Moldavian charters

Moldavian charters [Молдавські грамоти; Moldavski hramoty]. Documents composed from the mid-14th to the mid-17th centuries in Moldavian principality. Written in Middle Ukrainian, which shows the influence of Middle Bulgarian and Romanian Slavonic spelling, these charters are important sources for the history of the Ukrainian language. Most of the materials used in Slovnyk staroukraïns'koï movy XIV–XV st. (Dictionary of Old Ukrainian of the 14th and 15th centuries, 1977) is drawn from them. From the mid-17th century, Ukrainian was replaced with Romanian and Greek in Moldavian diplomacy. The language of the charters, particularly those of the 14th and 15th centuries, was studied by A. Yatsimirsky (1904) and Volodymyr H. Yaroshenko (1931).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]