Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: What language is spoken in Moldova?
The state language of Moldova is Romanian, locally known as Moldovan, which is the native language of 80.2% of the population; it is also spoken as a primary language by other ethnic minorities. Gagauz, Russian and Ukrainian languages are granted official regional status in Gagauzia and/or Transnistria.
Macedonian (, "makedonski jazik") is a South Slavic language, spoken as a first language by approximately 1.4-2.5 million people principally in Macedonia and the Macedonian diaspora. It is the official language in Macedonia and a recognized minority language in parts of Albania, Romania and Serbia.
In 2014, Moldova was the twentieth largest wine producing country in the world. Most of the country's commercial wine production is for export; 67 million bottles of wine are exported annually, including to Poland, Romania, Russia and United States.
The existence of a Macedonian language and Macedonian ethnos is highly disputed in Bulgaria. Most Bulgarians do not recognize the Macedonian language as a separate language and assert that it is a dialect of Bulgarian. There are two dialects in Bulgaria which are considered Macedonian in Macedonia: the Maleševo-Pirin (widely spoken in most of Blagoevgrad Province in Bulgaria and Delčevo region in the Republic of Macedonia) and the Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop ones. Some linguists consider these dialects to be transitional between modern Bulgarian and Macedonian.
Standardised Slavic languages that have official status in at least one country are: Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Ukrainian.
A large number of Macedonians live outside the traditional Balkan Macedonian region, with Australia, Canada, and the United States having the largest emigrant communities. According to a 1964 estimate, approximately 580,000 Macedonians live outside the Macedonian Republic, nearly 30% of the total population. The Macedonian language has the status of official language only in the Republic of Macedonia, and is a recognized minority and official language in parts of Albania (Pustec), Romania, and Serbia (Jabuka and Plandište). There are provisions for learning the Macedonian language in Romania as Macedonians are an officially recognized minority group. Macedonian is taught in some universities in Australia, Canada, Croatia, Italy, Poland, Russia, Serbia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries.
Bulgarian is the only language with official status and native for % of the population. It belongs to the Slavic group of languages, but it has a number of grammatical peculiarities, shared with its closest relative Macedonian, that set it apart from other Slavic languages: these include a complex verbal morphology (which also codes for distinctions in evidentiality), the absence of noun cases and infinitives, and the use of a suffixed definite article. Other major languages are Turkish and Romani, which according to the 2011 census were spoken natively by 9.1% and 4.2% respectively.
Bulgarian is the country's only official language. It's spoken by the vast majority of the Bulgarian population and used at all levels of society. It is a Slavic language, and its closest relative is Macedonian.
The varieties spoken by the Slavophone minority in parts of northern Greece, especially those in the Greek provinces of West and Central Macedonia, are today usually classified as part of the Macedonian language, with those in East Macedonia being transitional towards Bulgarian. Bulgarian linguistics traditionally regards them all as part of the Bulgarian language together with the rest of Macedonian. However, the codification of standard Macedonian has been in effect only in the Republic of Macedonia, and the Slavonic dialects spoken in Greece are thus practically "roofless", with their speakers having little access to standard or written Macedonian.
The Moesian dialects are a group of closely related dialects of the Bulgarian language, part of the Eastern Bulgarian dialects. The Moesian dialects are spoken in northeastern Bulgaria and in the regions of Karnobat, Aytos, Burgas and Yambol in southern Bulgaria. However, due to the mass population movements that affected eastern Bulgaria during the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, nowadays, there are very few areas where only Moesian is spoken. In most areas, and especially in southern Bulgaria and Dobruja, Moesian speakers are mixed with speakers speaking Balkan dialects. As a result of this and also due to the influence of the literary language, most features of the Moesian dialects have given way to features typical for the Balkan dialects.Стойков, Стойко: Българска диалектология, Акад. изд. "Проф. Марин Дринов", 2006
Standard Croatian is the official language of the Republic of Croatia and, along with Standard Bosnian and Standard Serbian, one of three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is also official in the regions of Burgenland (Austria), Molise (Italy) and Vojvodina (Serbia). Additionally, it has co-official status alongside Romanian in the communes of Carașova and Lupac, Romania. In these localities, Croats or Krashovani make up the majority of the population, and education, signage and access to public administration and the justice system are provided in Croatian, alongside Romanian.
Greek is by far the most widely spoken and the only official language of public life and education in Macedonia. The local Macedonian dialect is spoken alongside dialects from other parts of Greece and Pontic Greek still spoken by some Greeks of Pontic descent. One archaic Greek dialect indigenous to Greek Macedonia and other parts of Northern Greece is that spoken by the Sarakatsani, a traditionally transhument shepherd community whose dialect has undergone very little change through foreign influences. Macedonian Slavic dialects are the most widely spoken minority language while Aromanian, Arvanitic, Megleno-Romanian, Turkish and Romani are also spoken. Ladino is still spoken by some Jews in Thessaloniki.
Macedonian authors tend to treat all dialects spoken in the geographical region of Macedonia as Macedonian, including those spoken in the westernmost part of Bulgaria (so-called Pirin Macedonia), whereas Bulgarian authors treat all Macedonian dialects as part of the Bulgarian language. Prior to the codification of standard Macedonian in 1945, the dialects of Macedonia were for the most part classified as Bulgarian. In Greece, the identification of the dialects spoken by the local Slavophone minority with either Bulgarian or Macedonian is often avoided, and these dialects are instead described simply as "Slavic", "Dopia" ('Local'), Stariski (old) or Našinski (ours).
The Malagasy language of Malayo-Polynesian origin, is generally spoken throughout the island. The official languages of Madagascar are Malagasy and French. Madagascar is a Francophone country, and French is spoken among the educated population of this former French colony. Including second-language speakers, there are more speakers of Malagasy than French in Madagascar .
Romanian descended from the Vulgar Latin spoken in the Roman provinces of Southeastern Europe. Roman inscriptions show that Latin was primarily used to the north of the so-called Jireček Line (a hypothetical boundary between the predominantly Latin- and Greek-speaking territories of the Balkan Peninsula in the Roman Empire), but the exact territory where Proto-Romanian (or Common Romanian) developed cannot certainly be determined. Most regions where Romanian is now widely spokenBessarabia, Bukovina, Crișana, Maramureș, Moldova, and significant parts of Munteniawere not incorporated in the Roman Empire. Other regionsBanat, western Muntenia, Oltenia and Transylvaniaformed the Roman province of Dacia Traiana for about 170 years. According to the "continuity" theory, modern Romanian is the direct descendant of the Latin dialect of Dacia Traiana and developed primarily in the lands now forming Romania; the concurring "immigrationist" theory maintains that Proto-Romanian was spoken in the lands to the south of the Danube and Romanian-speakers settled in most parts of modern Romania only centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire.
The dialects of Macedonian comprise the Slavic dialects spoken in the Republic of Macedonia as well as some varieties spoken in the wider geographic region of Macedonia. They are part of the dialect continuum of South Slavic languages that joins the Macedonian language with Bulgarian to the east and Serbo-Croatian to the north. The precise delimitation between these languages is fleeting and controversial.
The CIS-Election Monitoring Organisation () is an election monitoring body that was formed in October 2002, following a Commonwealth of Independent States heads of states meeting which adopted the "Convention on the Standards of Democratic Elections, Electoral Rights, and Freedoms in the Member States of the Commonwealth of Independent States". The CIS-EMO has been sending election observers to member countries of the CIS since this time; they approved many elections which have been heavily criticised by independent observers.Russia has been urging that the Russian language receive official status in all of the CIS member states. So far Russian is an official language in only four of these states: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Russian is also considered an official language in the region of Transnistria, and the autonomous region of Gagauzia in Moldova. Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-supported presidential candidate in the controversial 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, declared his intention to make Russian an official second language of Ukraine. However, the Western-supported candidate Viktor Yushchenko, the winner, did not do so. After his early 2010 election as President Yanukovych stated (on 9 March 2010) that "Ukraine will continue to promote the Ukrainian language as its only state language".
There are about 225 indigenous languages in Europe – roughly 3% of the world's total. Most of the European languages are of Indo-European origin. Since the end of the 18th century, the most widespread language of Europe (both in terms of geography and the number of native speakers) has been Russian, which replaced French. Counting only native speakers, approximately 150 million Europeans speak Russian on a daily basis, followed by German (approx. 95 mil.), English and French (each by 65 mil.), Italian (60 mil.), Spanish and Polish (40 mil. each), Ukrainian (30 mil.) and Romanian (26 mil.). As far as foreign language studies are concerned, English is currently the most popular foreign language in Europe, followed by German, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish
The Istro-Romanian language is one of the smallest minority languages spoken in Croatia with fewer than 500 speakers concentrated mainly in the north-eastern part of the Istrian Peninsula. While the language is not officially recognized in the Constitution of Croatia under that name (the Constitution does reference Romanians and Vlachs), it is specifically recognized as such in the Statute of the Istrian Region and in the Statute of the Municipality of Kršan . In 2016, with funding from the Romanian government, the school in the village of Šušnjevica was fully renovated and is expected to start offering education in Istro-Romanian.
French, the official language, is taught in schools and serves as a lingua franca in the country. An estimated 70 languages are spoken in Ivory Coast. One of the most common is Dyula, which acts as a trade language, as well as a language commonly spoken by the Muslim population.
The share of ethnic Latvians had fallen from 77% (1,467,035) in 1935 to 52% (1,387,757) in 1989. In 2011, there were even fewer Latvians than in 1989, though their share of the population was larger – 1,285,136 (62.1% of the population).
The sole official language of Latvia is Latvian, which belongs to the Baltic language sub-group of the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Another notable language of Latvia is the nearly extinct Livonian language of the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family, which enjoys protection by law; Latgalian – referred to as either a dialect or a distinct separate language of Latvian – is also formally protected by Latvian law but only as a historical variation of the Latvian language. Russian, which was widely spoken during the Soviet period, is still the most widely used minority language by far (in 2011, 34% spoke it at home, including people who were not ethnically Russian).
While it is now required that all school students learn Latvian, most schools also include English, Russian and German in their curricula. English and Russian are also widely accepted in Latvia, especially in business and tourism. there were 109 schools for minorities that use Russian as the language of instruction for 40% of subjects (the remaining 60% of subjects are taught in Latvian).
There is essentially no disagreement that the standard form of the official language in Moldova is identical to standard Romanian. The spoken language of Moldova, in spite of small regional differences, is completely understandable to speakers from Romania and vice versa. The slight differences are in pronunciation and the choice of vocabulary. For example, cabbage, drill and water melon are respectively "curechi", "sfredel" and "harbuz" in both the Republic of Moldova and the Romanian part of Moldavia, but their synonyms "varză", "burghiu" and "pepene" are preferred in Wallachia.
In 1979, Russian was claimed as a native language by a large proportion of Jews (66%) and Belarusians (62%), and by a significant proportion of Ukrainians (30%). Proportions of other ethnicities naming Russian as a native language ranged from 17% of Bulgarians to 3% of Moldovans (Russian was more spoken by urban Moldovans than by rural Moldovans). Russian was claimed as a second language by a sizeable proportion of all ethnicities: Moldovans (46%), Ukrainians (43%), Gagauz (68%), Jews (30%), Bulgarians (67%), Belarusians (34%), Germans (53%), Roma (36%), and Poles (24%).
The Moldavian dialect ("subdialectul / graiul moldovean / moldovenesc") is one of several dialects of the Romanian language (Daco-Romanian). It is spoken across the approximate area of the historical region of Moldavia, now split between Romania, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.
During the first years of Soviet occupation, the term "Romanian language" was forbidden. The official language for use in Moldovan schools throughout the entire MSSR (both in Bessarabia and Transnistria) during Stalinist period was based on a patois variety spoken in some areas of the former MASSR. The Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Moldova is assessing this period.