On the origins of Romanian language

Sid, you are only making more talk around your future plan of analysing the DEX.
I have nothing against you randomly counting words, I just want you to know I will demand a very scientific methodology from you if you want to project the result of your random sample to the totality of the romanian lexicon.

I just realised to what your "oh yes you can!" replied.

It was to my statement:

Wow, Sid! You say "yes, you can!".
OMG, I dont want to think about the erroneous conclusions you will reach after your random count, if you start off with that premise....

edit -- and mind you that the 30%-70% ration/aprtment block is reached by checking each and every person living there, not just randomly

This post has been edited by Imperialist on August 23, 2005 04:23 pm

Hi Imperialist and Zayets,

You have been offered ample opportunity to:

1) Yourselves make the sample word count, for which you are both better equipped than I am by virtue of both already possessing the DEX.

or

2) Contribute in advance to the methodology to be employed by me in assembling that sample.

If you do neither, you will have surrendered all right to criticise any result by virtue of being contributory to any failings.

As it is likely to be a couple of months at least before I get access to a DEX myself, you have plenty of time to make a positive contribution and I look forward to it.

Cheers,

Sid.

Life is full of opportunities arranged by prioritising. For me at least starting to randomly count the words in the DEX is not on the list of priorities for now and not in the foreseeable future.

Allow me to . Like I said, you do it scientifical or better not do it at all. Because we will criticise any generalisations you do based on a random count. Just imagine that 75% of the words in your random count (lets say out of 1000) are of french origin. Should we accept your conclusion that 75% of romanian lexicon is of french origin? Think again, and think better what you want to do. For your sake, not ours... we are not afraid you will discover a secret or something...

Hi Imperialist,

Did the Latinists only try to tamper with the spellings of existing Latin words in Romanian? Their success or failure in the word list you gave wouldn't even show up in the DEX because the Latin root in all cases remained the same.

Surely changing an introduced French word like "circonstance" to "circumstanta" is also a form of Latinisation?

And what about the 2.4% of Romanian words apparently drawn directly from Classical Latin?

And what about the changing of the script from Cyrillic to Latin?

Is this not all evidence of "Latinisation", whether directly promoted by your "Latinists" or not?

And then, on top of that we have very large numbers of French and some Italian words adopted into the Romanian language, which I was happy to sideline under the suggested heading of "Romancisation", but which you and your source originally happily subsumed under the term "Latin" in origin without differentiation?

Here are a couple of the questions that I have asked several times and are still to be answered:

Can anyone offer sourced Romanian definitions of dialect and grai? What does your DEX say?

When was the first Romanian dictionary, written entirely in Romanian, published? We have the 1825 Lexiconul de la Budapest offered as the first multi-language dictionary, but you have expressed so reservations over the use of multi-language dictionaries. OK. When was the first Romanian dictionary, written entirely in Romanian, published?

And one new one:

Are there any grammatical terms used in Romanian that are not of French origin? If so, what?

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. Whether you agree or disagree with any results of the random sample word-origin count won't much matter if you don't make any effort to either do it yourself or contribute in advance to the methodology when given the chance, will it?

Still plenty of time to change your mind.................

You can use http://dexonline.ro/

http://www.acad.ro/academia2002/acadrom/pag05_01.htm

Another problem with the word count from DEX would be:

DIALECT (< fr., lat.)

Which one do you pick?

The Dialect Issue

The Grai Issue

source:
Mic Dictionar de Terminologie Lingvistica

This post has been edited by Imperialist on August 23, 2005 07:03 pm

Dear Sid,
I realy don't care which opportunity you offered me to prove that YOUR source is not wrong! I said, and I will say again,your math sucks. Just add the percentage and then come back and tell us what you found.
I don't want to count all DEX words , is not in my task list. A sample in this case (which obviously,is less than 100%) is a false result.As I said earlier we dont make a poll here but a count.If you can't understand that then go ahead and smash your head into the DEX with your method.Which by the way it will be contested the very moment you will present your results.
Your second point only made me smile.And BTW, I did not surrendered anything since I did not know I wasn't right. From the very begining you were on the wrong side,I was on the good one. I have lost nothing and I hardly doubt I will lose this one.Unlike you , I am a contributor to the Romanian language by speaking it daily.You are just someone that came in fishing trying to endorse (that's a long shot anyway) something you didn't even thought will turn against you.
As for your couple of months until you'll get your DEX,I don't worry,you will not even get one.Is not even your plan.
Cheers and have a good one.I am waiting your results.To contest them,scientifically as I did until now,obviously.

This post has been edited by Zayets on August 23, 2005 08:51 pm

Hello... remember I told you the DEX gives circumstanta a direct latin origin???

What about it?

Maybe yes, maybe no, but you initially referred to the purification of the language and rooting out slavic words when you first introduced the term re-latinisation on this thread. You didn even take back those statements, and now morph again. At least admit you were wrong about what you initially claimed.

So? My source offered the total of 80%. Direct and indirect, no doubt. So? Yours offered a total of 63% and a missing unaccounted for 15%. Hmm... tough choice, which source should we pick?

Sid, do you take us for fools here?
Do you have a project for school or a research to make?
We should now ask you, are the grammatical terms used in Romanian, in your view, exclusively of French origin? And if so, whats your source?

Dragos, Sid may be unaware of the existence of something called multiple ethymology.
Usually the introductive part of the DEX should clarify which one of the 2 origins mentioned is the one from which the word entered use.
But for some words its unclear or more complicated (multiple ethymology).

take care

Sid, I spent 1 year attending both statistics and research methodology courses. I have also taken polls in Bucharest. I have done several researches using the knowledge I gained.
All I wanted here was to warn you that your intention of random counting words and deriving percentages from that random count will have no scientific relevancy for the entire lexicon unless you engage in far more complex things than that.
I dont intend to give you directions, nor do your work. I think I was pretty fair-play to warn you. I could've left you to embarass yourself again, and I could have thrashed your results. But I didnt want to do that to you and presumably your good-intentended research.

As for the general thread here, I do feel you continue to search for something and press us to give you sources and info on things. But you have long ceased to bring your own source contribution on this thread. You just ask question which have a certain character ( cu substrat -- would be the romanian saying).

take care

This post has been edited by Imperialist on August 23, 2005 08:26 pm

Sid let me know if you need this translated. Basically it says the only true dialects are not in Romania but South of the Danube and within Romania we have 5 subdialects (that would mean something less then a dialect), as you can see they cannot name dialects within the country.

BTW: I am reading now in "Istoria Romanialor vol VII" issued by Academia Romana, about the cultural development in Romania (Muntenia, Moldova and Transilvania) in the fisrt half of 19th century, there was an attempt to implement french language in schools as official teaching language but that failed - some of the enlighten heads strongly oposed this and saw it as a threadt to our own language and culture.

Also, about the chirilic writings - how did it get in Romania ? Did it come from slavic cultures ? I think not - my opinion is as follows: there were 2 major religions in Europe Catholic and Orthodox (untill the 15th century), considering that romanian official church was always orthodox and the center of Orthodox church was in Greece/Byzantium and also the most writings in early times were provided by the church, it was only normal that we used greek writing which is just like chirilic writing, ofcourse after some time the slavic entities around us having the same religion and using chirilic writing (with the byzantin empire gone) we started using same type of writing as them. As far as I know the oldest writings made in our teritory after being conquered by romans, date from around 9th century and belong to the church, it would be great if we were able to see those unfortunatelly I was told only a special few have access to them.

Hi Dragos,

Many thanks.

I had seen the Academia Romana site, which mentions a first academic grammar from 1859 and a first academic dictionary from 1871. However, I got the impression from Imperialist's posts that there was at least one earlier all-Romanian dictionary predating the 1840s, which was before the Academia Romana was founded.

With regard to the "Fr., Lat" issue. It is clear that most French words are derived from Latin. However, if a French reference appears in the DEX my working assumption would be that the current word arrived in Romanian via French, almost certainly since the early 19th Century because earlier contact was minimal. If the word had come directly from Latin, there would presumably be no need for a French reference in the DEX at all.

Thus the word "circumstanta" would appear on my list as of French provenance (circonstance), even though it originally arrived in French from Latin. Similarly, the word "imprejurare" would appear on my list as Latin, even though its stem is of Greek provenance (yupo/guro).

Any suggested refinements would be welcome.

Cheers,

Sid.