Aromanian – Language or Dialect? Overview of Historical and Contemporary Opinions

This article aims at presenting two concepts from the modern typology of the Romance languages, with a special focus on the Aromanian ethnolect. The first concept, which is widely accepted in the Romanian linguistics and was most prevalent before the Second World War, does not recognise Aromanian as a separate language, but treats it as one of four dialects of the Romanian language. The second movement, much closer to modern Romanist research at the international level, opts for a full autonomy of all Balkan Romance ethnolects and attributes to them statuses of national languages. It also negates the existence of a common Romanian language in the first millennium, arguing that the Balkan Romance languages developed independently from a late form of Balkan Latin around the 11th century.