a
Romance language continuously occupied the territory claimed by the
Romanian state, thus rendering legitimacy to the claim. The other theory
stresses the absence of a Romance-language-speaking people in
Transylvania at the time of the Magyar immigrations into that region,
thus giving legitimacy to the Hungarian claim to Transylvania.

Whatever their origin, Romanians have occupied the territory of their
present state since the Middle Ages. In 1966 they numbered 16.8 million
and formed the majority population in most of the country (see fig. 5).

Romanian, a Romance language, differs sharply from the languages of
neighboring countries which, with the exception of Hungarian, are all
Slavic tongues. The basis for Romanian seems to be the Vulgar Latin of
ancient Rome. Long contact with Slavic-speaking peoples has left its
mark on the vocabulary but has not affected grammar or syntax, which
remain similar to those of other Romance languages. The vocabulary of
literary Romanian is more purely of Latin origin than that of the spoken
dialects. Frequently, parallel words of Latin and Slavic derivation
exist for an object or concept and are used interchangeably. Turkish,
Albanian, Hungarian, and German have also influenced the vocabulary of
the spoken language in various parts of the country.

[Illustration: Source: Adapted from Ian M. Matley, Romania: A
Profile, New York, 1970, p. 276.

_Figure 5. Romania, Distribution of Ethnic Groups, 1966._]

Hungarians

In the 1966 census Hungarians numbered 1.6 million, constituting 8.4
percent of the total population. Since 1947, when Romania acquired its
present borders, the number of Hungarians within its borders has
remained relatively stable, although their percentage in the total
population has been declining.

Hungarians form the majority population in parts of Transylvania and in
pockets along the Hungarian border. They form a significant minority of
the population in the rest of Transylvania and in the Banat region. In
1952 the area of greatest Hungarian concentration in eastern
Transylvania was designated the Hungarian Autonomous Region
(Mures-Magyar) and was given considerable degree of self-government to
deal with complaints of political and cultural oppression by Romanians.
The region was eliminated in the administrative reorganization of 1968
(see ch. 9).

In 1971 it was estimated that slightly more than half of Romania's
Hungarian minority still lived in r