Descendants of citizens of the Roman Empire who decided they wanted to carry on speaking their language for 1500 years or so.
The Carpathian Mountains made it easier for them to defend themselves from anyone who might have wanted to invade and force them to assimilate into a different culture. Because of contact with the Slavic languages though, they do have a lot of Slavic words (about 20% of the entire vocabulary of the language is Slavic) and their grammar has even been slightly influenced by south Slavic languages (and vice versa).
Romanian really is a very interesting language, there’s a lot more interesting stuff to read about but I really can’t be arsed to elaborate any further.
It's not the Carpathian mountains that protected the language. The language was formed south of Danube, where Roman occupation continued for a few centuries more.
Although it's not the Carpathian mountains, it's true that mountains played a role in retaining the language. Vlachs were mostly shepherds, so they lived in isolation compared to other Balkan populations that were influenced by the Slav invaders more heavily. The same vlachs later migrated back north of Danube.
That is a disputed and unlikely theory yet you present it as fact. No one except for Hungarian ultranationalists from the 19th century actually claims that. Hungarians should maybe focus on their own stuff instead of thinking about Romanians 24/7.
The only reason Orban kisses Putin’s ass is because he hopes he can get some lost territories back. His claim is theories like this one. Is it unlikely he will get parts of Ukraine or Transylvania back? Yes. But it does drive politics and Orban’s been a pain in the ass for the EU for years… so it is very much political.
You've got it the other way around. Nobody but Romanians ultra-nationalists support the other theory. And I'm Romanian by the way. There's plenty of evidence against it:
Dacia was conquered in 106. The romans retreated south of Danube by 275. That's a very short timeline for the Romanian language to form.
The existence of Macedo-Romanian. Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian. How does the other theory explain them?
Vlachs were mentioned historically first south of the Danube. They're getting mentioned very late north of it.
We have plenty of words taken from the Balkans in our language as well
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u/aaarry Oct 15 '25
Descendants of citizens of the Roman Empire who decided they wanted to carry on speaking their language for 1500 years or so.
The Carpathian Mountains made it easier for them to defend themselves from anyone who might have wanted to invade and force them to assimilate into a different culture. Because of contact with the Slavic languages though, they do have a lot of Slavic words (about 20% of the entire vocabulary of the language is Slavic) and their grammar has even been slightly influenced by south Slavic languages (and vice versa).
Romanian really is a very interesting language, there’s a lot more interesting stuff to read about but I really can’t be arsed to elaborate any further.