Each second person (56.7%) in Moldova considers Moldovan is their mother tongue. For 23.5%, the mother tongue is Romanian, according to the 2014 population census results presented in a news conference on March 31, IPN reports.
Director general of the National Bureau of Statistics Vitalie Valcov said that compared with 2004 the number of persons who indicated Romanian as the native language increased by 6.9 percentage points. On the other hand, the number of those who indicated Moldovan as the mother tongue decreased by 3.5 percentage points.
As regards the language spoken usually, 54.6% indicated the Moldovan language, 24% – the Romanian language, 14.5% – Russian, 2.7% – Ukrainian, 2.7% - the Gagauz language and 1% – Bulgarian.
Information about ethnicity is available about 98.2% of the population. 75.1% of the population said they are Moldovans, 7% - Romanians, 6.6% – Ukrainians, 4.6% – Gagauz people, 4.1% – Russian, 1.9% - Bulgarians, while 0.3% - Roma.
According to Vitalie Valcov, compared with 2004 the number of those who said they are Romanians is by 4.8 percentage points higher, while of those who consider themselves Moldovans decreased by 1 percentage points. The number of people of Russian and Ukrainian ethnicity declined by 1.9 and 1.8 percentage points respectively.
