Moves are afoot to rename the language of Moldova Romanian rather than Moldovan, according to this report.
The Moldovan Prime Minister believes that the “Moldovan people speak in Romanian like Americans speak in English. The national language can be renamed in the future from Moldovan to Romanian”.
While the main language they speak in Moldova is not exactly the same as the Romanian of Romania, it can be considered a dialect of Romanian, according to the government in Bucharest.
Arguments over whether Moldovans speak Moldovan or Romanian have been bubbling away at least since the country became independent in 1991. When independence was declared the official language was named as Romanian, but the 1994 constitution named Moldovan as the the national language of Moldova. In 1996 a proposal by the Moldovan President to refer to the Moldovan national language as Romanian was dismissed by the parliament, and the 2004 census found that 60% of Moldovans thought of their language as Moldovan, while only 16% thought of it as Romanian.
Before 1989 Moldovan / Romanian in Moldova was written with the Cyrillic alphabet. Since then it has been written with the Latin alphabet, except in the Transdniestrian region, where the population is mainly Russian and Ukrainian they still use Cyrillic.
Moldova was part of Romania before it was taken over by the Soviet Union after the Second World War, and recently has began seeking closely ties with Romania.