Aromanian language

Aromanian (also known as Macedoromanian; in Aromanian: Armâneashti or Vlăheşte) is a language in the eastern group of the Romance languages. It is considered to be either a Romanian dialect or a separate language.

The language is similar to Romanian, but it does exhibit some differences, especially in vocabulary. Aromanian is spoken by the Aromanian or Vlach minority in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, but also in parts of Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece.

Greek and Bulgarian influences are much stronger than in other East Romance languages, especially because Aromanian used Greek words to coin new words (neologisms), while Romanian based most of its neologisms on Italian and French.

Still the lexical composition remains mainly Romance. Just as in Romanian, the morphology is rather different from other descendants of Latin. For example, the article is appended to the end of the word, and both definite and indefinite articles can be declined. Nouns have common (or neuter) gender in addition to masculine and feminine genders. On the other hand, the sequence of tensess is absolutely absent.

See also: Romanian language, Romance languages