AROMANIAN – A LANGUAGE OR A DIALECT?

Abstract

The 90s of the last century marked the reopening of the ‘Aromanian file’,
which seemed to have exhausted its resources and polemics. Considered part of the
Romanian people, Latinized Greeks or descendants of the Macedonians of
Alexander the Great, the Aromanians continue to look for answers to questions
concerning their national being itself. After the fall of the communist regimes, the
surprise came from Romania, where a ‘neo-Aromanian’ group demanded the
recognition of the Aromanians as a national minority, claiming that they are not
part of the Romanian people, and the tongue spoken by them is not a dialect, but a
language. Although, in obvious numerical inferiority, the neo-Aromanians
managed to stir up polemics with the devotees of the traditional theory, including
with the fellows from the Macedo-Romanian Cultural Society. This carousel of
statements, has also included civic activists, academics, journalists, researchers and
politicians, making a compromise become impossible.