The character of Moldovan
Ranked by how often they actually turn up in spoken dialogue, not by how useful somebody guessed they would be. Every number below is counted from a corpus, and the corpus is named at the bottom.
Why learn Moldovan
The identical twin of Romanian: born in 1924, raised in a Cyrillic costume, retired together with the Soviet Union. Officially it no longer exists; unofficially it is alive at every table in Chișinău, in barabule and perje and a dozen words Bucharest would need translated. Learn Romanian and it arrives on its own, which makes it the ultimate flex: fluency in a language that is not on any list. Between Bucharest and Chișinău lives a whole identity story with its own flag, and it speaks beautifully.
Passepartout: Moldovan
Five printable pages that carry you through the whole trip: 105 phrases with the sounds spelled out, an example where it helps, a dry comment where you have earned one.
Fold them, pocket them, land ready.
The origins of Moldovan
Proto-Indo-European › Italic › Latin › Romance › Eastern Romance › Moldovan
Born Latin in 1924, raised in a Cyrillic costume, retired with the Soviet Union. In 2003 a man published a 19,000-word Moldovan-Romanian dictionary. Linguists on both banks of the Prut asked him to stop.
Voices you unlock
Mihai Eminescu · Ion Creangă · Grigore Vieru · Ion Druță
The unique words of Moldovan
Sound like you live there
Passepartout gets you understood.
These make you unremarkable.