Moldavian dialect

Geographic distribution

• in the Moldavian part of Romania: the counties of Bacău, Botoșani, Galați, Iași, Neamț, Suceava, Vaslui, Vrancea;
• in Muntenia and Northern Dobruja, some isoglosses extend over the northern parts of the following counties: Buzău, Brăila, Tulcea;
• in the Republic of Moldova: the whole territory, including the breakaway region of Transnistria;
• in Ukraine:
• *Chernivtsi Oblast: the Northern Bukovina, the Hertza region, and other areas of the oblast;
• *Odessa Oblast: the historical region of Budjak and other areas in the Odessa Oblast;
• *smaller pockets in other parts of Ukraine;
• in the north-eastern half of Transylvania, various isoglosses include all or part of the following counties: Bistrița-Năsăud, Harghita, Covasna, Cluj, Mureș.

  Transitional areas

Particularities

Phonetic features

• The postalveolar affricates become the fricatives : for standard ceapă, cină, gene. As a consequence, the affricate and the fricative merge into the latter: for joc, sânge. However, the Atlasul lingvistic român and other field works record examples of pronunciations showing that, while the merger covers most of the dialect area, it is not systematic and sometimes found in free variation. In parts of the south-western and north-eastern Moldavia the distinction is preserved.
• After the fricatives and the affricate , a vowel shift occurs that changes into, into, and into : for semn, singur, seară, zer, zid, zeamă, șale, rășină, jale, țes, țeapăn, reci. In the same phonetic contexts, the phoneme, which is generally responsible for indicating the plural in nouns and adjectives or the second person in verbs, is no longer realized: . As a consequence, the number distinction is completely lost in some nouns and adjectives, such as moș, leneș, colț, ursuz.
• After the labial, changes into and into : for lovesc, să lovească.
• Word-final becomes : for mamă, casă.
• Unstressed closes to : for acoperit.
• The diphthong is preserved: for soare, boală.
• Unstressed in middle and final positions closes to : for lapte, desfac.
• In the northern areas, the vowel immediately before the stress opens to : for măgar, bătrân, tăcut, pădure.
• The diphthong becomes : for băiat, încuiat.
• Etymologic is preserved in the words for câine, mâine, mâini, pâine.
• The labials receive a palatalized pronunciation when followed by front vowels and become, respectively: for copil, bine, miel.
• Similarly, the palatalization of the labio-dentals occurs, but in two different ways. In the southern half of the dialect area they become, respectively, whereas in the northern half they become : for fierbe, vițel.
• The dentals are left unchanged before :.
• The affricate occurs, as in, as in the Banat dialect, the Maramureș dialect and the Aromanian language, whereas it evolved to in the Wallachian dialect, the Criș dialect, and standard Romanian: for zic.
• The diphthong in final positions becomes the monophthong : for avea, spunea.
• Asyllabic versions of and occur in word-final positions: for pădurar, cojocar.
• In the northern part, followed by changes into : holbură, hulpe, hultan.

  Morphological features

• Feminine nouns ending in -că have genitive and dative forms ending in -căi: maicăi, puicăi.
• The noun tată "father" with the definite article has the form tatul.
• The possessive article is invariable: a meu, a mea, a mei, a mele.
• The number distinction is made in verbs in the imperfect at the 3rd person: era / erau, făcea / făceau.
• The simple perfect is not used, except rarely, only in the 3rd person, with the simple value of a past tense.
• The auxiliary for the compound perfect has the same form for both the singular and the plural of the 3rd person: el o fost / ei o fost.
• In northern Moldavia, the pluperfect is also made analytically: m-am fost dus, am fost venit.
• The future tense in verbs uses the infinitive and is sometimes identical to it: va veni, a veni.
• The following subjunctive forms occur: să deie, să steie, să beie, să ieie, să vreie.
• The following imperatives occur: ádă, vină.
• When the object of a verb is another verb, the latter is in its infinitive form, including the isolated morpheme a: prinde a fierbe.
• Genitives and datives of nouns tend to be formed analytically: dă mâncare la pisică.

  Lexical particularities

• Some words have preserved archaic forms: îmblu, împlu, întru, înflu, nour, dirept.
• A particular variant for the personal pronoun for the 3rd person occurs frequently and is used for animates and inanimates alike: dânsul, dânsa, dânșii, dânsele. In the standard language, these forms have started being used as 3rd person polite pronouns.
• The demonstrative pronouns have particular forms: .
• Other specific words: omăt, agudă, poame, perje, ciubotă, cori, etc.

  Sample