Languages, letters, and a brief historical timeline

The point of this blog is to help me (and hopefully you!) learn about Moldova. And I have learned that there are more languages spoken in Moldova than I mentioned in my previous post. Romanian and Russian are the most common, but there are also quite a few people who speak Ukrainian and Gagauz. To be honest, I hadn't heard of Gagauz before. You learn something new every day! 

Languages follow culture, and that is often based on a region's history. I didn't have a lot of time (so little free time right now!) to do comparative research or fact-check, so that will have to be for another day, but here is what I learned from http://www.factsking.com/countries/moldova/:

The region that is now Moldova has historically been inhabited by a largely Romanian speaking population. Before the Second World War, most of Moldova was connected to Romania, and about two-thirds of the population speaks fluent Romanian.

The second official language is Gagauz, which comes from Gagauzia, an area in southern Moldova. There are only around 200,000 Gagauz speakers. Look for more about Gagauzia in another post. I'm curious to learn more about it. 

Most of what is now Moldova was the independent principality of Moldavia in the 14th century. In the 16th century, it came under Ottoman Turkish rule. The region was part of the larger Romanian principality of Moldova in the 18th century. Moldova became part of the Russian Empire, under the name Bessarabia, in the year 1812. Bessarabia joined Romania in 1917-1918, after the Russian Empire was dissolved. In 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Bessarabia. Later, it was split between the Ukranian SSR and the newly-created Moldavian SSR. Moldova was occupied by Romania and Germany from 1941-1944. Part of Romania during the interwar period, Moldova was incorporated into the Soviet Union at the close of World War II. Moldova gained independence from the USSR on 27th August 1991. 

Technically, the official language of Moldova is Moldovan. But Moldovan is essentially Romanian. Although, not exactly... In 1939 the Moldovan alphabet was converted to Cyrillic by the Soviets, in order to distinguish (and divide) the Moldovan ethnic group from Romanians. Shortly after Communism fell in 1989, the Moldovan government passed a law switching the alphabet back to Latin script. Moldovans are still roughly split regarding whether they speak “Moldovan” or Romanian.