expressions, as well as a specific accent or rhythm of speech.
Linguists have divided Romanian into two groups or types of varieties: northern, including Moldavian, and southern, or Muntenian, which in turn have sub-varieties. For example: Moldavian, Muntenian, Banat, Crișana and Maramureș speech, the Oltenian variety, the Oaș variety, etc.
We can see how many secrets and hiding places a language has. That is why the most skilful translations are best supervised by native translators too, as in the Syncro project teams. A project team made up of native translators and specialized translators is the key to a refined, sophisticated translation. A language vibrates and lives through its native speakers and becomes an international working tool through authorized, specialized translators.