The national history page about the way in which we searched for our linguistic and ethnic identity was overcome. Linguists will be further able to discuss dialects and regionalisms,while the correct name of the language was fixed, Igor Boțan, the permanent expert of IPN’s project, stated in a public debate hosted by IPN News Agency. He noted that the literary language and the official language are brought to the highest level that unites all those living in the historical Romanian provinces a part of which united in the modern unitary Romanian state. Those from the Republic of Moldova now have European aspirations and if the country becomes a member of the European Union, the best solutions accepted by all will be found.

According to the expert, the Party of Communists adopted in 2003, when it was in power, the Law on the conception of national politics, in which it admitted that Moldovan and Romanian are identical languages. “However, the Communists more than once noted that if the Moldovans speak Romanian language, then they are Romanians. Therefore, the Communists could not admit this for geopolitical and ethnopolitical reasons,” said Igor Boțan. Speaking about legal issues, the expert argued that the Law on the functioning of spoken languages that was adopted on September 1, 1989 very clearly says that, although the language is Moldovan, it is equivalent to the Romanian language and those from the Party of Communists, when they had a constitutional majority, confirmed this in their Law on the concept of national politics. “Thus, they do not doubt that it is the same language. The fight is for the name for geopolitical reasons. The politicians have an interest in speculating on these issues. Particular state political forces once divided us and we, as people who have gained independence and sovereignty, have the right to decide what to do next.”

The expert noted that the notion of Romanian language appears in the Declaration of Independence. “Also, there is the Constitutional Court’s judgment of December 5, 2013, which says that if we have documents of the same level of generalization, it is not good to have in two documents of the same level different notions for the same object. And it took years for a government to come and say that there is obvious dissonance, including because the Romanian language has been studied in the schools of the Republic of Moldovan for almost 35 years. In the documents of people who have already reached retirement age, it was written that they studied the Romanian language at school, while the Constitution stipulated that Moldovan was the official language. And then Parliament decided to put things in order, adopted a law that was challenged in the Constitutional Court and the Constitutional Court rejected that challenge, meaning that the CC maintained jurisprudence on this important issue. If we put all these things together, we can come to the conclusion that we should not have any misunderstandings,” stated Igor Boțan.

The expert also said that Romanian linguists brought our language to the right level to meet technical-scientific, legal and other needs. “We must have a feeling of gratitude for our linguists, for historians who have long ago put things in a correct way. Jurists from the Republic of Moldova and politicians also brought things to a level of normality. Now society, the representatives of different sections to which I referred should make efforts for the things whose bases were laid 34 years ago to continue because many things depend on history teachers, Romanian language and literature teachers, writers from the Republic of Moldova. I think such debates like today’s debate are extremely useful because I have questions. I want to know how many writers at the Writers’ Union create in the  Moldovan language? As for those who insist that the language is Moldovan, I want to kindly ask them to come up with a list of modern writers who wrote in Moldovan and to see what is the cultural value of their works, and then to ask the ordinary citizens what they understand,” said Igor Boțan.

The public debate entitled “The long path home of the Romanian language” was the 32nd installment of IPN’s project “Impact of the Past on Confidence and Peace Building Processes”, which is implemented with support from the Hanns Seidel Foundation.