Just ignore the troll.
Which Romance language sounds more Slavic?
@ravinescu
Ok, let's start with the claim that at some point Romanian was 50% Latin 50% Slavic. This makes no sense because Slavic languages have very different morphology and syntax compared to Romance languages. Image 50% Slavic words mixed with 50% Latin words in the same phrase, it just does not work, you can't have the syntax and morphology from both language families at the same time.
I know this because my training is in data mining and I did quite a lot of analysis on natural language processing for machine translation. In fact the most successful machine translation algorithms today rely on the fact that all languages have short sequences of words (4 or 5 words) that have meaning together and can be reliably converted into a different sequence of words of another language. If you mix these short sequences with words from two different languages you get something that is not functional/meaningful in either language.
Keep in mind that here I am talking about the impossibility of mixing languages of different families, like those of Slavic and Romance origin. Otherwise it is obvious that languages of the same origin mix together quite well (because of the common word roots, syntax and morphology). I think that statics can show that languages of different origin very rarely mix lexically in proportions higher than 70% to 30%, and that a 50/50 combination never happened. But of course you can prove me wrong with examples if you have them available :)
Ok, let's start with the claim that at some point Romanian was 50% Latin 50% Slavic. This makes no sense because Slavic languages have very different morphology and syntax compared to Romance languages. Image 50% Slavic words mixed with 50% Latin words in the same phrase, it just does not work, you can't have the syntax and morphology from both language families at the same time.
I know this because my training is in data mining and I did quite a lot of analysis on natural language processing for machine translation. In fact the most successful machine translation algorithms today rely on the fact that all languages have short sequences of words (4 or 5 words) that have meaning together and can be reliably converted into a different sequence of words of another language. If you mix these short sequences with words from two different languages you get something that is not functional/meaningful in either language.
Keep in mind that here I am talking about the impossibility of mixing languages of different families, like those of Slavic and Romance origin. Otherwise it is obvious that languages of the same origin mix together quite well (because of the common word roots, syntax and morphology). I think that statics can show that languages of different origin very rarely mix lexically in proportions higher than 70% to 30%, and that a 50/50 combination never happened. But of course you can prove me wrong with examples if you have them available :)
Your second point was that Romanian has a smaller percentage of Slavic words today because it was Re-latinized between the 18th and 20th century. To me this is obviously false. Let's look at this Romanian text written almost 500 years ago:
"După acéia şi eu care sunt intre cei păcătoşi, Simeon Dascal apucatu-m-am şi eu pre urma a tuturora a scrie acéste poveşti, ce într-înse spune cursul anilor şi viiaţa domnilor, văzindu şi cunoscând că scriitorii cei mai de demult care au fost însămnând acéste lucruri ce au trecut şi s-au sfârşit şi pre urma lor alţii nu vor să se apuce; văzând noi aceasta că să părăséşte această însămnare, socotit-am ca să nu lăsăm acestŭ lucru nesăvârşit şi să nu să însămnéze înainte, carele mai nainte de alţii au fost început pre rând însemnatu, pănă la domniia lui Vasilie vodă, ca să nu ne zică cronicarii altora limbi c-am murit şi noi cu scriitorii cei dinceput, sau că doară suntem neînvăţat."
This text was written in Moldova, which always used a higher percentage of Slavic words in the language, and yet this text is nowhere near the 50/50 Latin/Slavic mixture claimed here by ravinescu. At the same time, although this is a centuries old text, it is perfectly intelligible by nowadays Romanians.
In other words, although some 18th and 19th century Romanian intellectuals lobbied for re-latinization, the changes they proposed were never adopted. In fact they were ridiculed, the word "degatlegau" signifies the flop of that initiative. In reality, the reason why modern Romanian contains fewer Slavic words is that Old Church Slavonic was replaced with Romanian in church and administration use in 19th century. At the same time the drop in percentage was not as dramatic as claimed, because the percentage of Slavic words in Romanian was not so big to begin with - the above Medieval text in Romanian proves this point.
"După acéia şi eu care sunt intre cei păcătoşi, Simeon Dascal apucatu-m-am şi eu pre urma a tuturora a scrie acéste poveşti, ce într-înse spune cursul anilor şi viiaţa domnilor, văzindu şi cunoscând că scriitorii cei mai de demult care au fost însămnând acéste lucruri ce au trecut şi s-au sfârşit şi pre urma lor alţii nu vor să se apuce; văzând noi aceasta că să părăséşte această însămnare, socotit-am ca să nu lăsăm acestŭ lucru nesăvârşit şi să nu să însămnéze înainte, carele mai nainte de alţii au fost început pre rând însemnatu, pănă la domniia lui Vasilie vodă, ca să nu ne zică cronicarii altora limbi c-am murit şi noi cu scriitorii cei dinceput, sau că doară suntem neînvăţat."
This text was written in Moldova, which always used a higher percentage of Slavic words in the language, and yet this text is nowhere near the 50/50 Latin/Slavic mixture claimed here by ravinescu. At the same time, although this is a centuries old text, it is perfectly intelligible by nowadays Romanians.
In other words, although some 18th and 19th century Romanian intellectuals lobbied for re-latinization, the changes they proposed were never adopted. In fact they were ridiculed, the word "degatlegau" signifies the flop of that initiative. In reality, the reason why modern Romanian contains fewer Slavic words is that Old Church Slavonic was replaced with Romanian in church and administration use in 19th century. At the same time the drop in percentage was not as dramatic as claimed, because the percentage of Slavic words in Romanian was not so big to begin with - the above Medieval text in Romanian proves this point.
What is the lexical origin of the word "multumesc" for "thank you" in Romanian? Is it of Latin origin and akin to the French "merci" or is it of Slavic origin?
'Multumesc' seems to come from 'multam' a contraction for 'multi ani', translated literally 'many years', meaning 'may you live many years'. So apparently it has Latin origin.
^Cool thanks. I always thought it was interesting how different Romance languages had different ways to convey a particular word or meaning, with each of the ways being of Latin origin. So Romanian uses "multumesc" from the Latin "multi ani," but then Italian and Spanish say "grazie" and "gracias" respectively, from the Latin "gratias." I guess certain Latin phrases and words appealed to each of the populations that adopted Latin, hence the different ways of conveying the same meaning.
Let's discuss for a moment the genealogy of Romanians. It is important here to start by saying that Southern Slavic populations did not reach the Balkans through Romania. This happened probably because the area occupied by Romania is geographically insulated from tribal migration by wide rivers, starting in Ukraine with Bug, Dnieper, Prut and then Danube. Crossing these rivers was especially difficult for tribes that migrated with their life's possessions (livestock), like Slavic tribes. Only the turkic tribes, that travelled light and pillaged the locals, arrived in enough numbers to establish short term rulings in former Dacia (before 1000 AD).
We can trace the Slavic migration around Dacia by looking at the cultural connections between Slavic populations. We can easily observe the following cultural chain that links in succession the folk traditions: Russian->Ukrainian->Polish, Polish->Czech/Slovak/Slovene/Croat, Croat->Serb/Macedonian/Bulgarian. Russian and Ukrainian folklore is typical Slavic, while the further you go on the above cultural chain, the more the Slavic folklore is influenced by the underlying thracian substrate. Here's a map of Slavic migrations:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Origins_500A.png
We can see on the map that Ukrainian and Bulgarian slavs were split by 100 km across Dacia but have no direct cultural connection.
If we are to talk about genealogy, Romanians (especially in South) are closest related to Bulgarians:
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/european_y-dna_haplogroups.shtml
However this relationship predates the arrival of the Slavic populations. The haplogroups map shows that Bulgarians are the least Slavic nation among those that have a Slavic language and culture. Romanians and Bulgarians are the descendants of the mixt Balkanic populations that lived to the North and South of the Danube and spoke a Romance language. Later on Bulgarians adopted the name of the Turkic tribe that conquered them and the language of the Slavic population pushing them from West. Because Bulgaria became earlier a state and developed a written culture, it had an influence on Romania, especially through the adoption of Orthodoxy and OCS. The formation of the Romanian states in 14th century sealed the borders and ended pretty much the direct contact with large Slavic populations until the massive migrations from Russia that took place in 18-19th century.
The haplogroups map shows that Slavic/Balkanic characters are found in less than 14% of the population in Bulgaria and less than 22% in Romania. The problem with haplogroup R1a is that it is common for both Slavic and Balkanic populations, it is a confounded factor. In the cases of Romania and Bulgaria we don't know whether that percentage comes from Slavic or Balkanic heritage, especially since both are Balkanic states. Looking at that map I think it is safe to say that 15% or less of the Romanians are of Slavic descent. This is another argument against the hypothesis that at some point in former Dacia Latinized and Slavic populations mixed together in similar percentages and spoke an equally mixed language.
We can trace the Slavic migration around Dacia by looking at the cultural connections between Slavic populations. We can easily observe the following cultural chain that links in succession the folk traditions: Russian->Ukrainian->Polish, Polish->Czech/Slovak/Slovene/Croat, Croat->Serb/Macedonian/Bulgarian. Russian and Ukrainian folklore is typical Slavic, while the further you go on the above cultural chain, the more the Slavic folklore is influenced by the underlying thracian substrate. Here's a map of Slavic migrations:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Origins_500A.png
We can see on the map that Ukrainian and Bulgarian slavs were split by 100 km across Dacia but have no direct cultural connection.
If we are to talk about genealogy, Romanians (especially in South) are closest related to Bulgarians:
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/european_y-dna_haplogroups.shtml
However this relationship predates the arrival of the Slavic populations. The haplogroups map shows that Bulgarians are the least Slavic nation among those that have a Slavic language and culture. Romanians and Bulgarians are the descendants of the mixt Balkanic populations that lived to the North and South of the Danube and spoke a Romance language. Later on Bulgarians adopted the name of the Turkic tribe that conquered them and the language of the Slavic population pushing them from West. Because Bulgaria became earlier a state and developed a written culture, it had an influence on Romania, especially through the adoption of Orthodoxy and OCS. The formation of the Romanian states in 14th century sealed the borders and ended pretty much the direct contact with large Slavic populations until the massive migrations from Russia that took place in 18-19th century.
The haplogroups map shows that Slavic/Balkanic characters are found in less than 14% of the population in Bulgaria and less than 22% in Romania. The problem with haplogroup R1a is that it is common for both Slavic and Balkanic populations, it is a confounded factor. In the cases of Romania and Bulgaria we don't know whether that percentage comes from Slavic or Balkanic heritage, especially since both are Balkanic states. Looking at that map I think it is safe to say that 15% or less of the Romanians are of Slavic descent. This is another argument against the hypothesis that at some point in former Dacia Latinized and Slavic populations mixed together in similar percentages and spoke an equally mixed language.
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Quote from: AI
I still maintain that the comparison with America is sustainable because the Roman settlers were living in a territory that was under Roman rule, so how can anyone say that they were not the rulers of Dacia during the 175 or so years that it was under Roman occupation.
....................................
I'm just gonna stick with my original statement and say that Romanian sounds like a somewhat Slavic-influenced version of Italian. The key word there is Italian though because Romanian is fundamentally a Romance language. Why it sounds closer to Italian than the other Romance languages I don't know, but perhaps it's simply because Italy is geographically the closest Romance-speaking country to Romania.
====================================
I was speaking about the romanic population after the romans left. The romans were the rulers of Dacia for approximately 170 years (some say no more than 150). The first romanian states appeared around the year 1200, when there is a mention of some principalities (voievodates) north of the Danube in today's western Muntenia. Two of them (ruled by Litovoi and Seneslav) were considered at that time as belonging to romanians (vlachs). So between 275 and 1200 there is a time period of approximately 1000 years, and in this long period the romanians had not ruled the land, so it was hard for them to impose a language. I am not saying that romanian is not a romanic language, or the romanians are not descendants of the roman colonists, I am saying only that the genetic origin of the romanian population is very mixed, it is not pure romanic. Probably the dacian and slavic component (genetically speaking) is much more important than the romanic component (which also was not italic, but thracian, illiryan, etc.). And the language is not pure romanic, it has a strong slavic influence, maybe als a dacian influence, which cannot be determined today because there are no texts left in the dacian language. The slavs were assimilated in the process of cohabitation alongside the romanic population, but that romanic population did not rule the land, in fact the slavs ruled it at that time. The first romanian rulers had slavic names and it is thought that the original ruling class ("boyars") in old Romania was at first predominantly slavic, then became romanianized with the passing of time.
Romanian sounds close to italian because italian is the closest language to latin and romanian because of its isolation remained in some respects like a latin frozen in time. But in my opinion french (which I know at advanced level) is much more similar to italian when it comes to the vocabulary. Romanian borrowed a lot of french words (thousands) in the 19th century, but even with that, french remains more close to italian.
There are some theories about romanians being also a result of immigration from the former roman provinces in the Balkans (Moesia, Illyria, Pannonia, Dalmatia) after the slavs conquered those territories. But these theories are only hypotheses, nothing could be demonstrated from an archaeological point of view or from ancient texts. There are some linguistic data that suggest a latin influence from the south of the Danube, but historical facts cannot be demonstrated only with linguistic data.
Yes, the major slavic linguistic influence on romanian is actually south slavic, but this is based on present-day languages (bulgarian and serbocroatian), no one knows how slavic sounded when the slavs began to settle in the territories north of the Danube, in the year 500.
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Quote from: Dan
Ok, let's start with the claim that at some point Romanian was 50% Latin 50% Slavic. This makes no sense because Slavic languages have very different morphology and syntax compared to Romance languages. Image 50% Slavic words mixed with 50% Latin words in the same phrase, it just does not work, you can't have the syntax and morphology from both language families at the same time.
====================================
You must take into account that romanian is no exception when it comes to having words of (very) different origins. English is a germanic language and it has a lot of romanic words (close to 30%), mainly from french, which were inherited from the french-speaking normans or borrowed later. The mixing of words of different origin works wonderfully, because they are not keeping their original chracteristics, they are modified, and this also happened in romanian, where almost all the words were modified, regardless of their origin (latin, slavic, turkish, greek, etc.). In romanian there are a lot of slavic suffixes that are attached to all the words, regardless of their origin. The same thing can be said about latin suffixes that are attached to slavic words.
====================================
Quote from: Dan
I know this because my training is in data mining and I did quite a lot of analysis on natural language processing for machine translation. In fact the most successful machine translation algorithms today rely on the fact that all languages have short sequences of words (4 or 5 words) that have meaning together and can be reliably converted into a different sequence of words of another language. If you mix these short sequences with words from two different languages you get something that is not functional/meaningful in either language.
====================================
We are not speking of different languages here, we are speaking about a single one, romanian. There are no latin or slavic words in romanian, there are only romanian words of latin or slavic origin. And the grammar of romanian is not identical to the grammar of latin, far from that. A romanian (or italian, french, spanish, portuguese) cannot understand latin without learning it, anyone can verify that by opening a book written in latin.
====================================
Quote from: Dan
Your second point was that Romanian has a smaller percentage of Slavic words today because it was Re-latinized between the 18th and 20th century. To me this is obviously false. Let's look at this Romanian text written almost 500 years ago. [...] This text was written in Moldova, which always used a higher percentage of Slavic words in the language, and yet this text is nowhere near the 50/50 Latin/Slavic mixture claimed here by ravinescu. At the same time, although this is a centuries old text, it is perfectly intelligible by nowadays Romanians.
====================================
You are using a completely amateurish approach. We are speaking about the whole romanian vocabulary, not about the vocabulary used in a few lines of text. You cannot extract meaningful conclusions from such a minor sample.
====================================
Quote from: Dan
In other words, although some 18th and 19th century Romanian intellectuals lobbied for re-latinization, the changes they proposed were never adopted. In fact they were ridiculed, the word "degatlegau" signifies the flop of that initiative. In reality, the reason why modern Romanian contains fewer Slavic words is that Old Church Slavonic was replaced with Romanian in church and administration use in 19th century. At the same time the drop in percentage was not as dramatic as claimed, because the percentage of Slavic words in Romanian was not so big to begin with - the above Medieval text in Romanian proves this point.
====================================
You continue to use propaganda methods and slogans from 100 years ago... Come on, these things have been debunked, they are childish. No one believes them today, except those that do not know the real history of the romanian people and of the romanian language. But if you insist in completely destroying your reputation you can do it. But keep in mind that romanians and non-romanians alike have today the possibility to read books about Romania written by specialists (historians, linguists, etc.). They can learn the truth easily from the internet, so propaganda like the one used 100 years ago is completely worthless, it's a waste of time and energy.
For example there is a book written by a known romanian historian (professor at the state university of Bucharest) which was a bestseller not long ago, being published in romanian in 1997, and in english in 2001. The name of the book is "History and Myth in Romanian Conciousness" and the author presents all the historical myths invented by some romanian historians, for example those used to "prove" the pure romanic origin of the romanian people and its language. The book discusses the lies about the romanian history that were used as a means of propaganda in Romania and abroad from 1800 until 1990 (the fall of communism). The book is available in english from Google Books and the chapter about the origin of romanians can be read almost in its entirety (only 1-2 pages are missing from the preview).
Lucian Boia: History and Myth in Romanian Conciousness
(shortened URL to Google Books)
http://tinyurl.com/boia-myths
====================================
Quote from: Dan
Let's discuss for a moment the genealogy of Romanians. It is important here to start by saying that Southern Slavic populations did not reach the Balkans through Romania. This happened probably because the area occupied by Romania is geographically insulated from tribal migration by wide rivers, starting in Ukraine with Bug, Dnieper, Prut and then Danube. Crossing these rivers was especially difficult for tribes that migrated with their life's possessions (livestock), like Slavic tribes. Only the turkic tribes, that travelled light and pillaged the locals, arrived in enough numbers to establish short term rulings in former Dacia (before 1000 AD).
====================================
You are really trying to fool the ones that read what you write. Romania is not geographically insulated by wide rivers, you only prove that you have not a slightest idea of geography. You continue to use the old propaganda slogan of Romania as a "latin island in a slavic sea". You are probably the only romanian that can suggest such stupidities, that rivers were barriers to migration. They were not, people knew from a very long time ago how to transport goods by rivers and how to cross rivers with or without livestock. As an aside, it must be mentioned that slavs were primarily an agricultural people, but they also were very knowledgeable about waters. In romanian the great majority of the terms refferring to fishing are slavic ("năvod, undiţă, crap, caras, mreajă, morun, ştiucă, etc."), with the exception of fish ("peşte") and derived words (fishing, fisher).
====================================
Quote from: Dan
Romanians and Bulgarians are the descendants of the mixt Balkanic populations that lived to the North and South of the Danube and spoke a Romance language. Later on Bulgarians adopted the name of the Turkic tribe that conquered them and the language of the Slavic population pushing them from West. Because Bulgaria became earlier a state and developed a written culture, it had an influence on Romania, especially through the adoption of Orthodoxy and OCS. The formation of the Romanian states in 14th century sealed the borders and ended pretty much the direct contact with large Slavic populations until the massive migrations from Russia that took place in 18-19th century.
====================================
This is the proof that you have no idea of what you are saying. You are completely inventing a customized and completely false history to support your fallacious ideas. I will let the bulgarians to speak about their history. But concerning the romanian history, there was no sealing of borders in the 14th century and no massive russian migration in the 18-19th centuries. Unfortunately, because of the fabrications like the ones that you write, the romanians have abroad a reputation of liars and of people that cannot be trusted. An also a reputation of not knowing the history of their people and language.
Quote from: AI
I still maintain that the comparison with America is sustainable because the Roman settlers were living in a territory that was under Roman rule, so how can anyone say that they were not the rulers of Dacia during the 175 or so years that it was under Roman occupation.
....................................
I'm just gonna stick with my original statement and say that Romanian sounds like a somewhat Slavic-influenced version of Italian. The key word there is Italian though because Romanian is fundamentally a Romance language. Why it sounds closer to Italian than the other Romance languages I don't know, but perhaps it's simply because Italy is geographically the closest Romance-speaking country to Romania.
====================================
I was speaking about the romanic population after the romans left. The romans were the rulers of Dacia for approximately 170 years (some say no more than 150). The first romanian states appeared around the year 1200, when there is a mention of some principalities (voievodates) north of the Danube in today's western Muntenia. Two of them (ruled by Litovoi and Seneslav) were considered at that time as belonging to romanians (vlachs). So between 275 and 1200 there is a time period of approximately 1000 years, and in this long period the romanians had not ruled the land, so it was hard for them to impose a language. I am not saying that romanian is not a romanic language, or the romanians are not descendants of the roman colonists, I am saying only that the genetic origin of the romanian population is very mixed, it is not pure romanic. Probably the dacian and slavic component (genetically speaking) is much more important than the romanic component (which also was not italic, but thracian, illiryan, etc.). And the language is not pure romanic, it has a strong slavic influence, maybe als a dacian influence, which cannot be determined today because there are no texts left in the dacian language. The slavs were assimilated in the process of cohabitation alongside the romanic population, but that romanic population did not rule the land, in fact the slavs ruled it at that time. The first romanian rulers had slavic names and it is thought that the original ruling class ("boyars") in old Romania was at first predominantly slavic, then became romanianized with the passing of time.
Romanian sounds close to italian because italian is the closest language to latin and romanian because of its isolation remained in some respects like a latin frozen in time. But in my opinion french (which I know at advanced level) is much more similar to italian when it comes to the vocabulary. Romanian borrowed a lot of french words (thousands) in the 19th century, but even with that, french remains more close to italian.
There are some theories about romanians being also a result of immigration from the former roman provinces in the Balkans (Moesia, Illyria, Pannonia, Dalmatia) after the slavs conquered those territories. But these theories are only hypotheses, nothing could be demonstrated from an archaeological point of view or from ancient texts. There are some linguistic data that suggest a latin influence from the south of the Danube, but historical facts cannot be demonstrated only with linguistic data.
Yes, the major slavic linguistic influence on romanian is actually south slavic, but this is based on present-day languages (bulgarian and serbocroatian), no one knows how slavic sounded when the slavs began to settle in the territories north of the Danube, in the year 500.
====================================
Quote from: Dan
Ok, let's start with the claim that at some point Romanian was 50% Latin 50% Slavic. This makes no sense because Slavic languages have very different morphology and syntax compared to Romance languages. Image 50% Slavic words mixed with 50% Latin words in the same phrase, it just does not work, you can't have the syntax and morphology from both language families at the same time.
====================================
You must take into account that romanian is no exception when it comes to having words of (very) different origins. English is a germanic language and it has a lot of romanic words (close to 30%), mainly from french, which were inherited from the french-speaking normans or borrowed later. The mixing of words of different origin works wonderfully, because they are not keeping their original chracteristics, they are modified, and this also happened in romanian, where almost all the words were modified, regardless of their origin (latin, slavic, turkish, greek, etc.). In romanian there are a lot of slavic suffixes that are attached to all the words, regardless of their origin. The same thing can be said about latin suffixes that are attached to slavic words.
====================================
Quote from: Dan
I know this because my training is in data mining and I did quite a lot of analysis on natural language processing for machine translation. In fact the most successful machine translation algorithms today rely on the fact that all languages have short sequences of words (4 or 5 words) that have meaning together and can be reliably converted into a different sequence of words of another language. If you mix these short sequences with words from two different languages you get something that is not functional/meaningful in either language.
====================================
We are not speking of different languages here, we are speaking about a single one, romanian. There are no latin or slavic words in romanian, there are only romanian words of latin or slavic origin. And the grammar of romanian is not identical to the grammar of latin, far from that. A romanian (or italian, french, spanish, portuguese) cannot understand latin without learning it, anyone can verify that by opening a book written in latin.
====================================
Quote from: Dan
Your second point was that Romanian has a smaller percentage of Slavic words today because it was Re-latinized between the 18th and 20th century. To me this is obviously false. Let's look at this Romanian text written almost 500 years ago. [...] This text was written in Moldova, which always used a higher percentage of Slavic words in the language, and yet this text is nowhere near the 50/50 Latin/Slavic mixture claimed here by ravinescu. At the same time, although this is a centuries old text, it is perfectly intelligible by nowadays Romanians.
====================================
You are using a completely amateurish approach. We are speaking about the whole romanian vocabulary, not about the vocabulary used in a few lines of text. You cannot extract meaningful conclusions from such a minor sample.
====================================
Quote from: Dan
In other words, although some 18th and 19th century Romanian intellectuals lobbied for re-latinization, the changes they proposed were never adopted. In fact they were ridiculed, the word "degatlegau" signifies the flop of that initiative. In reality, the reason why modern Romanian contains fewer Slavic words is that Old Church Slavonic was replaced with Romanian in church and administration use in 19th century. At the same time the drop in percentage was not as dramatic as claimed, because the percentage of Slavic words in Romanian was not so big to begin with - the above Medieval text in Romanian proves this point.
====================================
You continue to use propaganda methods and slogans from 100 years ago... Come on, these things have been debunked, they are childish. No one believes them today, except those that do not know the real history of the romanian people and of the romanian language. But if you insist in completely destroying your reputation you can do it. But keep in mind that romanians and non-romanians alike have today the possibility to read books about Romania written by specialists (historians, linguists, etc.). They can learn the truth easily from the internet, so propaganda like the one used 100 years ago is completely worthless, it's a waste of time and energy.
For example there is a book written by a known romanian historian (professor at the state university of Bucharest) which was a bestseller not long ago, being published in romanian in 1997, and in english in 2001. The name of the book is "History and Myth in Romanian Conciousness" and the author presents all the historical myths invented by some romanian historians, for example those used to "prove" the pure romanic origin of the romanian people and its language. The book discusses the lies about the romanian history that were used as a means of propaganda in Romania and abroad from 1800 until 1990 (the fall of communism). The book is available in english from Google Books and the chapter about the origin of romanians can be read almost in its entirety (only 1-2 pages are missing from the preview).
Lucian Boia: History and Myth in Romanian Conciousness
(shortened URL to Google Books)
http://tinyurl.com/boia-myths
====================================
Quote from: Dan
Let's discuss for a moment the genealogy of Romanians. It is important here to start by saying that Southern Slavic populations did not reach the Balkans through Romania. This happened probably because the area occupied by Romania is geographically insulated from tribal migration by wide rivers, starting in Ukraine with Bug, Dnieper, Prut and then Danube. Crossing these rivers was especially difficult for tribes that migrated with their life's possessions (livestock), like Slavic tribes. Only the turkic tribes, that travelled light and pillaged the locals, arrived in enough numbers to establish short term rulings in former Dacia (before 1000 AD).
====================================
You are really trying to fool the ones that read what you write. Romania is not geographically insulated by wide rivers, you only prove that you have not a slightest idea of geography. You continue to use the old propaganda slogan of Romania as a "latin island in a slavic sea". You are probably the only romanian that can suggest such stupidities, that rivers were barriers to migration. They were not, people knew from a very long time ago how to transport goods by rivers and how to cross rivers with or without livestock. As an aside, it must be mentioned that slavs were primarily an agricultural people, but they also were very knowledgeable about waters. In romanian the great majority of the terms refferring to fishing are slavic ("năvod, undiţă, crap, caras, mreajă, morun, ştiucă, etc."), with the exception of fish ("peşte") and derived words (fishing, fisher).
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Quote from: Dan
Romanians and Bulgarians are the descendants of the mixt Balkanic populations that lived to the North and South of the Danube and spoke a Romance language. Later on Bulgarians adopted the name of the Turkic tribe that conquered them and the language of the Slavic population pushing them from West. Because Bulgaria became earlier a state and developed a written culture, it had an influence on Romania, especially through the adoption of Orthodoxy and OCS. The formation of the Romanian states in 14th century sealed the borders and ended pretty much the direct contact with large Slavic populations until the massive migrations from Russia that took place in 18-19th century.
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This is the proof that you have no idea of what you are saying. You are completely inventing a customized and completely false history to support your fallacious ideas. I will let the bulgarians to speak about their history. But concerning the romanian history, there was no sealing of borders in the 14th century and no massive russian migration in the 18-19th centuries. Unfortunately, because of the fabrications like the ones that you write, the romanians have abroad a reputation of liars and of people that cannot be trusted. An also a reputation of not knowing the history of their people and language.
^I've always basically thought that Romanians descend from a mixture of Romanized Dacians (supposedly a Thracian sub-group), Roman soldiers/colonists (knowing that they weren't mostly Italian but rather Romanized Illyrians, Thracians, and others who had a Roman identity and spoke Latin), and later migrating tribes, most notably of course the Slavs.
So yes I think it's perfectly clear that they are a mixed people and that such claims that they're pure Dacian, pure Roman, or have nothing at all to do with either Dacians or Romans are all utter nonsense. The Daco-Roman element was however the foundational one in terms of the Romanian identity, in particular as to how it differentiated them from their their neighbors, who spoke Hungarian or Slavic languages.
As such, I do think it's somewhat of a stretch that the name of their country literally means "Land of the Romans," (as really Italy should be called "Romania" in that sense), but it was a name that Romanian nationalists adopted in the 18th-19th centuries as a way to highlight the Latin influence among their people in order to distinguish them from their neighbors. So in a sense, I understand the name "Romania," but in another sense it almost seems like an exaggeration as to the Roman-ness of Romanians. But at the same time, that's what makes Romania so culturally fascinating, this uniqueness. They really can't be called Slavs but by the same token to simply call them "Latin" based on their language alone ignores the heavy Slavic/Balkan cultural influences that also characterize Romanians.
BTW I would agree with the people who state that Bulgarians are likely the closest genetic relatives to Romanians. The ancient Thracians are a major factor here (again Dacians were thought to be Thracians and some of the Roman colonists were really Romanized Thracians and other Balkan ethnicities), along with Slavic and other admixture in both groups. The differences are mainly that the Romanians preserved a Romance language that was lost by the Romanized Thracian population of present-day Bulgaria, which adopted a Slavic language and the name of later Bulgar conquerors. It's interesting that in Bulgaria's case, the name "Land of the Bulgars" is truly a misnomer as only the ruling people were Bulgars, the rest being a Slavic/Thracian population, with probably the majority being ultimately Thracian by ancestry. So basically you had one group adopting the language of another smaller group that was in turn conquered by an even smaller third group, with the name of that third group used for the ethnic designation of the people! Crazy how history works ain't it? LOL.
So yes I think it's perfectly clear that they are a mixed people and that such claims that they're pure Dacian, pure Roman, or have nothing at all to do with either Dacians or Romans are all utter nonsense. The Daco-Roman element was however the foundational one in terms of the Romanian identity, in particular as to how it differentiated them from their their neighbors, who spoke Hungarian or Slavic languages.
As such, I do think it's somewhat of a stretch that the name of their country literally means "Land of the Romans," (as really Italy should be called "Romania" in that sense), but it was a name that Romanian nationalists adopted in the 18th-19th centuries as a way to highlight the Latin influence among their people in order to distinguish them from their neighbors. So in a sense, I understand the name "Romania," but in another sense it almost seems like an exaggeration as to the Roman-ness of Romanians. But at the same time, that's what makes Romania so culturally fascinating, this uniqueness. They really can't be called Slavs but by the same token to simply call them "Latin" based on their language alone ignores the heavy Slavic/Balkan cultural influences that also characterize Romanians.
BTW I would agree with the people who state that Bulgarians are likely the closest genetic relatives to Romanians. The ancient Thracians are a major factor here (again Dacians were thought to be Thracians and some of the Roman colonists were really Romanized Thracians and other Balkan ethnicities), along with Slavic and other admixture in both groups. The differences are mainly that the Romanians preserved a Romance language that was lost by the Romanized Thracian population of present-day Bulgaria, which adopted a Slavic language and the name of later Bulgar conquerors. It's interesting that in Bulgaria's case, the name "Land of the Bulgars" is truly a misnomer as only the ruling people were Bulgars, the rest being a Slavic/Thracian population, with probably the majority being ultimately Thracian by ancestry. So basically you had one group adopting the language of another smaller group that was in turn conquered by an even smaller third group, with the name of that third group used for the ethnic designation of the people! Crazy how history works ain't it? LOL.
Spanish! I can hardly distinguish Spanish, Romanian or Slavic accents. They all sound similar to my ears.
I know a lot of people would have like to see slav words disappear from the rumanian language but that just wont happen. Romanian sounds slavic because IT IS slavic :D
1. "There are only a few words of slavic origin used in casual conversation". That is sheer nonsense (all words listed (ro) are romanian words of slavic origin):
love = iubire(ro) = liuba(slav) - liebe(german), luck = noroc (ro)
wrist watch = ceas(ro). Ceas means also hour just like in russian lol, second - clipa(ro) (in a second - intr-o clipa), it's time - e vremea(ro), dear - drag(ro) - daragoi(rus), cup - ceaşca - ceaşcă(russian), wife- nevastă(slav), work - munca(ro), honest - cinstit(ro), pizdă - meaning female genitals word common to all slav languages and origin of the romanian national swear "dute-n pizda matii" go baq into your mother's vagina hahaha, basically all words related to peasant life (work in the fields, animal husbandry) are of slavic origin:
ogor(field), brazda(result of ploughing), plug(plough), vadra(measure for wine), pinten(spur), cioban(shepherd), potcoava(horse shoe), praf(dust), clopot(church bell), cuşma(cap), gluga(de coceni), deal(hill), varf(mountain top), tolbă straiţă(textile peasant bag), mă(hey you! - mă, bă), bârna, grinda(wood piece used in house construction), pridvor, prag, gradina(garden), birt(pub), grabă(haste,make haste), milă(mercy), sila(disgust), pustiu(empty, desert), zdrobi(crush), spor(work well), vlaga(power), lotru(thief), iesle(horse, cow place to eat), grajd(animal barn), scoc(burlan) jgheab, şubă(coat), cojoc(winter fur coat), zdravăn(strong), boală(illness, sickness), borcan(jar), sticlă(bottle),mană(manat), sanie(sledge), şipcă, steag(flag), babă(old woman), isca, porni(to start), zăpadă(snow), crâng(small forest), pahar(glass), izvor(spring of water), obârşie, trudă(toil), mistrie(mason tool), ucenic(apprentice), zidar croitor(mason tailor), vâsli(to row), veselie(joy), paznic(guard), plăvan(ox), treabă(work, action), ispravă(heroic deed), destoinic(able, capable), lacom(greedy),jind, poftă(desire), tabară(camp), jupân(master), smântâna(cream), vreasc(dry wood), zăvor(door lock), voievod(king, literally warrior king in russian voi voda) cneaz(duke or count), baniţă(dry measure for grain), pivniţă, ciocan(hammer), cloci(clocitoare), scump(expensive and also dear), hulube(la căruţă), stâlp(pillar), osie(cart axis), stup(bee hive), ba(No), da(yes), slavă(glory, Slavă ţie Doamne - Glory to you Lord), ştiucă(kind of fish), odihna(rest), straja(guard), ţeapă(pike), topor(axe), maică(muică) - maika - mother, taică - father, borş, prost(stupid), trăi(to live, to be alive), , veac(century), blana(fur), mladiţă(young branch of tree), plămădi(build, make), trainic(durable), dârz(comitted), hotar(boundary), rât(pig mouth), vişină, pară(fire, flame, foc şi pară), duhni(stink), sfeclă, cocean, rochie(dress), blid(plate), bleg(fool), gâscă(goose), raţă(duck), minge(ball for sport like football) , pajişte islaz(pasture), prieten(friend), var(cousin), vârâ(insert), răscoli, răscoală(mutiny), mirosi(smell), vătrai, lovi(to hit), vrajbă(argument, enmity), veşnic(eternal), vajnic, vrednic harnic(hard working), struji sau strunji ciopli(carve the wood), clipi(blink of eye), potecă(small trail), ciupercă(mushroom), lipi(to glue, to bind), lipit, poleit, polei(thin ice), vopsi(paint), belciug(ring in ox, pig, nose), cutie(box), livada(tree garden), grămadă(a lot of), jupui, beli(to skin an animal), câlţi, icră(fish eg), ciudat(strange), sfârşit(end, the end), săvârşi(to do something), odor comoară(treasure), sarac(poor), bogat(rich), căli(harden iron), păli(hit), ortac tovarăş(comrade), cârd târlă (fleece), oişte, izbi(to hit smash), zadar(uselless efort), grijă(worry), cutră, natâng nărod(fool mad), isteţ(smart), dibaci(able), năuc, mânjit(dirty), sfada(verbal fight), sorcova, hâtru(funny), momeală nadă(decoy), plasă(bag or fish net), prăjină(staff and also ancient measure for length), proţap, şpagă(bribe), troiţă, lopată(shovel), bubă(wound), buruiană, plivi prăşi(farming works), sprijin(support), proptea, propti(to support), prăvăli(fall), prăvălie(shop), obicei datină(folkloric customs), nărav(habit), dungă(stripe), citi( to read),pitroci(varza, vinul), puşcă (rifle), trânti (to make someone fall to the ground), şobolan (rat), colţ (fang), nicovală (anvil), bob (grain, bead), bobiţe, covaci (ironsmith), colivie (bird cage), coteţ (dog house), cocină (pig house), mânăstire (monastery), ciubăr, cofă, doniţă (different recipients), stradanie, strădui(try hard), urni (to move something), opinti(push hard), opincă (peasant leather shoe), sloi (ice fragment), sleit (tired), şipot, şoptit (whisper), zdreanţă (rag), ciupi (pinch), prigoni prigoana(to chase someone, to hunt), goni(bane), lanţ(chain), măslui(forgery), impotrivi(to stand against), tâlc(hidden sense in a joke), glumă(joke), şagă, pâlc, sluga argat(servant), prispa, şatră, sită,
cobiliţă, strivi(to crush), chiti, pitic(dwarf,pigmy) jertfa(sacrifice), vazduh(air), gloata(mob), marsavie(bad deed), gloaba mirtoaga(bad horse), lesne(easy), podoaba(jewel), omor(killing), curva(whore), scarnav(dirty. slimy), vreme(time and weather), devreme(early), opri(stop), opreste, gospodar(husband, working man, russian gospodin means sir), gospodina(wife, working woman), gazda, jder(wild animal somekind of ferret) , creangă(branch), dobanda(interest), dobandi(to get to obtain), bâtlan(kind of bird).
You want more there is more :D
Guest it is you who is retarded just read about "Junimea". Romanians used slavonic alphabet for at least 1300-1400 years and latin alphabet for only 100 years ROFL. Rovinescu said it all just read his post
Read some of the rules made by Titu Maiorescu member of Masonic lodge Steaua Romaniei one of the "architects" lol of the purged romanian language. Just one example : We will say Maica preacurată nu Maică precistă. Just google "Titu Maiorescu despre Neologisme" and read the whole romanian wiki article
A small quote:
"Until 1830—1840 all rumanians used to say: nădăjduiesc, îmbelşugare, priincios, jertfă, destoinic, îndeobşte, polcovnic(slavic words), today most educated(in France and Italy) romanians use: abundenţă, favorabil, sacrificiu, capabil, în genere, colonel(french neologisms). He concludes: What happened once can happen again and what has happened for educated people can happen for the whole nation.
No doubt about that, we think, only problem is that we must find the conditions (the setup) for this thing to happen and we must find the law or rule according to wich this change can happen." Typical masonic thinking IMO
Maiorescu was totally against neologisms from german, greek and slavic languages. He would have liked to erase all slavic words from romanian but he didn't know what to replace them with, as he himself confesses :D.
1. "There are only a few words of slavic origin used in casual conversation". That is sheer nonsense (all words listed (ro) are romanian words of slavic origin):
love = iubire(ro) = liuba(slav) - liebe(german), luck = noroc (ro)
wrist watch = ceas(ro). Ceas means also hour just like in russian lol, second - clipa(ro) (in a second - intr-o clipa), it's time - e vremea(ro), dear - drag(ro) - daragoi(rus), cup - ceaşca - ceaşcă(russian), wife- nevastă(slav), work - munca(ro), honest - cinstit(ro), pizdă - meaning female genitals word common to all slav languages and origin of the romanian national swear "dute-n pizda matii" go baq into your mother's vagina hahaha, basically all words related to peasant life (work in the fields, animal husbandry) are of slavic origin:
ogor(field), brazda(result of ploughing), plug(plough), vadra(measure for wine), pinten(spur), cioban(shepherd), potcoava(horse shoe), praf(dust), clopot(church bell), cuşma(cap), gluga(de coceni), deal(hill), varf(mountain top), tolbă straiţă(textile peasant bag), mă(hey you! - mă, bă), bârna, grinda(wood piece used in house construction), pridvor, prag, gradina(garden), birt(pub), grabă(haste,make haste), milă(mercy), sila(disgust), pustiu(empty, desert), zdrobi(crush), spor(work well), vlaga(power), lotru(thief), iesle(horse, cow place to eat), grajd(animal barn), scoc(burlan) jgheab, şubă(coat), cojoc(winter fur coat), zdravăn(strong), boală(illness, sickness), borcan(jar), sticlă(bottle),mană(manat), sanie(sledge), şipcă, steag(flag), babă(old woman), isca, porni(to start), zăpadă(snow), crâng(small forest), pahar(glass), izvor(spring of water), obârşie, trudă(toil), mistrie(mason tool), ucenic(apprentice), zidar croitor(mason tailor), vâsli(to row), veselie(joy), paznic(guard), plăvan(ox), treabă(work, action), ispravă(heroic deed), destoinic(able, capable), lacom(greedy),jind, poftă(desire), tabară(camp), jupân(master), smântâna(cream), vreasc(dry wood), zăvor(door lock), voievod(king, literally warrior king in russian voi voda) cneaz(duke or count), baniţă(dry measure for grain), pivniţă, ciocan(hammer), cloci(clocitoare), scump(expensive and also dear), hulube(la căruţă), stâlp(pillar), osie(cart axis), stup(bee hive), ba(No), da(yes), slavă(glory, Slavă ţie Doamne - Glory to you Lord), ştiucă(kind of fish), odihna(rest), straja(guard), ţeapă(pike), topor(axe), maică(muică) - maika - mother, taică - father, borş, prost(stupid), trăi(to live, to be alive), , veac(century), blana(fur), mladiţă(young branch of tree), plămădi(build, make), trainic(durable), dârz(comitted), hotar(boundary), rât(pig mouth), vişină, pară(fire, flame, foc şi pară), duhni(stink), sfeclă, cocean, rochie(dress), blid(plate), bleg(fool), gâscă(goose), raţă(duck), minge(ball for sport like football) , pajişte islaz(pasture), prieten(friend), var(cousin), vârâ(insert), răscoli, răscoală(mutiny), mirosi(smell), vătrai, lovi(to hit), vrajbă(argument, enmity), veşnic(eternal), vajnic, vrednic harnic(hard working), struji sau strunji ciopli(carve the wood), clipi(blink of eye), potecă(small trail), ciupercă(mushroom), lipi(to glue, to bind), lipit, poleit, polei(thin ice), vopsi(paint), belciug(ring in ox, pig, nose), cutie(box), livada(tree garden), grămadă(a lot of), jupui, beli(to skin an animal), câlţi, icră(fish eg), ciudat(strange), sfârşit(end, the end), săvârşi(to do something), odor comoară(treasure), sarac(poor), bogat(rich), căli(harden iron), păli(hit), ortac tovarăş(comrade), cârd târlă (fleece), oişte, izbi(to hit smash), zadar(uselless efort), grijă(worry), cutră, natâng nărod(fool mad), isteţ(smart), dibaci(able), năuc, mânjit(dirty), sfada(verbal fight), sorcova, hâtru(funny), momeală nadă(decoy), plasă(bag or fish net), prăjină(staff and also ancient measure for length), proţap, şpagă(bribe), troiţă, lopată(shovel), bubă(wound), buruiană, plivi prăşi(farming works), sprijin(support), proptea, propti(to support), prăvăli(fall), prăvălie(shop), obicei datină(folkloric customs), nărav(habit), dungă(stripe), citi( to read),pitroci(varza, vinul), puşcă (rifle), trânti (to make someone fall to the ground), şobolan (rat), colţ (fang), nicovală (anvil), bob (grain, bead), bobiţe, covaci (ironsmith), colivie (bird cage), coteţ (dog house), cocină (pig house), mânăstire (monastery), ciubăr, cofă, doniţă (different recipients), stradanie, strădui(try hard), urni (to move something), opinti(push hard), opincă (peasant leather shoe), sloi (ice fragment), sleit (tired), şipot, şoptit (whisper), zdreanţă (rag), ciupi (pinch), prigoni prigoana(to chase someone, to hunt), goni(bane), lanţ(chain), măslui(forgery), impotrivi(to stand against), tâlc(hidden sense in a joke), glumă(joke), şagă, pâlc, sluga argat(servant), prispa, şatră, sită,
cobiliţă, strivi(to crush), chiti, pitic(dwarf,pigmy) jertfa(sacrifice), vazduh(air), gloata(mob), marsavie(bad deed), gloaba mirtoaga(bad horse), lesne(easy), podoaba(jewel), omor(killing), curva(whore), scarnav(dirty. slimy), vreme(time and weather), devreme(early), opri(stop), opreste, gospodar(husband, working man, russian gospodin means sir), gospodina(wife, working woman), gazda, jder(wild animal somekind of ferret) , creangă(branch), dobanda(interest), dobandi(to get to obtain), bâtlan(kind of bird).
You want more there is more :D
Guest it is you who is retarded just read about "Junimea". Romanians used slavonic alphabet for at least 1300-1400 years and latin alphabet for only 100 years ROFL. Rovinescu said it all just read his post
Read some of the rules made by Titu Maiorescu member of Masonic lodge Steaua Romaniei one of the "architects" lol of the purged romanian language. Just one example : We will say Maica preacurată nu Maică precistă. Just google "Titu Maiorescu despre Neologisme" and read the whole romanian wiki article
A small quote:
"Until 1830—1840 all rumanians used to say: nădăjduiesc, îmbelşugare, priincios, jertfă, destoinic, îndeobşte, polcovnic(slavic words), today most educated(in France and Italy) romanians use: abundenţă, favorabil, sacrificiu, capabil, în genere, colonel(french neologisms). He concludes: What happened once can happen again and what has happened for educated people can happen for the whole nation.
No doubt about that, we think, only problem is that we must find the conditions (the setup) for this thing to happen and we must find the law or rule according to wich this change can happen." Typical masonic thinking IMO
Maiorescu was totally against neologisms from german, greek and slavic languages. He would have liked to erase all slavic words from romanian but he didn't know what to replace them with, as he himself confesses :D.
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Quote from: ravinescu
No, it's not unlikely, it's the truth. Of course romanian language had a larger percentage of slavic words than what it has now. The romanian language was heavily modified in the 19th and 20th centuries by importing large numbers of french words. Everyone that knows a thing or two about the romanian language is aware of the process or "reromanization" ("relatinization") that took part mainly in the 19th century, process that changed considerably the romanian vocabulary and modified the percentage of romanic and slavic words. Whereas the percentage was more or less equal in the 19th century, in the 20th century that changed dramatically, because the percentage of words of romanic origin was greatly boosted by the imports from french (and to a lesser extent from italian). At the present time, when it comes to the vocabulary (totality of words), romanian is more related to french than to latin.
There is an entire book written recently (1999) that analyzes the reromanization (relatinzation) of the romanian vocabulary, and this book is available for free. Unfortunately it is only available in romanian.
Author: Coman Lupu
Publishing House : Editura Logos
==================================
The attempts made by some Romanian intellectuals to displace the Slavic words that entered the basic Romanian vocabulary were failures for a simple reason: most of the Romanian population was illetarate when this proposals were made (18th and early 19th century) and couldn't care less about such initiatives. So in a basic conversation, the amount of Slavic words in Romanian is pretty much the same as it was 200 years ago. That being said, when Romania replaced OCS from administration use with Romanian language in 19th century, words of Latin origin or from other Romance language were adopted to fill the gaps. Words like voievod, voda, cneaz, jupan, boier etc etc were dropped from everyday use, and the new words describing modern realities were adopted from languages closer to Romanian than OCS, like French and Italian. I see far more practical than political reasons behind this process.
Quote from: ravinescu
No, it's not unlikely, it's the truth. Of course romanian language had a larger percentage of slavic words than what it has now. The romanian language was heavily modified in the 19th and 20th centuries by importing large numbers of french words. Everyone that knows a thing or two about the romanian language is aware of the process or "reromanization" ("relatinization") that took part mainly in the 19th century, process that changed considerably the romanian vocabulary and modified the percentage of romanic and slavic words. Whereas the percentage was more or less equal in the 19th century, in the 20th century that changed dramatically, because the percentage of words of romanic origin was greatly boosted by the imports from french (and to a lesser extent from italian). At the present time, when it comes to the vocabulary (totality of words), romanian is more related to french than to latin.
There is an entire book written recently (1999) that analyzes the reromanization (relatinzation) of the romanian vocabulary, and this book is available for free. Unfortunately it is only available in romanian.
Author: Coman Lupu
Publishing House : Editura Logos
==================================
The attempts made by some Romanian intellectuals to displace the Slavic words that entered the basic Romanian vocabulary were failures for a simple reason: most of the Romanian population was illetarate when this proposals were made (18th and early 19th century) and couldn't care less about such initiatives. So in a basic conversation, the amount of Slavic words in Romanian is pretty much the same as it was 200 years ago. That being said, when Romania replaced OCS from administration use with Romanian language in 19th century, words of Latin origin or from other Romance language were adopted to fill the gaps. Words like voievod, voda, cneaz, jupan, boier etc etc were dropped from everyday use, and the new words describing modern realities were adopted from languages closer to Romanian than OCS, like French and Italian. I see far more practical than political reasons behind this process.
================================
Quote from: Ruman
Maiorescu was totally against neologisms from german, greek and slavic languages. He would have liked to erase all slavic words from romanian but he didn't know what to replace them with, as he himself confesses :D.
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I am sure he would, it doesn't mean he could.
This is why spoken languages are called natural, it's very hard to adjust them to one's liking :D
Quote from: Ruman
Maiorescu was totally against neologisms from german, greek and slavic languages. He would have liked to erase all slavic words from romanian but he didn't know what to replace them with, as he himself confesses :D.
================================
I am sure he would, it doesn't mean he could.
This is why spoken languages are called natural, it's very hard to adjust them to one's liking :D
==================================
Quote from: Dan
The only significant amount of Slavic words from today's Romanian comes from the Old Church Slavonic. These imports took place after Romanian was formed, because Old Slavonic was introduced in Romania after year 1000. Nevertheless, these imports were resilient in the Romanian language because they were understood by the common man. While illiterate, Middle Age man was faithful and had a decent understanding of the liturgy held in OCS. The words related to religious life aspects (love, mariage etc) are from Slavonic, solely because of their use in church. The same goes for the Slavic names - first they were used by monks which were baptized with Slavic names, then gradually these names were adopted by the population.
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Quote from: ravinescu
Really, you have no clue about the history of the romanian people and its language. Go and buy any history book. For example go and buy "Istoria Românilor" by C.C. Giurescu, a treaty in 3 volumes (written between 1935-1946) that can be found in the bookshops or can be ordered via internet. I will post below a little fragment from that book referring to the romanian words of slavic origin (the emphasis -- CAPS -- was added by me).
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C.C. Giurescu: Istoria Românilor (Editura All, 2007) => vol. I, page 209
This great number of slavic words did not enter the romanian language at the same time, but one by one, beginning with the 6th century (maybe even the end of the 5th century) and continuing until the end of the 19th century. A significant part -- THE MOST SIGNIFICANT PART -- entered at THE TIME OF THE COHABITATION WITH THE SLAVS IN DACIA, until they were assimilated, that is in the 6 to the 9th centuries (the years 500-800). A second part of slavic words, related to the church, was received after the slavs were christianized, that is from the 9th century onwards. which time (epoch, age) he wants to speak.
[...]
Of course, their repartition is not equal; in some domains the slavic words are more numerous, in other less numerous; but there is not any single domain were they cannot be found.
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That quote offers a hypothesis on how the Slavic words got into the Romanian language, but a hypothesis cannot be used as proof.
There is no proof that there was cohabitation with Slavic populations in Dacia other than the word imports - unfortunatelly for this hypothesis there is another explanation that is grounded in facts not speculation: namely the use in the former Romanian kingdoms for almost 1000 years of the Old Church Slavonic in church and administration. As Giurescu noticed the spread of the Slavic words in Romanian is not uniform, meaning the Slavic words were used mostly to describe things like ranks, property, market goods, occupations, toponymy (everything that would appear in administrative documents written in OCS) and words related to church and Christian life (like the moral values, marriage and so on). This is a very specific set of words and such a word selection would make no sense if there was real cohabitation with Slavic populations in Dacia.
Quote from: Dan
The only significant amount of Slavic words from today's Romanian comes from the Old Church Slavonic. These imports took place after Romanian was formed, because Old Slavonic was introduced in Romania after year 1000. Nevertheless, these imports were resilient in the Romanian language because they were understood by the common man. While illiterate, Middle Age man was faithful and had a decent understanding of the liturgy held in OCS. The words related to religious life aspects (love, mariage etc) are from Slavonic, solely because of their use in church. The same goes for the Slavic names - first they were used by monks which were baptized with Slavic names, then gradually these names were adopted by the population.
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Quote from: ravinescu
Really, you have no clue about the history of the romanian people and its language. Go and buy any history book. For example go and buy "Istoria Românilor" by C.C. Giurescu, a treaty in 3 volumes (written between 1935-1946) that can be found in the bookshops or can be ordered via internet. I will post below a little fragment from that book referring to the romanian words of slavic origin (the emphasis -- CAPS -- was added by me).
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C.C. Giurescu: Istoria Românilor (Editura All, 2007) => vol. I, page 209
This great number of slavic words did not enter the romanian language at the same time, but one by one, beginning with the 6th century (maybe even the end of the 5th century) and continuing until the end of the 19th century. A significant part -- THE MOST SIGNIFICANT PART -- entered at THE TIME OF THE COHABITATION WITH THE SLAVS IN DACIA, until they were assimilated, that is in the 6 to the 9th centuries (the years 500-800). A second part of slavic words, related to the church, was received after the slavs were christianized, that is from the 9th century onwards. which time (epoch, age) he wants to speak.
[...]
Of course, their repartition is not equal; in some domains the slavic words are more numerous, in other less numerous; but there is not any single domain were they cannot be found.
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That quote offers a hypothesis on how the Slavic words got into the Romanian language, but a hypothesis cannot be used as proof.
There is no proof that there was cohabitation with Slavic populations in Dacia other than the word imports - unfortunatelly for this hypothesis there is another explanation that is grounded in facts not speculation: namely the use in the former Romanian kingdoms for almost 1000 years of the Old Church Slavonic in church and administration. As Giurescu noticed the spread of the Slavic words in Romanian is not uniform, meaning the Slavic words were used mostly to describe things like ranks, property, market goods, occupations, toponymy (everything that would appear in administrative documents written in OCS) and words related to church and Christian life (like the moral values, marriage and so on). This is a very specific set of words and such a word selection would make no sense if there was real cohabitation with Slavic populations in Dacia.