NBS: 48% of the Country’s Residents Speak Moldovan, 32% – Romanian

The share of those who indicated Romanian as their native language increased from 22.6% in 2014 to 31.8% in 2024, according to the final results of the 2024 Population Census presented by the National Bureau of Statistics. At the same time, 48.1% of census participants stated that their native language is Moldovan. This figure has decreased by 7.4 percentage points compared to ten years earlier. In total, 79.9% of the citizens of the Republic of Moldova indicated Romanian or Moldovan as their native language, agora.md reports. Russian remains the main language of national minorities: 11.6% of the population named it as their native language, and 15.9% reported using it regularly. This represents an increase of more than two percentage points compared to 2014. It is followed by Gagauz – 3.6%, Ukrainian – 3%, Bulgarian – 1.2%, and Romani – 0.3%. In urban areas, Romanian predominates – 55% consider it their main language, as do 80.5% for Russian and 73.2% for Romani, while in rural areas Moldovan (67.3%) and Gagauz (60.9%) are predominant.