Aromanians

The Aromanians (Aromanian: Armãnji, Rrãmãnji) are an ethnic group native to the southern Balkans who speak Aromanian, an Eastern Romance language. They traditionally live in central and southern Albania, south-western Bulgaria, northern and central Greece, and North Macedonia, and can currently be found also in southern Serbia, and south-eastern Romania (Northern Dobruja). An Aromanian diaspora living outside these places also exists. The Aromanians are known by several other names, such as "Vlachs" or "Macedo-Romanians" (sometimes used to also refer to the Megleno-Romanians). The term "Vlachs" is used in Greece and in other countries to refer to the Aromanians, with this term having been more widespread in the past to refer to all Romance-speaking peoples of the Balkan Peninsula and Carpathian Mountains region (Southeast Europe). Their vernacular, Aromanian, is an Eastern Romance language very similar to Romanian, which has many slightly varying dialects of its own. Aromanian is considered to have developed from Common Romanian, a common stage of all the Eastern Romance varieties that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken by Paleo-Balkan peoples after the Romanization of the Balkan area that fell under the Latin sphere of influence. The Aromanian language shares many common features with Albanian, Bulgarian and Greek; however, although it has many loanwords from Greek, Slavic, and Turkish, its lexicon remains majority Romance in origin.