Old Romanian
The literary stage begins with the oldest preserved Romanian writings such as Neacșu's letter and the Rhotacizing Texts.
Before the 11th century,[4] Common Romanian split in two geographically separated groups due to the settlement of Slavs in the area and the formation of the South Slavic states.
[9] The Rhotacizing Texts [note 1] are religious writings from Moldavia and carry evidence of being translations of manuscripts written in the other languages used in the Banat-Hunedoara area.
[12] Probably drawing from Letopisețul de la Bistrița, a manuscript in Old Church Slavonic narrating main Moldavian events from 1359 up to 1519,[13] the nobleman Grigore Ureche (ca.
[14] His work was continued by Miron Costin and Ion Neculce, and it peaked with Dimitrie Cantemir who was the first to write a biography, and a novel (Istoria ieroglifică)[10] in Romanian.
[16] The use of Romanian in the 16th century in juridical and administrative spheres was sporadic and only gradually implemented from the reign of Michael the Brave.
[17] The printing press was introduced to Wallachia during the reign of Radu IV the Great (1467 - 1508), and placed in Târgoviște then the capital of the country.
[18] The first printing house in Transylvania was established by magistrate Theobaldus Gryphius at Sibiu, a city that was experiencing the Lutheran reform.
[19] Less than 20 years after, Deacon Coresi will print at Brașov a series of books[note 2] in Romanian, along with others in Old Church Slavonic.
[21] Numerous printing houses functioned, either intermittently or continuously, over the next two centuries in cities like Alba Iulia, Brașov, Bucharest, Buzău, Câmpulung, Cluj-Napoca, Iași, Sebeș, Sibiu, Snagov, and Târgoviște.
Modern Romanian constructions lack the equivalent of French il and English it in such cases: Venise atunci vremea troianilor să piară.
Grammar of functional elements such as lui stabilised to their current form together with other form-distribution specialization such as of demonstratives acesta,acela.
The old language also showed the proliferation of numerous tense and aspect periphrases with a decreasing frequency towards the end of the period.
The more numerous forms at the beginning of the Old Romanian period were the simple past (Scriș eu, călugărița Mariia) but gradually a distinction between "impersonal narration" and "discourse" develops with the two forms used in the same context to express the two different interpretations: În lume era, și lumea pren el s-au făcut, și lumea pe el nu cunoscu.
As in the other examples there was a synthetic conditional, similar to the future subjunctive in the Ibero-Romance languages and formed by the perfect root followed by the suffix -re introduced by the particle să which could produce unique periphrases: Se fure faptu păcatu - "If he has committed sin".
[29][30] The effects of the standardization of the language did not only bring it closer to other Romance languages but also, haphazardly, strengthened some Slavic features, for example the particle da of Slavic origin (most likely Bulgarian and corresponding to English yes, French oui and so on) used mostly in the Wallachian dialect and which appears in Romanian language texts from the early nineteenth century, replaced Old Romanian methods of indicating agreement or acceptance through non-specialised words such as așa, adevărat, bine or the repetition of the verb in the question (for example "Ai văzut pe Ion?"
