On the origins of Romanian language

Hi Bohmih,

You got to page 4? You did better than I did!

Much of the article is beyond my understanding as well. I think the point it is making here is to signal a contradiction.

My purpose in putting up the original article to which your earlier link objected was to emphasise that it was a serious piece of contemporary university academic research, and that glottochronology is not quite the long abandoned or discredited branch of research the Wikipedia article implied.

Please don't feel any obligation to read the whole link just because I put it up. I shall just be printing off a couple of the charts myself. The rest is too academic and specialist for my tiny brain to grasp!

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Sid

Actually I had almost finished reading the article, when I couldn't just continue down the pages. Maybe their server had crashed? Anyway, the second half of the article was about calculating the age of the Proto-Indo-European language, using a modified form of glottochronology.

Btw, do they allow people who know a thing about mathematics be linguists?

t = log C/2 log r

C - the percentage of cognates shared = 75

r - the "universal" constant, or rate of retention (the expected proportion of cognates remaining after 1000 years of separation) = 81

t = log 75/2 log 81 = log 37.5 log 81 = 1.574 1.908 = (I presume the two numbers are multiplied) = 3

Hello,

Mathematically it is not possible to solve a model when the number of unknowns (the number of factors that can modifiy the language) is infinit (or huge).

Of course one can consider only the important variables, but we have to expect to some errors. And, for example, a result like: "Hungarian and Finnish languages were splitted 500 years ago" will change the history!?!?

By the way please tell me what language (sub-dialect) is this:

"Tatucu o fost la mora shi o adus farina. Mamuca o facut o zama de lashte cu carne de galita, palanetz cu branza shi ptiroshte cu cureti dulce. Io am sapat tata zua cu arsheu' in gredinutza si mni-am batut cosa pa ileu. Asara am fost la joc unde mni-o placut Mariutza ca-i tare shiretica"

Cheers!!!!

Could be Nasaud but it can also be Cluj.Also it can be Oas but not that much.However,the closest thing is Salaj.That's my oppinion.

It is from the Somes' Valley near Dej. But you are right could be also Oas, Salaj, Nasuad. We can see that is a continuous (smooth) change between regions without jumps from one region to another. I suppose that this means that the language is unitar.

Hi bogmih,

I see your point. Also, looking at the earlier example you raised, after a closer read it too seems to be wrong in its own terms.

I am neither a mathematician nor a linguist, but you may be right, perhaps basic mathematics is not a requirement for linguists!

Cheers,

Sid.

The thread is really long and a lot of opnion has been stated. What I say here I heard it from my mother, a linguist, who also worked on the new DEX published by the Institute of Linguistics "Iorgu Iordan" led by Marius Sala. If someone is interested I think they could find a email address on internet.

Regarding the procents. There were expressed two points of view: 80% and 63% latin words. I think the 63% is more accurate (but I think it might be even lower). In romanian you can't make a sentence without latin words. The 15% of slavic words is probably higher. Usually the slavic words are describing tools. They are not at the core of the Romanian Language. Very often I am asked whether I am Russian because they catch a few slavic words and they believe I am speak a slavic language. The turkish words entered the language much later and (you will laugh) some are words like: "mita" (bribe) or bacsis ("tip'), used mostly in administration. They must have had a very high corruption rate. The 38% French words in the romanian language is simply unrealistacally because they must be new words (called in romanian "neologisme"). In this group there are also words of german and english origin.

The few words of dacian origin have their etimologies inferred by compariosn with the albanian. After the roman ocupation of Dacia the dacian language was defeated and the only a few words were preserved. In Albania it was exactly the opposite. The latin language was defeated and the illir was the dominant language. If you look at the old DEX at words like "branza" (cheese) you will see that they have "unknown" etimologies. They are beleived to be of dacian origin, but there are only a few.

There are no romanian dialects north of Danube, as some people obstinately state. The differences between the romanian spoken in Moldavia and Muntenia consists mainly in words called "regionalisme". Different words that describe the same thing. However, there are only a few such words relative to the main body of the language. I remember a few years ago someone from Chisinau (rep. of Moldavia) had the bright ideea to publish a Romanian-Moldavian dictionary (only for political reasons) which was in fact a collection of "regionalisme".

Both Densusianu and Puscariu are good references for the ethymological roots, but they are old. Hasdeu tried to publish an ethimological dictionary but he died before finishing his work. He had reached the word "batran" (old in English). I don't think there is any complete ethimological dictionary, therefore the best source at the moment must be the new DEX.

Also an interesting fact. All the words describing the romanian christianity are of latin origin. Therefore the romanians were already christians by the time the slavs crossed the country, and they were not christiansed by the slaves. That's why Iorga said that the Romanians were borned christians.

The Latinists was a current in a moment when everything was done to stress the national roots. There are also some other excesses in the Romanian history. The Chronicle of Huru is a good example. It gave all the clues about the 1000 gap in the Romanian history (from the Aurelian withdrawal to the letter of Neacsu). Usually they don't last and, sadly, they are having a boomerang effect.

Incidentally, the Slovaks claim 'bryndza' (i.e., sheep cheese), and 'bryndziaren' (i.e, the place where the sheep cheese is made) as their own. They even claim in the EU 'bryndza' as 'Slovakicum', i.e. originally Slovak, thus it cannot be reproduced by others (just like the Tokaj wine is a 'Hungaricum' in the EU).

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on September 13, 2005 11:38 pm

Hi Denes,

A few years ago I saw a Slovak shop that only sold Slovak-grown Tokaj. The entire back wall consisted of Tokaj bottles, with a deep orange coloured wine in the top left running down to a thin yellow coloured wine in the bottom right. The display was impressive and the wine was too!

Was Tokaj historically grown in what is now southern Slovakia?

What is the relationship between Tokaj and Cotnari?

Cheers,

Sid.

Yes. During the partition of Hungary at Trianon, a small area of the Tokaj region became part of Czechoslovakia. However, currently the Slovaks make wines to a different (lower) standard, so they should not be using the name Tokaj. This is currently being fought in European courts.

A similar issue was related to an Italian region, where Tokai Fruliano wine was produced. They were forced to drop the name recently.

Nothing.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on September 14, 2005 03:38 pm

http://www.discoveromania.ro/cotnari_wine.htm

<<Cotnari , a precious jewel among theRomanian vineyards, with more than 2000 hectares is the only vineyard of Romania that produces only native varieties like Grasa, Tămâioasa Românească, Feteasca Albă, Frâncuşa.

The main sort of the vineyard is Grasa de Cotnari, which is believed that it has a common origin with the Furmint sort, cultivated at Tokaj (the famous Hungarian wine).

The origin of the wine is, as legend said, in medieval Transylvania. It is said that Stephen the Great (under whose reign the vineyard enjoyed prosperity) , one of the great voivodes of Moldavia, brought some wine growers Saxons from Transylvania who arrived bringing grape stocks - the noble vine of Furmint. From this vine Grasa de Cotnari was born more than five hundred years ago.>>

I dont think the "purification", or "replace" is a correct term. Practically is imposible to forbid a people to use words he feel familiar. One could only introduce an alternative word-in time, the people will choose if will consider the old word obsolete, or will use it in paralele. In romanian many words with slavic origins are still used, even they have neologism correspondent. I don't know what happened in Bulgaria, but in romanian, the slavic originated words were not banned in official documents, literature ...Some were regionalisms, and were naturarelly abandoned by the original users, due to contact with other romanians who didn't use it.
On the other hand, is not fair to compare a modern language(with few hundred thousands words), with a medieval language(with few thousands words); beside the paralel correspondants neologisms of existing words, the vast majority of the vocabulary represent technical terms and their derivates. So, one could easely speculate "za language waz changed completely". But I bet bulgarian, hungarian...languages have also a vast latin, german, english majority, if we'd take all the vocabulary.

Even the official name is Cluj-Napoca, no romanian use in normal speaking other than Cluj. The journals, tv...is full of only "Cluj" using, and nobody protest in it

In fact is not Bucharest "dialect". Is too much to say dialect, but romanian language is based mainly in central romania "dialect". It is the "dialect" spoken in the counties Arges, Dambovita, Brasov, Sibiu, Valcea

A kind of this word is "bidon"(cane). His origins are french, but you could find this word in bulgarian, turkish, greek...even they are not latin languages