What languages do people speak in Moldova

The official language of Moldova is the Moldovan language, nonetheless several other languages are spoken here, namely: Russian, Ukrainian, Gagauz, Bulgarian, and Polish. Such a variety of languages can be easily explained by the fact that for many centuries the territory of modern Moldova was at the border of European and Asian empires. Most linguists will attest that the Moldovan language is just a dialect of Romanian, which was formed under the influence of the Russian and Ukrainian languages. In the middle of the twentieth century the main difference between Romanian and Moldovan languages was the fact that the first used the Latin alphabet and the second used Cyrillic. Today both languages use the Latin alphabet. The Moldovan and Romanian languages belong to the Roman group of languages and a very similar to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and even French.

In the southern part of Moldova, in the Autonomous Territorial Formation Gagauzia, people speak in Gagauz, Moldova, and Russian. The Gagauz language belongs to the Oguz group of Turk languages and the Gagauz people are descendants of VII Century Turkish protobulgarians, who moved to the territory of contemporary Moldova and adopted Christianity in the IX Century. The Gagauz language is a mixture of Turkish and Bulgarian. Somewhere around 4.4% of the Moldovan population are Gagauz. In addition, in Gagauzia there are a lot of Bulgarian villages where Bessarabian (Bessarabia is the archaic name of Moldova) Bulgarians live.

In the unrecognized Transnistrian Republic, located in the eastern part of Moldova, people speak in Ukrainian, while Russian, Moldovan (using the Cyrillic alphabet) are the other two official languages. In some regions of northeastern Moldova, like Sloboda-Rashkov for example, people speak Polish.

According to a survey conducted as part of the 2004 Population Census, 60% of the people stated that Moldovan was their mother tongue, 16,5% stated it was Romanian, 11,26% - Russian, 12,24% - Ukrainian, Gagauz, Bulgarian, or other. Moldova was a part of the Russian Empire in the XIX Century and a Soviet republic in the XX Century and many Russian speaking people immigrated here, thus making Russian a very widespread language, similar to other Soviet republics. In such a way, according to the 2004 data, 35% of the urban population of Moldova states that they speak Russian most of the time, regardless of whether or not it is their native language.

In conclusion it is worth noting that if you ever get a chance to visit Moldova but speak neither Russian nor Moldovan – don’t worry, you will be able to find help easily. All the hotel and restaurant staff has at least conversational knowledge of English. If however, you are interested in the history and culture of Moldova and would like to visit one of the many local museum, then you should know that there are many tours conducted in foreign languages.