Editing Romanian language (section)

=== Romance language ===
{{See also|Romance languages}}
[[File:Romance languages diagram en.svg|500px|thumb|Romanian language, as part of the [[Eastern Romance languages|Eastern Romance]] sub-branch of Romance languages, alongside and related to [[Aromanian language|Aromanian]], [[Megleno-Romanian language|Megleno-Romanian]], and [[Istro-Romanian language|Istro-Romanian]]. All of these Eastern Romance languages are spoken in [[Central Europe|Central]], [[Eastern Europe|Eastern]], and [[Southeast Europe|Southeastern Europe]].]]
Romanian is a Romance language, belonging to the [[Italic languages|Italic branch]] of the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European language family]], having much in common with languages such as Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese.<ref name="Stoica1">{{Cite book |last=Stoica |first=Vasile |url=http://www.wdl.org/en/item/7314/view/1/50/ |title=The Roumanian Question: The Roumanians and their Lands |publisher=Pittsburgh Printing Company |year=1919 |location=Pittsburgh |page=50 |access-date=8 October 2013 |archive-date=29 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171229112601/https://www.wdl.org/en/item/7314/view/1/50/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Compared with the other Romance languages, the closest relative of Romanian is Italian.<ref name=Stoica1/> Romanian has had a greater share of foreign influence than some other Romance languages such as Italian in terms of vocabulary and other aspects. A 1949 study by the Italian-American linguist [[Mario Pei]], analyzing the degree to which seven Romance languages diverged from Vulgar Latin with respect to their accent vocalization, yielded the following measurements of divergence (with higher percentages indicating greater divergence from the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin): 

* [[Sardinian language|Sardinian]]: 8%
* Italian: 12%
* Spanish: 20%
* Romanian: 23.5%
* [[Occitan language|Occitan]]: 25%
* Portuguese: 31%
* French: 44%

The study emphasized, however, that it represented only "a very elementary, incomplete and tentative demonstration" of how statistical methods could measure linguistic change, assigned "frankly arbitrary" point values to various types of change, and did not compare languages in the sample with respect to any characteristics or forms of divergence other than stressed vowels, among other caveats.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Pei |first=Mario |author-link=Mario Pei |date=1949 |title=A New Methodology for Romance Classification |journal=WORD |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=135–146 |doi=10.1080/00437956.1949.11659494 |doi-access=free }}</ref> 

The [[lexical similarity]] of Romanian with Italian has been estimated at 77%, followed by French at 75%, Sardinian 74%, Catalan 73%, Portuguese and [[Rhaeto-Romance languages|Rhaeto-Romance]] 72%, Spanish 71%.<ref>Ethnologue, [http://www.ethnologue.com/language/ron Romanian] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200525155837/https://www.ethnologue.com/language/ron |date=25 May 2020 }}</ref>

The Romanian vocabulary became predominantly influenced by French and, to a lesser extent, Italian in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sandiuc |first=Corina |date=1 November 2014 |title=Languages and cultures in contact: The French language and the maritime terminology |url=https://doaj.org/article/6eb325ddd1ea4f5eb41f3119f6ea3485 |journal=Diversitate Si Identitate Culturala in Europa |language=en |volume=11 |issue=2 |issn=2067-0931 |access-date=21 November 2017 |archive-date=1 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201040644/https://doaj.org/article/6eb325ddd1ea4f5eb41f3119f6ea3485 |url-status=dead }}</ref>