Moldova Limbra Noastra Day

August 31, 2009

Limbra Noastra Day is a public holiday in Moldova.

Limba Noastra literally translates to our language. On August 31, every year Moldova celebrates Limba Noastra or its language day.

The day is celebrated to honor the passing of the language law, which proclaimed the Moldovan language written in Latin script to be the official language of Moldova. The law also established its identity with the Roman language. The day is considered to be a milestone in Moldova’s progress towards its independence.

History of Moldova Limbra Noastra

The language spoken in Moldova has been a political issue since a very long time. Majority of Moldovans speak a dialect of Romanian that has been dubbed Moldavian by the Russians in the 19th century and the Soviet Union in the 20th century. This local language was forbidden to be used in administration and public documents by the Russian Empire as far back as in 1829. Russians tried to replace Romanian with Russian.

This was viewed as an attempt of Russification of the Moldovan culture. Moldovan was banned from schools. The attempts of Russification continued in public administration, church and education with Moldovan being replaced with the Russian language. This continued till the collapse of Russian empire in 1917. The process of Russification had a brief interlude in the period between 1918 and 1940, when Moscow had relinquished its control over the Moldovan territories. However, at the outbreak of World War II, Moscow again seized control of the Moldovan territories and the Russian language once again returned as the official language in the newly founded Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.

It was asserted by the official Soviet policy that the language that was spoken by the Moldovans was distinct from the Romanian language. To distinguish between the two, the Soviet authorities promoted Moldovan written in Cyrillic script as opposed to Romanian, which is written in Latin alphabet. All these are viewed as attempts of the Soviet Union to promote a Moldovan ethnic identity that was completely distinct from that of the Romanians.

From 1988 onwards, Moldova along with several other republics of the former Soviet Union began to step forward towards its independence. On 27th of August 1989, a mass demonstration was organized by the nationalist Popular Front of Moldova. This mass demonstration which later came to be known as the Great Assembly forced the Soviet Authorities to pass a language law. Finally on 31st August, 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic passed the language law that established Romanian as the official language of the country. It also witnessed the return of the Latin script. Since 1989, this date of 31st August came to be known as the Limba Noastra Holiday or the Language day of Moldova.

CHISINAU — In a sign of growing rapprochement with neighboring EU-member Romania, Moldova’s government has changed the language signs on all of its websites from “Moldovan” (MD) to “Romanian” (RO), RFE/RL’s Moldovan Service reports.

The Moldovan Constitution states that the official language of the country is “Moldovan,” although most linguists say the language spoken in Moldova does not differ enough Romanian to be considered a different language.

The new pro-Western government has said it will try to amend the constitution in the future to remove the “Moldovan language” concept. The term “Moldovan language” was coined by the Soviets after they annexed what is now Moldova from Romania at the beginning of World War II.

They also imposed use of the cyrillic alphabet in the new Soviet republic, to differentiate it even more from the Latin-writing Romania. Romanian President Traian Basescu has said that Moldovan leaders from previous governments have requested a translator during official meetings with their Romanian counterparts, despite speaking essentially the same language.