Romanian: A Linguistic Mish-Mash Like English

My cousin flew into Washington DC this week for a business trip. He brought his wonderful girlfriend with him, and the three of us met up for dinner on Sunday. My Cousin's girlfriend, Diana, is of Romanian heritage; both of her parents left Romania after the overthrow of Romania's Communist Dictator in 1989. She is a heritage speaker of Romanian and I enjoy asking her about Romanian vocabulary. But at dinner on Sunday I got a little bit carried away in my questioning and went a little bit too into detail for her to follow: "How much Slavic influence do you notice in Romanian." She, not having much knowledge of linguistics or a Slavic language responded to me by saying, "None, its a romance language."

What Diana didn't realize is that yes, Romanian is, without doubt, a Romance Language, closely related to Italian, French, and Spanish, but unlike the other three languages which have developed away from Vulgar Latin in contact with one another, Romanian was isolated from the Romance Language Family and has adopted a flair all in its own both by adopting characteristics of the languages it is surrounded by and also by maintaining features of Latin which disappeared in Western Romance Languages. 

For example, Romanian has maintained three noun cases from the Latin grammatical case system. Modern Romanian maintains a dative, vocative, and nominative case whereas all other modern Romance Languages have lost this feature that was present in Latin. Additionally, Romanian maintains three grammatical cases (Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter) just like Latin. Romanian also maintains a large amount of Latin based vocabulary, and here are some examples I was able to find through Google Translate: 

English:       Romanian:      Spanish:      Latin:

Red              Rosu               Roja             Rubrum

House          Casa               Casa             Casa (or Domum)

Hand           Mana              Mano            Manibus

Language    Limba            Lengua          Lingua

Although Romanian maintains a lot of features from its Romance roots, there is also a great deal of borrowed vocabulary from the Slavic Languages which nearly surround Romania with Romanian. The word for 'yes' in Romanian is 'da' as it is in Russian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, and Polish. The Romanian word for 'car' is 'mashina' just as it is in Russian and the Romanian word for 'coat' is 'palt' which is rather similar to the Russian word 'Palto.' A lot of Romanians most sophisticated vocabulary stems from a Slavic source, insinuating the elevated status that speakers of Slavic languages must have had over Romanian speakers. In fact, the cross between Slavic and Romance features in Romanian is very reminiscent of English, a Germanic language that has adopted a lot of its sophisticated vocabulary from a Latin (French) source. It also reminds me of Russian, a language that has plenty of French and German influences on its sophisticated vocabulary. 

Evidently, Romania has borrowed a lot from its Slavic neighbors, making Romanian a very interesting cross between two the Europes most prominent language families. It is a perfect example of how languages can change over time based on contact with other groups of people.