Other influences :
The first language to influence the Latin spoken in Dacia was the Dacian
language, but there are only few words in present Romanian that can be related to this
language. Most of those words are related to pastoral life, for example : ”balaur”
(dragon), ”brânză” (cheese) and ”mal” (shore).
While most of Romanian grammar and morphology are based on Latin, there
are some features that are shared only with other languages of the Balkans and not found
in other Romance languages.
The Slavic influences on Romanian are especially noticeable and can be
observed at all linguistic levels: lexis, phonetics, morphology and syntax. About 20% of
Romanian words are of Slavic origin. This is due to the migration of Slavic tribes who
traversed the territory of present-day Romania during the early evolution of the language.
Other small contributions to the Romanian language had: Greek, for example:
”buzunar” (meaning ”pocket”), Hungarian (”oraș” which means ”town”), German
(”cartof” meaning ”potato”) and Turkish (”cafea” meaning ”coffee”).