Romanian publications held by the Library number only a few thousand, but active acquisition of Romanian books has recently been re-introduced thanks to two strands of work in the Modern and Medieval Languages Faculty: an international project on the Romanian avant-garde led by Dr Jean Khalfa and the linguistics work led by Professor Adam Ledgeway.
A Romance language in Eastern Europe, Romanian is largely accessible to those with a knowledge of Latin or modern Romance languages but has assimilated a significant amount of Slavonic loan words from its immediate neighbours. Romanian even used the Cyrillic alphabet until the late 19th century (the Library of Congress provides a specific transliteration sheet for early Cyrillic Romanian). Added to the picture is Moldovan, earlier known as Moldavian. During the Soviet period, Moldovan was treated as a separate language, but was formally recognised by the government of Moldova in 2013 as Romanian, and all catalogue records now record the language of Moldova past and present as that. It too is now written in the Latin alphabet, although Cyrillic was also used in Soviet times – covered in another Library of Congress transliteration guide. The Cyrillic alphabet is still used in the disputed area of Transdniestria (whose authorised name for cataloguers is the Dniester Moldovan Republic).
Languages across Borders 