The language is a part of the so-called "Balkan language community", sharing common features with Bulgarian, Greek and Albanian languages, though it comes from another Indo-European group. Greek and Bulgarian influence are much stronger than in other East Romance languages, for Aromanian speakers (about 100,000 by now) live in Macedonia, Greece, Albania and Bulgaria, south to Romanians and Istroromanians. But still the language keeps features that do not let us make a mistake - it's Romance. The lexical composition though rich in Greek, Slavic and Turkish borrowings, remains Romance.
The morphology disagrees more with other descendants of Latin. The article is put to the end of the word; both definite and indefinite articles can be declined. The noun has not only masculine and feminine, but also common (or neuter) gender, keeping here due to Slavic influence. On the other hand, the sequence of tenses is absolutely absent.
Nowadays the number of Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians (in Greece) steadily decreases, and their languages are sometimes cannot be revived because of the policy of states where those peoples live. Nevertheless, Aromanian has much more chances to survive comparing to Istroromanian language (nearly 1,000 speakers) or Megleno-Romanian dialect (20,000).
