Vira_ said:
Are the Romanians Slavs?
If not, what origins do they have?
It seems strange to me that all countries around Romania are classified as Slavic, but Romania is not.
Maybe they mean Slavic in the linguistic context.
What can you tell me about the Slavic people and the Romanian people (on a racial level)?
They're quite a mix. Linguistically-speaking, no, Romanian is not a Slavic language but a Romance, (lol...name "Romania" literally means "of Rome/Romans"). However, because of the centuries-long ties and interactions with the Slavic-speaking world of Russia, Serbia and Bulgaria, it has absorbed heavy Slavic influence to the point where the average person wouldn't even suspect it to be related to Spanish or Portuguese or Italian and etc., and the "pan-Orthodox" alliance with Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia against the Ottomans surely played it role. I remember hearing a Russian do a cover of the infamous "Dragostea din Tei" song, guy sounded like a native Romanian due to the large influences of Slavic languages on Romanian. I too, thought that Romanian was Slavic or Germanic upon first hearing that song by the original singers (O-Zone). The same can probably be said of their descent, I think they're originally Latinic or Western European in origin, but started getting Slavic ancestry via intermarriages. I remember having a Romanian professor, I thought she was Russian because of her accent, demeanor and appearance (I notice Eastern Europeans tend to have a much more "tough masculine" demeanor than their soft Western European counterparts, probably as a result of harsh experiences living under a communist bloc).
That being said, country border don't necessitate ancestry. Not even all Slavic-speaking countries themselves are even "full Slav" in origin, many of Russia's people are Germanic or mixed Slav-Asiatic (Turkic/Mongolic) in reality, or the Balkan "Slavs" being Turkic (Ottoman) or Gypsies, but were linguistically-assimilated, due to nationalistic ideals. Take most of the Romanovs, or Maria Shaparova and Anna Kournikova, or even Viktoria Azarenka (Belarus) for example, these are all from Slavic-speaking countries, are Slavic-speakers, but are clearly Germanic. The "Russian population" of northern Kazakhstan too is in reality, are of Germanic descent but lost their German identities. As to why such a high German presence in Russia, another topic for another post.
I can imagine Romania could have large population of assimilated Slavic descent, though no longer speaking a Slavic language. Communities of Serbs, Bulgarians, Russians and Rusyns still live in Romania though, many of them actually being native-generations and not as a result of modern migration.