Aromanians
| Aromanian: Armâńi, Rrămăńi | |
|---|---|
| Total population | |
| c. 250,000 (Aromanian-speakers) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Greece
|
39,855 (1951 census); estimate up to 200,000 |
 Albania
|
8,266 (2011 census); estimate up to 200,000 |
 Romania
|
28,600 |
 Macedonia
|
9,695 (2002 census) |
 Bulgaria
|
3,684 (2011 census) |
 Serbia
|
243 "Cincari" (2011 census) |
| Languages | |
| Aromanian (native) | |
| Religion | |
| Eastern Orthodox Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Romanians, Istro-Romanians, Megleno-Romanians | |
The Aromanians (Aromanian: Armâńi, Rrămăńi) are an ethnic group native to the southern Balkans, traditionally living in northern and central Greece, central and southern Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, and south-western Bulgaria. Especially in Greece, the term Vlachs is widespread, but this term is internationally used to encompass all Romance-speaking peoples of the Balkans and Tatra Mountains regions, including the modern-day Romanians. "Vlach" is a blanket term covering several modern peoples descending from the Latinized population of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe.
The Aromanians speak the Aromanian language, a Latin-derived language similar to Romanian, which has many slightly varying dialects of its own. It descends from the Vulgar Latin spoken by the Paleo-Balkan peoples subsequent to their Romanization. It is a mix of domestic and Latin language with additional influences from other surrounding languages of the Balkans, such as Bulgarian, Greek, Macedonian, and Albanian.
The term Aromanian derives directly from the Latin Romanus, meaning Roman citizen. The initial a- is a regular epenthetic vowel, occurring when certain consonant clusters are formed, and it is not, as folk etymology sometimes has it, related to the negative or privative a- of Greek (also occurring in Latin words of Greek origin). The term was coined by Gustav Weigand in his 1894 work Die Aromunen. The first book to which many scholars have referred to as the most valuable to translate their ethnical name is a grammar printed in 1813 in Austria by Michael Boiagi. The Greek title was Grammatike Romanike Etoi Makedono-Blachike (Roman or Macedono-Vlach Grammar).
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Wikipedia