Open Access
Aromanian – Language or Dialect? Overview of Historical and Contemporary Opinions
Author(s) -
Anna Oczko
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
romanica cracoviensia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 1
eISSN - 2084-3917
pISSN - 1732-8705
DOI - 10.4467/20843917rc.21.011.14066
Subject(s) - romanian , linguistics , romance languages , typology , focus (optics) , romance , autonomy , history , sociology , political science , literature , art , philosophy , anthropology , law , physics , optics
This article aims at presenting two concepts from the modern typology of the Romance languages, with a special focus on the Aromanian ethnolect. The first concept, which is widely accepted in the Romanian linguistics and was most prevalent before the Second World War, does not recognise Aromanian as a separate language, but treats it as one of four dialects of the Romanian language. The second movement, much closer to modern Romanist research at the international level, opts for a full autonomy of all Balkan Romance ethnolects and attributes to them statuses of national languages. It also negates the existence of a common Romanian language in the first millennium, arguing that the Balkan Romance languages developed independently from a late form of Balkan Latin around the 11th century.