The Romanian alphabet is a variant of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Romanian language. It consists of 31 letters, Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, 1998, Z is the thirty first letter of the Romanian alphabet, dexonline.roAcademia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române, Editura Univers Enciclopedic, București, 2005, pp. XXVII–XXVIII five of which (Ă, Â, Î, Ș, and Ț) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language.
Letter Name Aa a Ăă ă Ââ î din a Bb be / bî Cc ce / cî Dd de / dî Ee e Ff ef / fe / fî Gg ge / ghe / gî Hh haș / ha / hî Ii i Îî î din i Jj je / jî Kk ka / kapa Ll el / le / lî Mm em / me / mî Nn en / ne / nî Oo o Pp pe / pî Qq chiu () Rr er / re / rî Ss es / se / sî Șș șe / șî Tt te / tî Țț țe / țî Uu u Vv ve / vî Ww dublu ve / dublu vî Xx iks Yy igrec Zz ze / zet / zed / zî
The letters Q (chiu), W (dublu ve), and Y (igrec or i grec, meaning "Greek i") were formally introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982, although they had been used earlier. They occur only in foreign words and their Romanian derivatives, such as quasar, watt, and yoga. The letter K, although relatively older, is also rarely used and appears only in proper names and international neologisms such as kilogram, broker, karate. Academia Română, Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, Entry for K, Editura Univers Enciclopedic, 1998, dexonline.ro These four letters are still perceived as foreign, which explains their usage for stylistic purposes in words such as nomenklatură (normally nomenclatură, meaning "nomenclature", but sometimes spelled with k instead of c if referring to members of the Communist leadership in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries, as nomenklatura is used in English).Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române, 2nd Edition, Univers Enciclopedic Publishing House, Bucharest, 2005, , p. XXIX
Most of the <qu> and <y> in learned Latin words (or Greek words via Latin) are replaced by <cu/cv> and <i> respectively (e.g. ecuație "equation", acvariu "aquarium", oxigen "oxygen"). However, the <y> is retained in ytriu ("yttrium") and yterbiu ("ytterbium"), probably because of the element symbols Y and Yb.
In cases where the word is a direct borrowing having diacritical marks not present in the above alphabet, official spelling tends to favor their use (München, Angoulême etc., as opposed to the use of Istanbul over İstanbul).
History
Until the mid-19th century, Romanian was generally written with the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet derived from Church Slavonic, which was used in both Wallachia and Moldavia. During the 19th century a Latin-based transitional alphabet that mixed Cyrillic and Latin letters came into use, and in 1862 the authorities of the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia decreed the full replacement of Cyrillic with the Latin alphabet for official Romanian language publications. However, from 1938-1989 under the Soviet influence, Soviet law required the use of the Cyrillic alphabet, but only in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic which soon fell out of use when the Soviet Union collapsed.
In the 20th century several spelling reforms modified the inventory and distribution of letters. A 1904 reform reduced the earlier use of multiple circumflex letters to just ⟨Â⟩ and ⟨Î⟩, while later reforms in 1953, 1964 and 1993 changed when each of these two letters is used to write the phoneme (see Î versus  below). The modern 31-letter inventory was fixed in 1982, when the letters Q, W and Y—previously used only in loanwords and proper names—were officially recognized as part of the Romanian alphabet.
Letters and their pronunciation Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române, 2nd Edition, Univers Enciclopedic Publishing House, Bucharest, 2005, , p. XXIX–XXXVI
Romanian spelling is mostly phonemic without silent letters (but see i). The table below gives the correspondence between letters and sounds. Some of the letters have several possible readings, even if allophones are not taken into account. When vowels , , , and are changed into their corresponding semivowels, this is not marked in writing. Letters K, Q, W, and Y appear only in foreign borrowings; the pronunciation of W and Y and of the combination QU depends on the origin of the word they appear in.
Letter Phoneme Approximate pronunciation A a a in "father" Ă ă (a with breve) a in "above" Â â (a with circumflex) the close central unrounded vowel as heard, for example, in the last syllable of the word roses for some English speakers B b b in "ball" C c c in "scan" ch in "chip" — if c appears before letters e or i (but not î); in this case, e and i are usually not pronounced in the combinations: cea (cia in some loanwords), cio, ciu and in word-final ci if not accented D d d in "dancing" E e e in "merry" , before a or o — semivocalic ; if not preceded by a consonant becomes , ye in "yes" — in a few old words with initial e: este, el etc. Several Romanian dictionaries specify the pronunciation [je] for word-initial letter e in some personal pronouns: el, ei, etc. and in some forms of the verb a fi (to be): este, eram, etc. F f f in "flag" G g g in "goat" g in "general" — if g appears before letters e or i (but not î); in this case, e and i are usually not pronounced in the combinations: gea (gia in some loanwords), gio (geo in some loanwords), giu and in word-final gi if not accented H h (, , ) ch in Scottish "loch" or h in English "ha!" or more usually a subtle mix of the two (that is, not so guttural as the Scottish loch.) no pronunciation if h appears between letters c or g and e or i (che, chi, ghe, ghi); c and g are palatalized I i i in "machine" y in "yes" Indicates palatalization of the preceding consonant (when word-final and unstressed, in some compounds like oricum, and in the combinations chia, chio, chiu, ghia, ghio, ghiu) Î î (i with circumflex) Identical to Â, see above, used at the beginning and at the end of the word for etymological reasons, ex. "to learn" = "a învăța"; "to kill" = "a omorî" J j s in "treasure" K k c in "scan" (palatalized before e and i) L l l in "limp" M m m in "mouth" N n n in "north" O o o in "floor" , before a — semivocalic ; if not preceded by a consonant becomes P p p in "spot" Q q c in "scan" (qu is pronounced , , or ) R r alveolar trill or tap S s s in "song" Ș ș (s with comma) * sh in "shopping" T t t in "stone" Ț ț (t with comma) * ts in "cats" U u u in "group" w in "cow" French u or German ü (close front rounded vowel) — in some loanwords from French: ecru, tul V v v in "vision" W w v in "vision" w in "west" oo in "spoon" X x x in "six" x in "example" Y y i in "machine" y in "yes" Z z z in "zipper"
* See Comma-below (ș and ț) versus cedilla (ş and ţ).
Special letters
Romanian orthography does not use accents or diacritics – these are secondary symbols added to letters (i.e. basic glyphs) to alter their pronunciation or to distinguish between words. There are, however, five special letters in the Romanian alphabet (associated with four different sounds) which are formed by modifying other Latin letters; strictly speaking these letters function as basic glyphs in their own right rather than letters with diacritical marks, but they are often referred to as the latter.
Ă ă — a with breve – for the sound  ⠗ a with circumflex – for the sound Î î — i with circumflex – for the sound Ș ș — s with comma – for the sound Ț ț — t with comma – for the sound
The letter â is used exclusively in the middle of words; its majuscule version appears only in all-capitals inscriptions.
Writing letters ș and ț with a cedilla instead of a comma is considered incorrect by the Romanian Academy. Romanian writings, including books created to teach children to write, treat the comma and cedilla as a variation in font. See Unicode and HTML below.
Î versus  The letters î and â are phonetically and functionally identical. The reason for using both of them is historical, denoting the language's Latin origin.
For a few decades until a spelling reform in 1904, as many as four or five letters had been used for the same phoneme (â, ê, î, û, and occasionally ô, see Removed Letters), according to an etymological rule., 1992, No. 10, p. 531 All were used to represent the vowel , toward which the original Latin vowels written with circumflexes had converged. The 1904 reform saw only two letters remaining, â and î, the choice of which followed rules that changed several times during the 20th century.
During the first half of the century the rule was to use î in word-initial and word-final positions, and â everywhere else. There were exceptions, imposing the use of î in internal positions when words were combined or derived with prefixes or suffixes. For example, the adjective "ugly" was written with î because it derives from the verb "to hate".
In 1953, during the Communist era, the Romanian Academy eliminated the letter â, replacing it with î everywhere, including the name of the country, which was to be spelled . The first stipulation coincided with the official designation of the country as a People's Republic, which meant that its full title was . A minor spelling reform in 1964 brought back the letter â, but only in the spelling of "Romanian" and all its derivatives, including the name of the country. As such, the Socialist Republic proclaimed in 1965 is associated with the spelling .