Romanian dialects

Most recent works seem to favor a number of three clear dialects, corresponding to the regions of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Banat (all of which actually extend into Transylvania), and an additional group of varieties covering the remainder of Transylvania, two of which are more clearly distinguished, in Crișana and Maramureș, that is, a total of five.

Nonetheless, common working conventions arise in particular cases and contexts, and for the purposes of this article, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian are considered separate languages from Romanian rather than dialects of it.

Early dialectal studies of Romanian tended to divide the language according to administrative regions, which in turn were usually based on historical provinces.

The criteria given the most weight in establishing the dialectal classification were the regular phonetic features, in particular phenomena such as palatalization, monophthongization, vowel changes, etc.

One example is the Gumuțeasca, spoken by the people of the commune of Mărgău so outsiders could not understand them on their way to bigger cities to sell their traditional glass products.