Tsaruhiazvarna VlachoVlachu

SAVE AROMANIAN LANGUAGE

The Aromanians, or Vlachs, of the Balkans are an elusive tribe of disputed Roman, Dacian, Greek and Illyrian origins. A nomadic shepherding people, they endlessly traversed the woodlands of Southeastern Europe for hundreds of years. Many in the early 20th century began to take up permanent residence in small villages, engulfed by the Pindus Mountains.
The Aromanian language in itself is an Eastern Romance language with many syntactic similarities to Romanian, and many lexical similarities to Greek.
Most Aromanians are located in Northern Greece, parts of Romania, southern Albania, and the FYROM.
However the use of Aromanian is slowly dying out, making it an endangered language. As with many European minorities, this is due to the process of steady assimilation into the surrounding superstrate cultures/national entities.
Recently, there have been movements by local groups and by government in Romania and Greece to promote Aromanian as a heritage language.

The term Vlach is an exonym, modified from the Germanic word "Wallach", meaning "foreigner". Most Vlachs prefer to call themselves "Aromâni". Other exonmic terms used: Çobani (Albania), Tsintsari (Serbia), Ulahlar (Turkey), Βλάχοι (Greece).

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