On the origins of Romanian language

Hi Dragos,

I thought that there was no written evidence of the Romanian language until the Middle Ages. If this is so, what are the sources for such words as "voievodate", "voievozi", "criezate", "criezi", etc.? In structure, the two former look as though they may be related to the Slavic root word for "leader".

Cheers,

Sid.

According to the DEX, the words cneaz and voievod are indeed of Slavic origin. Pheraps because they were first mentioned in Slavic/Orthodox chronicles?

http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=cneaz&source=

http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=voievod&source=

No, probably the earliest written evidence of romanian language is an inscription at Basarabi-Murfatlar dated to 992 A.D.

80% of romanian language lexicon is made up of latin words, and 15% of slavic ones. 160-170 ones have been identified to be dacian.

take care

Hi Imperialist,

Does the 80%-15% ratio refer to today's Romanian language or to the Romanian language before French grammarians began to root out Slavic loan words and replace them with Latin-derived words in the early 19th Century?

At the same time the Bulgarians were employing Russian grammarians to root out Latin-derived words and replace them with Slavic words. This "purification" of languages in order to reinforce national identities is a widespread phenomenon, even today.

Cheers,

Sid.

Hahaha...
Thats funny. So what you are implying is that the 80% of the latin words of Romanian lexicon were the result of purification of slavic words and the creation of latin-derived words! Its linguistically erroneous. Most latin words present in Romanian language are basic words. Caine, paine, casa, camp, lana, mana, avere etc. They are not the product of latin-derived invention in the 19th century...

Again, I see you see everything connected to national identity the result of a conspiracy to enforce that national identity.

BTW, the so-called Latinists that tried to introduce newly invented latin-french-derived words for the commonly used words in the 19th century did not succeed. Somehow people continued to call a matchstick "chibrit", not "de-parete-frecatoriu" like the french influenced latinists tried to propose. "De-parete-frecatoriu" was totally ludicrous. Languages cannot be purified, people cannot be made to use some invented words while they have an easier alternative at hand. Not to mention when they complicate the language unnecessarily.

An example, please.

take care

LMAO ! That is a good joke come on, see the big picture - abyone belives that those frenchie (who weren't even french, it was a romanian movement aimed at pointing out the latin origin of our language and NOT replacing ti with a latin one) so how would those "french grammarians" teach the sheppard far in the mountains, a new language ? You should come to Romania and visit all parts of it - you will notice there is only one language spoken as oposed to other countries, we have no dialect - however people from different parts of the country speak with different accent but they do speak same language = no one taught the peasants and sheppards a new language in 100 years.. lets be serious.

This post has been edited by D13-th_Mytzu on August 12, 2005 12:07 pm

Hi Imperialist,

Nope. I implied nothing. I asked you an open question. Furthermore, you haven't answered it.

You want examples of language purification? How about place names? A couple of years ago Bombay was changed to Mumbai. Twenty years ago Salisbury became Harare. What is Cetatea Alba called today? When did -Napoca get added to Cluj?

How about the Academie Francaise? It has a linguistic section that spends much of its time fighting the importation of English words. For example, a couple of decades ago the French public apparently adopted their own word for a female TV announcer - "speakerine". The academy squeezed it out as too Anglo-Saxon, even though the word doesn't actually exist in English. Other words resisted were "drugstore", "computer" and "bulldozer". Personally I don't blame the French for this, but one cannot pretend that language purification is not happening.

Is there an equivalent "Academia Romana"? If so, does it have similar linguistic police duties?

In Romania, wasn't there a deliberate effort to keep the spelling of Romania with an "a" even though a change in orthography in the rest of the language would have spelt in with an "i"? (i.e. as in vinatori/vanatori?). (An open question, because I may be wrong on this one).

In Moldova they returned from Cyrillic to Latin script only a decade ago.

Language purification is going on all the time.

Cheers,

Sid.

You implied that

At the same time with what? With the romanians purifying their language, right? I was referring to you implying the fact that it was a common thing, and the romanians were doing and at the same time, the bulgarians.

As for the open question I think I did answer. If it wasnt clear, the answer was no.

Harare, Mumbai. Give me a break! You talked about language purification.
And you talked about the bulk 80% of latin words in the Romanian language, not place names. Place names are not common nouns whose origin can be traced to Latin, nor are they 80% of romanian lexicon.

Fighting the "importation" of new words is not only futile, but it also has nothing to do with what you asked in your original question. You referred to the invention and introduction of new latin-derived words supposed to replace existing words.
THAT has nothing to do with trying to preserve the language THAT is an outright accusation of INVENTING/manufacturing the language.

Again, this is a long shot from custom-building new words to suit some political goal in the 19th century. Your example is about phonetics, not lexicon.

Ha! And who brought in the Cyrillic? Was that some kind of natural event too, like everything else that happens to a romanian...?

It doesnt work. And it the kind of purification you meant in the original post doesnt happen.

take care

Hi Imperialist,

I think I may reasonably claim that I am the greater authority on what I implied than you are. After all, I did write the question in the first place. Will you be answering it?

As I understand it, in the 19th century both Romanians and Bulgarians employed foreign scholars (in the former case French, in the latter case Russian) to help construct their first grammars and dictionaries because they lacked such specialists themselves. Is this not so?

Many place name changes ARE language purification. For example, Bombay was just an English rendition of Mumbai, it was not an English invention. Its recent change was a matter of linguistic purification. The same is true in Zimbabwe of dozens of place names, i.e. Que Que/Kwekwe, Umtali/Mutari, Mtoko/Mutoko, etc..

You brought up the fact that 80% of the Romanian lexikon was Latin based. I only asked you when you were referring to. Still no answer. ("No" is not, in fact an answer to this question.)

You asked for one example of the purification of languages. I gave you several. However, one thing I cannot do is make you LIKE the answers.

My Romania/Rominia example (sorry, I can't render circumflexes) was not about phonetics. It was about the over riding of phonetics for nationalist reasons.

It doesn't matter who brought in Cyrillic to Moldova. It was part of a deliberate policy to modify the language and national identity of Basarabians/Moldovans and its reversal was an example of purification. That was all you asked for.

All languages require new words to cover new phenomena. I would be very interested to hear of any Slavic-derived words that have entered the Romanian language in the last 180 years and to compare it with a list of Latin-derived words. What, for example, are the Romanian words for car, or train, or television, or aeroplane, or railway station, all of which were required for the first time by the Romanian language since the mid 19th Century? I imagine they are all of Romance and/or Greek, not Slavic, in origin. I don't actually know the answer, so I am taking a risk here. Correct me if I am wrong.

Cheers,

Sid.

Oh yes, Sid, romanians were idiots that needed French scholars to compile Romanian dictionaries and to construct the first Romanian grammars... What exactly is your source for this c**p, excuse my "french".

I see that you never heard of Samuil Micu (1745-1806) and Gh. Sincai (1754-1821) and Petru Maior.
They were some of the romanian idiots who dwelved into the analysis of the romanian language, alas! without the aid of french or british scholars...

WHAT nationalist reasons?

Indeed, your questions was:

Given the erroneous premise of your question (underlined), I dont know if I should even take into consideration your question. Not until you clarify what French grammarians and what replacements you referr to, and what is your source for that info.
Your questions asks me whether I am talking about the romanian language before or after an event that has never taken place!!! Revise your position.

This post has been edited by Imperialist on August 13, 2005 11:06 pm

Hi Mytzu!
I think Sid is making a big linguistical confusion and a historical one too (regarding the french scholars helping write dictionaries and grammar books etc..)
Linguistically there is no doubt that the Romanian language is a latin one. Its latinity is proven at the level of basic inherited words as well as in the grammar structure. The declension of nouns, the conjugated verbs, the genders, the phonetics, the morphology, are fundamentally latin.

take care

Pronounced very much like the Russian word, no? But all it means in this case is that both languages were borrowing from the French.

As an outsider, I'm amazed at how overheated this thread has become. Sid's not suggesting Romanian is not a Latin language, and he is not calling anyone idiots. Why is it such heresy to suggest that a country's language is influenced by its geography, and that some states in the 1800s looked to the dominant powers of the day as models?

No heresy there, but thats not what he suggested, IMO.
There are slavic, turkish and greek origin words in the romanian language too. But they are in small proportions. The bulk is made up of latin words.
In my view Sid questioned the fact that the latin bulk is inherited from latin, insinuating that the language was deliberately "purified" in the 19th century to look more like latin in order to serve the nationalistic conspiracy.
Its one thing to talk about neologisms, and another about deliberately uprooting and replacing words to suit a political goal.
If I misunderstood Sid's insinuation, I apologise, but he should name his sources for that info so as to better understand what was all about.

take care

This post has been edited by Imperialist on August 12, 2005 06:03 pm

We do have many words of slavic origin - but as it was stated before 80% are of latin origin. I do not think we may call the slavic words "neologisms" because they have been used for a long time. Except for hungary we are surounded by slavik countries so it is only natural to borrow something from them but as Imperialist said, there was no plot to transform romanian language in a latin one during the 19th century as Sid has sugested, this is the main problem - maybe Sid had something else in mind when he wrote what he wrote but we all understood he said romanian language was latinized during 19th century to serve political goals.

This post has been edited by D13-th_Mytzu on August 12, 2005 06:22 pm

In this case , to me , it seems that it is not about purifying (changing the ordinary existing words) but about protecting the language (the new words, sometime unuseful new words).

Those words "imported" from English are quite a few.
Those guys from the French Academy know something... The phenomena they are trying to prevent is actually a different one. ... The case of France is irrelelvant.. I can bring to your attention an other case: Québec. Here , many ordinary French words are replaced by English words... Few examples : Je veux "checker" instead of Je veux vérifier, or "Je cherche un(e) job" - in this case it is not decided yet if the "French" word "job" is actually F (une) or M(un), etc - as you can see these words are not new words but ordinary words...
Of course, in Québec, they try to protect the French language and this policy brings some strange results: for example the word email (widely used in Romania for example) is replaced by "courriel", the word "spam" is replaced by "pourriel", etc, etc... The effect is very strange : they can change the new words but they can not prevent the people from using the new and unnecessary English words which are pouring into the French language...

It is hard to believe that the Romanian scholars would have been so efficint in changing the base of the Romanian language... Even if they had done such thing, it would have been impossible for the rural Romanian people to change vocabulary...

This post has been edited by johnny_bi on August 15, 2005 02:05 am