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Concept
Vlachs
Summary
Vlach (pronˈvlɑːx or ˈvlæk), also Wallachian (and many other variants), is a term and exonym used from the Middle Ages until the Modern Era to designate speakers of Eastern Romance languages living in Southeast Europe — south of the Danube (the Balkan peninsula) and north of the Danube. The same name is still used in Polish(Włochy, Włosi, włoskie) and Hungarian (Olasz, Olaszország, Olasz) as an exonym for Italy, Italians and Italians, while in Slovakian (Vlasi), Czech (Vlachy) and Slovenian (Laško, Láh, Láhinja, laško) it was replaced with the endonym Italia.
Although it has also been used to name present-day Romanians, the term "Vlach" today refers primarily to speakers of the Balkan Romance languages who live south of the Danube, in Albania, Bulgaria, northern Greece, North Macedonia and eastern Serbia. These people include the ethnic groups of the Aromanians, the Megleno-Romanians and, in Serbia, the Timok Romanians. The term also became a synonym in the Balkans for the social category of shepherds, and was also used for non-Romance-speaking peoples, in recent times in the western Balkans derogatively. The term is also used to refer to the ethnographic group of Moravian Vlachs who speak a Slavic language but originate from Romanians, as well as for Morlachs and Istro-Romanians.
According to one origin theory, modern Romanians, Moldovans and Aromanians originated from Dacians. According to some linguists and scholars, the Eastern Romance languages prove the survival of the Thraco-Romans in the lower Danube basin during the Migration Period. On the other hand, most non-Romanian historian believe that Romanians, Moldovans, Aromanians and other Eastern Romance groups originated in the southern Balkans, what is now North-Macedonia, Kosovo, and Thessaly and migrated north from there from the 11th-12th centuries onwards.
Currently, Eastern Romance-speaking communities are estimated at 26–30 million people worldwide (including the Romanian diaspora and Moldovan diaspora).
Official source
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