. The event is taking place in the square in front of the "Maria Bieșu" National Opera and Ballet Theatre.){kind=link}
The National Great Dictation has begun – a competition for knowledge of the Romanian language, organized by the Ministry of Education and Research (MEC). The event is taking place in the square in front of the “Maria Bieșu” National Opera and Ballet Theatre.
President Maia Sandu is giving a speech at the opening of the event:
“Today, August 31, 2023, after 34 years since hundreds of thousands of people demanded in the Great National Assembly Square the recognition of the Romanian language as the official language and the transition to the Latin script, we have the joy of celebrating our language in the most beautiful way. Several hundred people will write today in the Romanian language freely, with respect for correct writing and love for the language of our people.
However, it wasn’t always like this. During the Soviet period, our people were deprived of the right to self-determination and the right to the Romanian language, in order to strip us of our national identity and mutilate our sense of belonging. You could be denigrated, threatened, dismissed from your job, or even face criminal charges for speaking your own language.
Until 1989, in the Moldavian 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. Reading a poem in the Romanian language was a crime!
However, students, writers, artists, mathematicians, teachers had the courage and loudly demanded the right to language, to a future, and to the dignity of their people.
I would like to honor those who brought the Romanian language back to our land – poets, writers, composers, actors, singers, and teachers. Many of their names are present 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!
However, we don’t even know many of them. Who are the young people who risked arrest for reciting a poem on the Alley of the Classics? Or the teachers who taught the Romanian language and helped hundreds of thousands of children speak and write correctly after its reintroduction in schools? They deserve our applause and gratitude.
(…) There are no inferior or superior peoples, there are no inferior or superior languages, as they tried to make us believe for years. The Romanian language has its rightful place among the nations of the world. Alongside over twenty-seven million other people across the globe, in the Republic of Moldova, we speak the Romanian language, one of the official languages of the European Union.
In the European Union, where we want to take the Republic of Moldova, the Romanian language holds a respected position, and no one risks being punished for speaking their own language. In the European Union, all languages and all citizens are equal. I have confidence in the generations growing up now – you will transform Moldova into a European state, with pride in our traditions, culture, and language.”