Annals of Philosophy, Social and Human Disciplines (Jun 2014)
From Romanian to “Rumanol”: linguistic confusions in native Romanian spoken by children born in Spain
Abstract
After Romania joined the European Union in 2007, a massive wave of Romanian immigrants reached the Western countries in search for work, and the most significant migration took place in the Spanish kingdom. They were not the first Romanians to arrive in Spain, so they added their number to that of those who immigrated before, in the two decades after the fall of the Communist regime. Many Romanian children were born in Spain, so when they reached school age, they were at best bilingual; nevertheless, there are children who need to take Romanian classes in school, as they chose not to learn their native tongue at home. Our article analyzes the ways Spanish influence their pronunciation and orthography of Romanian, based on test papers and homework that demonstrate the level of confusion produced in these children by their bilingualism, with Castilian being their first choice of language.
