From all the youtube postings that I've heard, I've notice the pretty strong difference between the Romanian and Moldovan accents. Romanian tends to lean much more towards the other Romance languages in terms of pronunciation (especially Italian) while Moldovan really sounds like it has a pronunciation closer to Russian. Can Romanians understand Moldovan despite the difference in pronunciation? Or is it like the situation between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese which without some type of exposure, understanding of spoken language can be limited (as we have noted from another forum, European Portuguese can sound much more Slavic than standard Romanian despite the distance).
Can Romanians understand Moldovans?
Yes, they can. I spoke some Romanian (just basic stuff) to a Moldavian and she understood it. It's Romanian, really.
Yes, they can. There is a north-south divide in terms of Romanian dialects, with Moldavia included in the north. So for example, someone from Moldavia and someone from northern Romania sound exactly the same, but someone from Bucharest sounds a bit different. But it's all the same language, with the differences being hardly larger than American vs. British English.
Romanian and Moldovan is the same language,as Dutch of Netherlands and Flemish.