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Romanian language in Serbia

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Map of the municipalities of Serbia where either Romanian or "Vlach" was declared as native language in the 2002 Serbian census.
  1–5%
  5–10%
  10–15%
  15–25%
  25–35%
  over 35%

The Romanian language is widely spoken in Serbia. This country hosts large native Romanian-speaking populations, which can be divided into the ethnic Romanians in the autonomous region of Vojvodina and the Vlachs of the Timok Valley, a geographical region in Central Serbia. The former speak the Banat Romanian dialect, identify as Romanians and have full rights within the autonomous region. In fact, Romanian is one of the six officially recognized languages of Vojvodina. On the other hand, the Vlachs speak archaic varieties of the Banat and Oltenian dialects, but they do not identify as Romanians and their language is also not recognized as Romanian within Serbia. A "Vlach language" has gone under attempted standardization in the country, which would go along with a Cyrillic alphabet for the Vlachs. This has been criticized in Romania, and attempts to bring Romanian-language resources and education to the Timok Vlachs have been blocked by the Serbian authorities.

Vojvodina

Ethnic composition of Vojvodina showing areas with a Romanian ethnic majority in red

Article 10 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia (2006) stipulates that in the Republic of Serbia the Serbian language and the Cyrillic script shall be officially used. In addition to that, the provision in Article 10 determines that in the regions of the Republic of Serbia inhabited by national minorities, their own languages and scripts shall be officially used as well, in the manner established by law.

Article 6 of the Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (published in the "Official Gazette of APV") determines that, together with the Serbo-Croat language and the Cyrillic script, and the Latin script as stipulated by the law, the Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian and Rusyn languages and their scripts, as well as languages and scripts of other nationalities, shall simultaneously be officially used in the work of the bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in the manner established by the law. The bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are: the Assembly, the Executive Council and the Provincial administrative bodies.[1]

The National Council of the Romanian National Minority has a department that attends to the analysis and promotion of the official use of the Romanian language.

Among others, decisions and laws established by the Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, bulletins and publications of the Assembly and the Executive Council, as well as other acts of provincial interest issued by the authorities of the Republic of Serbia must all be translated in Romanian. Also sessions of the Assembly are simultaneous interpreted in Romanian.[2] The Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities, through its sections and departments, collects and analyses data regarding the exercise of the rights of the national minorities in the domains of culture, education, information, the official use of the languages and the alphabets as well as it watches the orderliness of the laws that stipulates this. The Secretariat also prepares materials that are published in the "Official Gazette of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina", in the Serbian language and in the languages of national minorities that are in official use in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.[3] The Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities also sends Romanian judicial interprets to the district courts in Novi Sad and Pančevo.[4]

At the local level, the Romanian language and script are officially used in 8 municipalities: Alibunar, Bela Crkva, Žitište, Zrenjanin, Kovačica, Kovin, Plandište and Sečanj. In the municipality of Vršac, Romanian is also official in the villages with ethnic Romanian majority: Vojvodinci (Romanian: Voivodiț), Markovac (Romanian: Marcovăț), Straža (Romanian: Straja), Mali Žam (Romanian: Jamu Mic), Malo Središte (Romanian: Srediștea Mică), Mesić (Romanian: Mesici), Jablanka (Romanian: Jablanka), Sočica (Romanian: Sălcița), Ritiševo (Romanian: Râtișor), Orešac (Romanian: Oreșaț) and Kuštilj (Romanian: Coștei).[5]

The non-governmental organisation "Municipal parliament the "free" city of Vršac" (Romanian: Parlamentul orășenesc orașul "liber" Vârșeț) started a project aimed to encourage the public use of the Romanian language as an official language. The campaign is included in the program "Minority Rights in Practice in South Eastern Europe", initiated together by the King Baudouin Foundation, Open Society Found Belgrade, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Citizen's Initiatives.

In the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1.45% citizens of Vojvodina declared Romanian as their mother tongue (barely 0.1% of the world's Romanophones).

In religious education and service

A church in Vojvodina where religious service is performed in the Romanian language (Alibunar).

In Vojvodina there are 40 Romanian historical parishes, with 42 priests,[6] under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Orthodox Eparchy "Dacia Felix" based in Vršac and headed by Daniil Partoşanul, vicar bishop of the Archdiocese of Timişoara.

Starting 2006, religion in the Romanian language is taught in the state schools in Serbia. Two new textbooks for the first and the second grade were published for the students attending religion in the Romanian language. The textbooks were approved by the Commission of the Government of the Republic of Serbia for Religious Education in Elementary and Middle Schools.[7]

Arts

On 15 November 2003, the professional Romanian theatre was refounded, after almost 50 years, a theatre that performs acts in Romanian language for the Romanian-speaking communities. The theatre is based in Vršac, on the scene of the "Sterija" National Theatre.

Romanian language literature is represented in Banat starting with Victor Vlad Delamarina and going further to current writers. The contribution of Vojvodina-based writers is significant within the works published in the entire Banat, through authors like Vasile Barbu, president of the "Tibiscus" Literary-Artistic Society in Uzdin, Pavel Gătăiantu, Ana Niculina Ursulescu, Virginia Popovici, Slavco Almăjan and Marina Puia Bădescu. There is a state-financed publishing house, namely Libertatea. "Casa de Presă şi Editură Libertatea" publishes 20 titles each year. For the 45th edition of the Belgrade Book Fair, the publishing house prepared a CD with the most successful nine titles, under the slogan "3,000 pages for the third millennium" (Romanian: 3.000 de pagini pentru mileniul trei). Moreover, there are also other publishing houses based in Vojvodina, as for example "Editura Fundaţiei".

Bildung

In Vojvodina there are 37 education facilities that use Romanian as their teaching language, including two high schools.[8] 145 Romanian students from Vojvodina and the Timok Valley took part in interviews for scholarships in Romanian highschools and universities for the school year 2005–2006.[9] Regarding post-secondary education, there is a pedagogical school in Vršac as well as a Romanian language departament at the University of Novi Sad. School curricula are made in the Romanian language from kindergarten and to highschool; there is also an Institute where Romanian language textbooks are prepared.[10] There are four schools that teach exclusively in Romanian language, in the places with ethnic Romanian majority: Grebenac (Romanian: Grebenaţ), Nikolinci (Romanian: Nicolinţ), Kuštilj (Romanian: Coştei) and Lokve (Romanian: Sân-Mihai).

Media

Internet presence of the Romanian weekly "Libertatea".

The Autonomous Province of Vojvodina facilitates the public information of the citizens in the Romanian language, as per the Statute of the APV, article 15. The government partially finances daily and weekly newspapers in the languages of the national minorities, among them the Romanian weekly Libertatea (Pančevo). Other Romanian publications include Tinereţea (issued by the Libertatea group) and Cuvântul Românesc (Vršac). Radio Novi Sad[11] and TV Novi Sad[12] both have Romanian language sections, broadcasting Romanian-aimed schedule 6 hours a day on the radio and one to one and a half-hour on TV daily. BBC Romanian is retransmitted by Radio FAR in Alibunar on FM.[13] Also, Vojvodina receives the channel 1 (În direct, România) of Radio România Internaţional (24/24), and the Romanian national TV station TVR1. Also, further Romanian-language channels can be received through the DTH service offered by the Serbian subsidiary of the Romanian telecommunications company RCS & RDS (Digi TV),[14] as follows: Antena 1, Minimax Romania, Jetix, UTV, DDTV, OTV, Discovery Civilisation, Discovery Science, Discovery Travel & Living, Animal Planet, Animax, Zone Reality, National Geographic Channel, Eurosport, Viasat History and Viasat Explorer in the basis package, as well as Pro TV Internaţional, Antena 3, Realitatea TV, TVS Oradea, TVS Craiova, Etno TV, Favorit TV, Taraf TV in a special Romanian package.

Victoria, a 24-hour Romanian-language radio station, was launched in 2006. It broadcasts on 96.1 FM informative, musical and cultural formats, being the sole minority Romanian-language radio in Serbia broadcasting 24/7. The radio station can also be listened through the Internet.[15]

Timok Valley

Map of the Romanian-speaking Vlachs of the Timok Valley

Status

In contrast to Vojvodina, the Romanian language has far fewer rights in the Timok Valley where the Serbian Vlachs live. Although there is a controversy as to whether the speech of the Vlachs is really Romanian and the endonym limba vlaha ("Vlach language")[16] exists, many authors consider the Vlachs of Serbia to speak Romanian.[17][18][19]

Serbian statistics list Vlach and Romanian languages separately depending on what people declared in the census. This, however, does not mean that Serbian government has an official position whether Vlach and Romanian are separate languages. ISO has not assigned it a separate language code to the ISO 639 standard. In the 2002 census, 40,054 people in Serbia declared themselves ethnic Vlachs and 54,818 people declared themselves native speakers of the Vlach language.

The Romanian language of Timok does not have any official status and it is not standardized. Thus, some members of the Timok Vlach community ask for the official usage of standard Romanian in the areas inhabited by Vlachs at least until the standardization of a supposed "Vlach language" for them.[20]

According to some sources in the media, Serbia recognized "Romanian" as the native language of the Vlach community, through the act of confirmation of the National Council of the Vlach (Roumanian) National Minority in August 2007; the organization had listed Romanian as the native language of the community in their statute.[verification needed][21][22][23]

Linguistic characteristics

Its two main variants, "Ungurean" and "Țăran", are subordinated forms of the Romanian varieties spoken in Banat and Oltenia, respectively.

The speakers have been isolated from Romania and their speech did not keep up with the neologisms (for some abstract notions, as well as technological, political and scientific concepts) borrowed by the Romanian speakers on the other shore of the Danube from French and Italian and as such, they have been using Serbian counterparts instead, as Serbian has been the language of education for nearly two centuries.

Media

Radio Zaječar [1] and Radio Pomoravlje [2] Archived 14 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine broadcast programmes in the Vlach language.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Official use of languages and scripts in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina". Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities. Retrieved 18 October 2010.
  2. ^ "Department of Translations" (in Romanian). Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities. Retrieved 18 October 2010.[failed verification]
  3. ^ "About us" (in Romanian). Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities. Retrieved 18 October 2010.
  4. ^ "Judicial interprets" (in Romanian). Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities. Retrieved 18 October 2010.[permanent dead link]
  5. ^ "Official use of the Romanian language in the APV" (XLS). Provincial Secretariat for Regulations, Administration and National Minorities.
  6. ^ Romanian Global News: "PS Daniil Stoenescu va înfiinţa un centru religios la Vârşeţ“ Archived 28 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine (in Romanian), published on 17 August 2005
  7. ^ Marinica Ciobanu: "Moise Ianeş, Părintele Vicar al Vicariatului Ortodox Român: Între ciocan şi nicovală” Archived 6 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine (in Romanian) published in Libertatea on 11 March 2007
  8. ^ "Copiii românilor din Serbia-Muntenegru vor învăţa la şcoli din Romania“ Archived 27 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine (in Romanian), published in the informative bulletin Divers
  9. ^ Marcel Baica: "La studii spre România: Un mare interes pentru înscrierea la facultăţii“ Archived 6 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine (in Romanian), published in the weekly Libertatea, on 20 August 2005
  10. ^ Procesul verbal al şedinţelor din 3, 4 şi 5 decembrie 2002 ale Comisiei pentru Învâţământ, Ştiinţă, Tineret şi Sport din Cadrul Camerei Deputaţilor a României (in Romanian)
  11. ^ Radio Novi Sad – Romanian language section[permanent dead link] (in Romanian)
  12. ^ Today's schedule of TV Novi Sad 2
  13. ^ BBCRomanian.com (in Romanian)
  14. ^ Digi TV Serbia – About Archived 20 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine (in Serbian)
  15. ^ Fluxul audio "Radio Victoria” Archived 10 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  16. ^ Website of the Federaţia Vlahilor(Rumânilor) din Sârbie Archived 26 October 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ^ Gustav Weigand, Linguistischer Atlas des dacorumänischen Sprachgebiets, 1909, Leipzig: Barth
  18. ^ Petru Neiescu, Eugen Beltechi, Nicolae Mocanu, Atlas lingvistic al regiunii Valea Timocului – Contribuţii la atlasul lingvistic al graiurilor româneşti dintre Morava, Dunăre şi Timoc, Cluj-Napoca, 2006
  19. ^ Slavoljub Gacović, Od Rimljana i latinskog do Rumuna Timočana i vlaškog, Nacionalni savet vlaške nacionalne manjine, Bor, 2008
  20. ^ Danas "Svedeni smo na vlaško kolo" Archived 25 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, 19 March 2007
  21. ^ "Vlachs of Serbia recognised as a national minority" ("Vlahii din Serbia recunoscuţi ca minoritate naţională"), published by BBC on 17 August 2007: "Vlachs were finally recognised as a national minority and the Romanian language was accepted as their native language"
  22. ^ Ştirile ProTV: "Romanian language recognised as native language in Serbia" ("Limba română recunoscută drept limbă maternă în Serbia"], news report made by Ştirile ProTV on 19 August 2007
  23. ^ "Serbia recognised that the Vlachs of Timoc speak Romanian" Archived 29 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine ("Serbia a recunoscut că «vlahii» din Timoc vorbesc româneşte"), published in Gardianul, 3 August 2007
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