The Great National Dictation – a Romanian language competition organised by the Ministry of Education and Research (MEC) – has started. The event takes place in the square in front of the National Opera and Ballet Theatre “Maria Biesu”.

“Today, 31 August 2023, 34 years after hundreds of thousands of people demanded in the Great National Assembly Square the declaration of Romanian as a state language and the transition to Latin spelling, we have the joy of celebrating our language in the most beautiful way. A few hundred people will write freely in Romanian today, with respect for correct spelling and love for the language of our nation.

But it was not always like this. During the Soviet period, our people were deprived of the right to self-determination, but also of the right to the Romanian language, in order to deprive us of our national identity and to mutilate our national consciousness. You could have been denigrated, threatened, removed from office or even had a criminal record for speaking your language.

Until 1989, in the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic we wrote in the Cyrillic alphabet and the use of the Latin alphabet was considered a violation of the law. Romanian literature was forbidden. To read a poem in Romanian was a crime!

However, students, writers, artists, mathematicians, teachers had the courage and loudly demanded the right to language, to the future and the dignity of the nation.

I would like to honour those who brought the Romanian language back to our land – poets, writers, composers, actors, singers and teachers. The names of many are in our textbooks and must remain in our history – Grigore Vieru, Valentin Mândâcanu, Vladimir Beșleagă, Spiridon Vangheli, Lică Sainciuc, Dumitru Matcovschi, Ion and Doina Aldea Teodorovici, Nicolae Mătcaș, Ion Dumeniuk and many more!

But we don’t even know many of them. Who are the young people who risked being arrested for reciting a poem on the Alley of Classics? Or the teachers who passed on the Romanian language and taught hundreds of thousands of children to speak and write correctly after its return to schools? They deserve our applause and gratitude (…).

(…) There are no inferior or superior peoples, there are no inferior or superior languages, as they would have us believe for years. The Romanian language has its rightful place among the states of the world. Together with more than twenty-seven million other people around the world, we in Moldova speak Romanian, one of the official languages of the European Union.

In the European Union, where we want to take Moldova, the Romanian language has a respected place and no one risks being punished for speaking in their own language. In the European Union all languages and all citizens are equal. I have faith in the generations growing up now – you will turn Moldova into a European state, with pride in our traditions, culture and language”.

At around 09:00, registration of participants began.

The finalists of the Great National Dictation will be awarded in early September.

The text proposed to the participants of the Great National Dictation will be selected on the basis of an essay competition on the theme “Why Moldova should be part of the European Union”. The dictation will also include a text on the Romanian language.

“The topic of the essay – “Why Moldova should be part of the European Union” was not chosen by chance. It fully reflects our European aspirations and is a way of reaffirming that the Republic of Moldova must become a member of the European Union, that we have the potential to contribute and strengthen our participation in the great European family and we hope to open negotiations with the EU at the end of this year. It is also in this context that the topic of the essay was chosen,” said Minister of Education and Research Dan Perciun.

The five best essays will be awarded book vouchers and the first place winner will also receive a Presidency Diploma.