Moldovan language

Moldovan or Moldavian (Latin alphabet: limba moldovenească, Cyrillic alphabet: лимба молдовеняскэ) is one of the two local names for the Romanian language in Moldova. Moldovan was declared the official language of Moldova in Article 13 of the constitution adopted in 1994, while the 1991 Declaration of Independence of Moldova used the name Romanian. In 2003, the Moldovan parliament adopted a law defining Moldovan and Romanian as glottonyms for the same language. In 2013, the Constitutional Court of Moldova interpreted that Article 13 of the constitution is superseded by the Declaration of Independence, thus giving official status to the name Romanian. On 16 March 2023, the Moldovan Parliament approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution. On 22 March, the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, promulgated the law. The breakaway region of Transnistria continues to recognize "Moldovan" as one of its official languages, alongside Russian and Ukrainian. Ukraine also recognized "Moldovan" as a minority language in the country until 13 June 2026, when came into effect the promulgation of a bill approved by the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, on 3 December 2025 excluding Moldovan from its list of languages protected in accordance with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. All then 16 schools in Ukraine's Odesa Oblast that taught "Moldovan" had already dropped the term and replaced it with Romanian, as Ukrainian newspaper Dumska reported on 13 January 2024 citing an announcement from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. The language of the Moldovans had for centuries been interchangeably identified by both terms, but during the time of the Soviet Union, Moldovan, or as it was called in English at the time, Moldavian, was the only term officially recognized. Its resolution declared Moldavian a Romance language...