Romanian Language Day is celebrated in Romania and the Republic of Moldova on August 31st.
The Romanian Language Day has been celebrated on August 31 since 2013, following a legislative initiative, on behalf of all the 28 million people all over the world who speak Romanian. The initiators of the law argued that the importance of the Romanian language should not be diminished by the current globalization trend, since the Romanian language is fundamental to national identity, being a prerequisite for the consolidation of a strong and united society. According to Romania's national poet, Mihai Eminescu, the language is the very flower of Romanians' ethnic soul.
A Romance language, Romanian is the 5th most widely spoken language in terms of the number of speakers, after Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian. 24 million people speak Romanian as their mother tongue. In Romania, Romanian is the official language and mother tongue for more than 90% of the population. Romanian is the mother tongue or spoken language of many people in Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria. It is also spoken in the ethnic Romanian communities in Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland and everywhere in the Romanian Diaspora. Romanian has been an official language in the European Union since January 1, 2007. Also, the Romanian language is one of the 5 languages in which religious services are held at the monasteries on Mount Athos.
At present, there are 50 university courses of Romanian language, culture and civilization taught in 30 countries from Europe, Asia and America, as well as a project initiated by the Romanian Language Institute in 2007, entitled 'Courses of Romanian language, culture and civilization'. The project benefits the Romanian students enrolled in education institutions in Belgium, Italy and Spain. This project has also been implemented in Portugal and Ireland since 2015.
The Republic of Moldova, Romania's ex-Soviet neighbor with a predominantly Romanian-speaking population, also celebrates the Romanian Language Day on August 31. Romanian became an official state language in Moldova in 2013. During the Soviet regime, the population of Moldova was forced to speak the so-called Moldovan language and use the Cyrillic alphabet.
Here is Mariana Vasilache from Radio Chişinău with details: "Celebrating the Romanian Language is closely related to the process of national awakening in the Republic of Moldova, which occurred in late 1980s. The first rights requested by the inhabitants of Bessarabia during the rallies staged at the time were for the Romanian language to be declared an official language and the return to the Latin alphabet. It was the Moldovan writers who started the campaign in favour of using the Latin alphabet for writing in Romanian. Shortly afterwards, the rallies gained unprecedented scope. On August 27, 1989, Chişinău saw the organization of the first great national assembly, which was attended by tens of thousands of people. They asked for the Romanian language to be declared an official language in Moldova and for the adoption of the Latin alphabet."
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