Nicolae Grigorişin, the mayor of Bălţi city, in the Republic of Molodva, needed a translator at the meeting with Japan’s ambassador in the country.

Ambassador Masanobu Yoshii spoke Romanian but the Molodovan official required a translator to convert what the ambassador was saying into Russian, Radio Chişinău and TV Balti reported, quoted by Mediafax.

The Japanese diplomat took up his post in Moldova in 2016 and has learned Romanian since.

The mayor was born in the Republic of Moldova, where Moldovan is the official language. Last year, two commissions of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova passed a legislative initiative to modify an article in the Moldovan constitution that replaces the phrase Moldovan language with Romanian language. Romanian would replace the phrasing “Moldavian language with Latin writing.”

In 2013, the country’s Constitutional Court decided that Romanian is the correct name of the state language in the Republic of Moldova.

editor@romania-insider.com