INALCO and a professor of Romanian honoured with the Romanian Order of Cultural Merit

The medal presentation ceremony took place at the Romanian Embassy (7th arrondissement, Paris), in the presence of the Romanian Ambassador to France, Ioana Bivolaru, Delphine Allès, acting director of INALCO, and Alexandru Mardale, professor of Romanian language and linguistics and head of the Romanian Studies section at INALCO.

On this occasion, the award winners traced the history of the Institute’s contribution to mutual understanding between France and Romania since 1875, a year marked by the launch of the first Romanian language course by Émile Picot at the School of Oriental Languages, whilst paying tribute to the work and collective commitment of their Romanian and French colleagues over the decades, right up to the current teaching team.
 

Delphine Allès’s acceptance speech

 Excerpt from Delphine Allès’s speech

“ As this is a time for paying tribute, I would also like to highlight a particular strength of the Romanian Studies Department, namely that its lecturers form a wonderful, Franco-Romanian, multidisciplinary and close-knit, which makes wonderful collective projects possible – the celebration of the department’s anniversary being a magnificent illustration of this... and the result of which is also this award, which pays tribute to all the work of this team and that of its predecessors, who must also regard it as their own.

I shall conclude by saying, Madam Ambassador (Mr Counsellor), because it is particularly important to us at INALCO, that the teaching of Romanian, like that of other languages at INALCO, has a twofold distinctive feature that we hold dear and which makes our model particularly unique and valuable:
on the one hand, we interweave language teaching with that of the humanities and social sciences, and we are convinced that it is this interweaving that enables us to understand a society, its historical depth and its debates; on the other hand, the Romanian Studies section forms part of our Department of European Studies, which is also very much in evidence here this evening. The Department of European Studies awards degrees in 16 languages of the European Union and its neighbouring regions, amongst which Romanian interacts with neighbouring languages – Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Baltic and Balkan languages, and this is what makes INALCO, in its own way, a fully-fledged contributor to linguistic diversity and mutual understanding within a Europe that sorely needs to understand one another in order to remain united.

I wanted to highlight this dual distinction because it lends a very special value and identity to the institution that the President of Romania has seen fit to honour, and we are particularly pleased to receive this recognition at a time when the importance of the humanities and social sciences must be championed. ”

Alexandru Mardale’s acceptance speech

Excerpt from Alexandru Mardale’s speech

“ It is a great honour and an extremely moving moment to receive the medal of the Order of ‘Cultural Merit’ today.

To see that my efforts – that our efforts (those of the entire teaching team) – are recognised by this distinction awarded by the highest institution of the Romanian State, the Presidential Administration, represents not only professional recognition but also a source of personal satisfaction, which I accept with great humility.

The motto of this order – Prin cultură la libertate – takes on a very special meaning when we speak of the Romanian language and its promotion beyond the country’s borders. Languages are not merely sets of grammatical rules; they are not just a means of communication in the strict sense of the term; they also represent the realm of our spiritual freedom; they are our identity, our history and, above all, a bridge between people and between nations.

Promoting the Romanian language in France – a country with which Romania has maintained historic ties of friendship and diplomacy (for 145 years now), as well as such deep cultural and intellectual bonds – is a mission that is particularly close to my heart.

Carrying out this mission at INALCO is a great responsibility, not only because INALCO is a prestigious institution offering Romanian studies rooted in a long historical tradition, but also because we are currently – alas, and despite ourselves! – the only institution in France (and perhaps in Europe) that offers a comprehensive programme in Romanian.”

150 years of teaching Romanian at INALCO

This honour follows the celebration of 150 years of Romanian language teaching at INALCO, organised in autumn 2025, with the support of the Europe-Eurasia Research Centre (CREE, Inalco) and the CNRS IRN project ‘Heritage Languages’, led by the SFL laboratory at the University of Paris 8, the Romanian Embassy in France and the Maison Jidvei.

Further reading: 150 years after the first Romanian language course in France: a retrospective look at Romanian studies at the Langues O’ in Paris (Cécile Folschweiller, Irina Gridan, Alexandru Mardale)