Romanian alphabet
The Romanian alphabet is a variant of the Latin alphabet used by the Romanian language. It is a modification of the classical Latin alphabet and consists of 31 letters.[1][2] Five of the letters (Ă, Â, Î, Ș, and Ț) have been changed from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language:
| Letter | Name |
|---|---|
| A, a | a |
| Ă, ă | ă |
| Â, â | î / î din a |
| B, b | be / bî |
| C, c | ce / cî |
| D, d | de / dî |
| E, e | e |
| F, f | ef / fe / fî |
| G, g | ge / ghe / gî |
| H, h | haș / ha / hî |
| I, i | i |
| Letter | Name |
|---|---|
| Î, î | î / î din i |
| J, j | je / jî |
| K, k | ca / capa |
| L, l | el / le / lî |
| M, m | em / me / mî |
| N, n | en / ne / nî |
| O, o | o |
| P, p | pe / pî |
| Q, q | chiu (/ky/) |
| R, r | er / re / rî |
| S, s | es / se / sî |
| Letter | Name |
|---|---|
| Ș, ș | șe / șî |
| T, t | te / tî |
| Ț, ț | țe / țî |
| U, u | u |
| V, v | ve / vî |
| W, w | dublu ve / dublu vî |
| X, x | ics |
| Y, y | igrec / i grec |
| Z, z | ze / zet / zed / zî |
The letters Q (chiu), W (dublu v), and Y (igrec or i grec) were formally introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982, although they had been used earlier. They occur only in foreign words and their Romanian derivatives, such as quasar, watt, and yacht. The letter K, although relatively older, is also rarely used and appears only in proper names and international neologisms such as kilogram, broker, karate.[3] These four letters are still perceived as foreign, which explains their usage for stylistic purposes in words such as nomenklatură (normally nomenclatură, meaning "nomenclature", but sometimes spelled with k instead of c if referring to members of the Communist leadership in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries, as Nomenklatura is used in English).[4]
In cases where the word is a direct borrowing having diacritical marks not present in the above alphabet, official spelling tends to favor their use (München, Angoulême etc., as opposed to the use of Istanbul over İstanbul).
Romanian Alphabet Media
Pre-(top) and post-1993 (bottom) street signs in Bucharest, showing the two different spellings of the same name
Old Bucharest manhole cover inscribed according to the etymologically prone spelling at the time, which reads BUCURESCI CANALISARE (meaning Bucharest, sewers). Compare to today's BUCUREȘTI CANALIZARE.
Widespread incorrect usage of Romanian diacritics with examples
Inconsistent cedilla glyphs in Adobe Caslon (left). The correct Romanian rendering (right) can be obtained by activating the OpenType GSUB/latn/ROM/locl feature, which remaps the s with cedilla glyph to comma-below. The rendering on the right is visually indistinguishable from the rendering produced by comma-below code points for this font.
References
- ↑ (in Romanian) Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, 1998, Z is the thirty first letter of the Romanian alphabet, dexonline.ro
- ↑ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti", Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române, Editura Univers Enciclopedic, București, 2005, pp. XXVII–XXVIII (in Romanian)
- ↑ (in Romanian) Academia Română, Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, Entry for K, Editura Univers Enciclopedic, 1998, dexonline.ro
- ↑ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti", Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române, 2nd Edition, Univers Enciclopedic Publishing House, Bucharest, 2005, ISBN 973-637-087-9, p. XXIX (in Romanian)