Romanian is the only Romance language in the Eastern part of Europe. The region was inhabited by Dacians, who are believed to have spoken a Tracian language. However, during the rule of the Roman emperor Traian, the territory was conquered by the Romans who stayed for some time after the conquest and thus, the Romanian language was born.
After their departure, the language was influenced by the Slavs, who came to the area in the seventh century. Some of the words that have been borrowed from the Slavonic language became part of the basic Romanian vocabulary (words depicting notions such as love, work, friend, live, etc.). Starting with the 18th century, the language was influenced by Turkish and Greek. The Turkish influences were mostly limited to the administrative and diplomatic vocabulary and most of these words disappeared from the language during later times.
The oldest document written in Romanian is a letter dating from 1521. It was written with Cyrillic letters, which were in use up until the 19th century, when the modern era of Romanian starts and when the Cyrillic alphabet was replaced by the Latin alphabet. In the 19th century, the language was enriched with massive loans from other Romance languages (mostly from French). This contributed to the increase of the Latin influence on the Romanian language.