continental Romanian
Which Romance language sounds more Slavic?
Romanians used to speak a mostly Slavic language.
The largest DNA component of Romanians is the Slavic gene.
The largest DNA component of Romanians is the Slavic gene.
All Europe spoke a Slavic language and shares genes from a common Russian ancestor, president Putin.
<<Putin is a son of a bitch.>>
Haha. Literally he is!
-in is the surname suffix that means "son of"
So while Putin will try to convince you that it is "Put' + in = son of road or something", we all know it really means "Puta + in = son of bitch"
Haha. Literally he is!
-in is the surname suffix that means "son of"
So while Putin will try to convince you that it is "Put' + in = son of road or something", we all know it really means "Puta + in = son of bitch"
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Quote from: AI
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.
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Well, yes and no. The romanian identity is a relatively new concept, because the 3 provinces inhabited by romanian speaking people were not united until the 20th century. The union of those provinces occured in two steps. The first step was in 1859, when the principalities of Wallachia (Ţara Românească/Muntenia, the southern part of Romania) and Moldavia (Moldova, the eastern part of Romania) united to form the country of Romania. The second step was in 1918, when Transylvania (Transilvania, the western part of Romania) joined the two other provinces, so that all the territories inhabited by romanian speaking people formed a single country.
Although the population of the provinces of Wallachia (Muntenia), Moldavia (Moldova) and Transylvania (Transilvania) felt always that it belong to the same people (having the same language and similar popular customs), the association with dacians and romans came very late, because a state sponsored educational system for the masses was not in place until the 19th century. So the population of the three principalities knew that they were part of the same people, but the memories related to dacians and romans were forgotten from a very long time. That's because for 1000 years the autochtonous population mixed with migratory populations that settled on the territory. The dacian state lasted for less than 200 years and the roman province of Dacia lasted for 170 years. Both periods are much less than the 1000 years when there was no state at all. And it should be noted that the dacian state was completely destroyed by the romans, which also killed the nobles and the priests. The dacian fortresses (political and religious centers) were demolished and the dacian religion was prohibited, so the dacian civilization was annihilated completely in the roman province. After the romans departed, the same thing happened with the roman civilization, which was also completely destroyed in Dacia (towns became ghost towns and then ruins). The romanian people started with a new civilization, which was not based on the foundation of the dacian or roman civilization. Only much later the romanians (actually the wallachians, moldavians and transylvanians) discovered that they are related to the dacians and romans, and this is because of the history books, not because of lasting memories or continuity of civilization.
The romanian identity built on a daco-roman base is an intellectual construct of the 19th century, it was not based on what the population actually thought about its origins. This new daco-roman identity was propagated in the minds of the romanians through the educational system and this continues in today's schools. It is not that it is a completely bogus identity, but some things are greatly exaggerated, like the roman contribution to the genesis of the romanian people. Today the things taught in schools are much close to the truth than in the 19th century, when for a long time the schoolchildren learned that the romanians are descendants from romans only, and these romans were from Rome and Italy, not other parts of the roman empire. It was a brainwashing on a large scale, and even today some romanians are brainwashed like this. The bad part is that they want to brainwash the non-romanians to believe their propaganda.
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Quote from: AI
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.
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It'a stretch when you think that the name Romania actually existed long before it was used by the romanian state. It was used first to identify all the territories where the latin language was used (territories belonging to the roman empire), and after that it was used for the Byzantine Empire. The Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire no longer exist, but using their name for a modern country was a stretch from a historical point of view. However, it must be noted that the name taken by the new country formed in the 19th century is not Romania, it is România, with an  instead of an A. The true writing should be Romînia, because the sound Î has nothing to do with A, but with I. Now, when a non-romanian sees România, he must think that it is the same as Romania, but it is not, the pronunciation is very different, Î(Â) being nowhere near A in pronounciation. I already wrote about the trick used in the romanian language to write the sound Î as  in the middle of the words, in order to make people (especially non-romanians) believe it is an A with a circumflex accent.
The names of the countries do not always reflect their main ethnic component. The franks were not a big part of the population that inhabited the former roman province of Gallia, but because franks ruled the country for a significant amount of time, they gave it their name (France), even though the population was mostly of celtic (gallic) origin. The bulgarians have their name after a turkic tribe that ruled the country before being assimilated by the slavic population, which formed the majority. So it's not a problem if Romania is named România, the problem is the fact that some romanians don't know history and say that they are descendants principally from romans. It's like french or bulgarians saying they are principally descending from franks (germanic tribe) or bulgars (turkic tribe).
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Quote from: AI
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.
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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.
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You have understood the historic evolutions that took part in this part of Europe. But tell that to the brainwashed romanians like Dan, who believe they have nothing to do with the surrounding populations, because Romania "was an insulated country", a "latin island in a slavic sea", just like it was taught in schools 150 years ago.
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Quote from: Ruman
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. [...] all words listed (ro) are romanian words of slavic origin):
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Romanian is not a slavic language, but a romanic language with an important slavic influence. Romanian has a lot of words of slavic origin, just like you have demonstrated with the list posted above (although "cioban" is not of slavic origin, but of turkic origin, probably from the petchenegs or cumans).
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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
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Here you are wrong, because Titu Maiorescu was against the excessive latinization of the language, he was against the purging of words of slavic origin. Believe me, I have read all his writings on the subject. Those who wanted to transform romanian in a ressurected latin were the members and followers of the politico-cultural movement named "Şcoala Ardeleană" ("Transylvanian School"). Their names were Samuil Micu, Petru Maior, Timotei Cipariu, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, etc. In contrast, Titu Maiorescu strongly resisted the idea of purging the words of non-latin origin, especially slavic.
Ruman, in the quote you have provided, Titu Maiorescu was making a point, he was not saying that it would replace all the words of slavic origin if he had some suitable replacements. Of course these words could be replaced with french or italian ones, said Maiorescu, but the new words could not have the expressive power of the genuine romanian words (of slavic or other non-latin origin), used by the population for 1000 years or more, so it would be a mistake to replace them.
Alecu Russo was also an intellectual from the 19th century who decried the idea to expel from romanian the words of non-latin origin. His opinions (written in romanian) can be read on the internet.
http://tinyurl.com/russo-romanian
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Quote from: Dan
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.
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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.
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The population resisted the change, because it was stupid to replace words that had been in use for a thousand or more years. It's like today the intellectuals wanted to replace the romanian words with english ones, so the romanians would have to say "I love you" instead of "te iubesc". No matter from what language are taken the neologisms, the population likes much more the genuine romanian words, regardless of their origin. It is true now and it was also true in the 19th century.
The words "voievod", "vodă", "cneaz", "jupîn", "boier" were not dropped from the language, they are used even today. But the concepts they designate have disappeared from everyday life, because the political system and the administration have changed. It' like in french, where the words "marquis", "baron", "comte", "duc" are present in the language, but are used only in historical contexts, because the times have changed. It's a situation very similar to romanian, where "voievod", "vodă", "cneaz", boier" are used only in movies or literary works that describe events happening 200 years or more ago.
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Quote from: Dan
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.
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Of course there are proofs that the romanic people (left after the retreat of the romans) cohabitated with the slavs. But you, Dan, do not want to open an history book, so you have no possibility to find that. You can even open any history textbook and you will find out that the slavs were assimilated. I will give you a quote from a history textbook used today for the 13-14 years old schoolchildren:
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Etnogeneza românească se înscrie în procesul general european de formare a popoarelor şi limbilor neolatine. Ea s-a desfăşurat într-o lungă perioadă de timp, la nord şi sud de Dunăre, şi a avut drept coordonate esenţiale sinteza şi simbioza daco-romană şi asimilarea slavă. Născută o dată cu poporul care o vorbeşte, limba română este fundamental romanică, dar păstrează elemente dacice şi influenţe slave.
Poporul român
Dacii, care atinseseră un anumit nivel de civilizaţie înainte de cucerirea traiană, au dăinuit sub stăpînirea romană; ei s-au integrat în viaţa economică şi socială a noii provincii, alcătuind totodată suportul influenţei pe care imperiul a exercitat-o în timp asupra teritoriilor din afara Daciei romane. Elementele romane cu rol primordial în romanizarea dacilor au fost în principal soldaţii şi coloniştii; din sinteza lor cu autohtonii au rezultat daco-romanii. Cei mai mulţi dintre ei au rămas să vieţuiască la nord de Dunăre, după retragerea aureliană, reprezentînd baza continuării procesului de romanizare în condiţiile procesului migrator. Menţinerea legăturilor cu Imperiul roman şi răspîndirea creştinismului şi-au exercitat influenţa romanizatoare asupra teritoriului de la nordul fluviului pînă la începutul secolului al VII-lea, cînd s-a interpus prezenţa slavilor. Înscrisă într-o succesiune îndelungată de migraţii, trecerea masivă a slavilor în Balcani a făcut să crească ponderea elementului romanic în fosta Dacie şi a dus la asimilarea elementelor slave rămase. Rezultatul acestui îndelung proces a fost apariţia poporului român, eveniment pe care istoricii îl apreciază ca fiind încheiat în linii mari la sfîrşitul secolului al VIII-lea. Analiza etnogenezei româneşti pune în evidenţă încadrarea sa în procesul general european de formare a popoarelor neolatine: italian, francez, spaniol, portughez, etc. (doc 1)
[Precizare din partea mea: doc 1 e un tabel unde sînt prezentate "Entităţile etno-lingvistice neolatine europene", adică popoarele (românii, francezii, italienii, spaniolii, portughezii). La fiecare e menţionat substratul, stratul şi adstratul. La români substratul este "daco-moesic", stratul este "latin", iar adstratul este "slavic (meridional)". La italieni substratul este italic, stratul este latin, iar adstratul este germanic. La francezi substratul este galic, stratul este latin, iar adstratul este germanic. La spanioli substratul este celtiberic, stratul este latin, iar adstratul este germanic. La portughezi substratul este lusitan, stratul este latin, iar adstratul este germanic.]
Sorin Oane, Maria Ochescu - Istoria Românilor, manual pt. clasa a VIII-a (Editura Humanitas Educaţional, 2005) - pag. 40-41
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Quote from: Dan
Since the marriage vows were read in OCS for almost 1000 years one would expect than even the village idiot would understand some centuries down the road that he had to say 'Da' when he heard 'lyubvi' and 'nevesta'. So why it did not happen for Hungarians? because, to put it in their own words, they truly suck at foreign languages.
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You really are believing that the marriage vows in Romania were read in old church slavonic ? You are the only one to believe that. Do not confuse religious sermons with marriage vows, they are completely different things. The explication for hungarians not learning latin words from the latin used in the catholic church is a very funny one. Actually hungarians learned latin and they also wrote in latin, much more than the romanians wrote in old church slavonic. The hungarian literature written in latin is much more important than the romanian literature written in slavonic. But the hungarian ordinary population did not cohabitate with a latin speaking population, so that's the explanation for the lack of a latin influence in hungarian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_literature
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Quote from: Dan
In regards to the church use of 'pizda', you really have a naive view on how foreign words get into the language. Back in medieval times the church had to give family planning advice to women and the monasteries often offered homebirth services, and so 'pizda' was a perfectly safe word in a foreign language required for conversation while performing such services, much like 'vagin' is used today in Romanian. Later on, when the medicine adopted 'vagin', 'pizda' entered slang.
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Come on, stop making a fool of yourself. The church has never and will never give family planning advice. The church is against all forms of family planning, the church wants as many children as a woman can have. Even in present times, some years ago, the catholic church opposed the use of condoms for SIDA prevention in Africa, because by doing that it meant that fewer children would be born. And no, the church was not a provider of homebirth services, this was a service provided in the old times by midwives, named in romanian "moaşe".
And the romanian medical term for "pizdă" is not "vagin", but "vulvă", so you really have no idea what you are saying. Check the dictionary definitions (in romanian):
http://tinyurl.com/pizda-ro
http://tinyurl.com/vulva-ro
Really, you are trying hard to fabricate evidence, but you are not an expert of the romanian language, so you fall short of the truth.
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Quote from: Dan
Romanians had mostly Biblic names in Medieval times the most popular ones being Ion, Gheorghe and Maria (John, George and Mary). So most of the names were not Slavic. The Orthodox monks had Latin, Greek and Slavic names. Slavic names like Tihomir, Tihon or Slavicized names like Gavril, Daniil, Arsenie etc were common among monks, and of course OCS had to do with their spread.
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The names you mention (Razvan, Mircea, Dragos, Vlad, Bogdan, Radu etc), were nobiliary names for people of mixt or non-Romanian ethnicity. These names became popular in late 19th century when the Romanian peasantry became aware of the names of their historical leaders. Once again, these were not popular names for Romanians in Medieval times, they don't prove cohabitation with Slavs.
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No, you are again very far of the truth. There are a lot of written documents left from the medieval times and many contain names. This is because even at that time people had land properties and traded things, in short they needed to have some written documents to prove they were the owners of the traded lands or goods. So if you take a look at some old documents you will encounter plenty of romanians with slavic names that had no relation to the church (Stanca, Preda, Drăghici, Dragolea, Staico, Vlad, Voicu, Stan, Bratu, Stoica, Dobromir, Stanciu, Oprea, Neacşa, Radu, Pîrvu, etc.). The documents are not only about high ranking people, they are also about ordinary people.
You must understand that the orthodox church was never a slavicization factor (agent) in Romania, just like the catholic church was never a latinization factor (agent) in Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, etc.
If you really want to see some old medieval documents written in slavonic and transcripted in the contemporary romanian alphabet you could buy the following books:
Constantin Giurescu : Despre boieri şi despre rumâni (Editura Compania, 2008)
Ion Soare: Documente slavo-române păstrate în arhivele din Oltenia (Editura Scrisul Românesc, 2005)
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Quote from: JGreco
On this forum, it seems like there is a separation between pro-Slav versus pro-Latin/Romance camps. Does this same vehement opposition occur in country.
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There are not two camps in Romania, one pro-Slavic, the other Pro-Latin. There are however two camps, one pro-Truth and the other pro-Propaganda. Those that want to present the historical truth about the romanian people and language are reading history and language books written in recent times, after the fall of communism (1989). Those that want to lie about the history and the language of romanians use 100 years old propaganda, that no rational person would believe today. Unfortunately the brainwashing that began in the 19th century persists in some romanians, even though the recently written books are much more objective than 150 years ago.
There is a book published in 2004 by a professor of history at the University of Bucharest that describes the modification of romanian textbooks between 1831-1878, going from a theory that romanians are descending only from romans, to a theory that romanians are descendants in equal parts from romans and dacians. Today the texbooks acknowledge also the contribution of the slavs, but not on par with the romans and dacians, although from a genetical point of view the slavic contribution is much more important than the roman one.
http://ebooks.unibuc.ro/istorie/murgescu/cuprins.htm
(book in romanian about the modification of the official discourse about the origin of romanians - links to PDF files with full text)
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Quote from: Dan
In Rep of Moldova almost half of the population is made of Russian native speakers (even most of the Ukrainians living in Moldova are Russian native speakers). These Slavic populations fear any tighter political relation between Romania and Moldova. They truly believe the Tsarist/Soviet fabrications about the history of Romania and Moldova, used to lay claim over these lands.
Ruman and ravinescu are excellent representatives of this line of thought. They believe that Romanian lands were once called Russovlahia, that one third of the population was Slavic in Medieval times, that present day Romanian is an artificial language made by Freemasons and Imperial Austrians to hinder legitimate Russian claims over Romania.
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I am from Bucharest, capital of Romania, not from the Republic of Moldova. And I present only the truth based on historical texts and on the opinions of the romanian historians of today, that I have read.
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Quote from: Ruman
P.S.: Ravinescu I salute you and thanks for the usefull links. I am happy that I am not alone :D.
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Well, I salute you too, even though I do not share all of your opinions. Many people want to know the truth about the history of romanians, just check the two massive threads about that topic on the romanian forum Softpedia:
http://forum.softpedia.com/index.php?showtopic=593236
http://forum.softpedia.com/index.php?showtopic=80323
There is also a thread about the slavic influence on the romanian people and civilization:
http://forum.softpedia.com/index.php?showtopic=569037
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Quote from : AI
I agree that there appears to be an intense and spirited divide between Romanians who wish to identify more with Latin Europeans and those who see themselves as closer to Slavs and other Eastern Europeans.
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No, there is no such divide. The great majority of romanians want to be perceived by the strangers as Latin Europeans, not Slavs. It is funny, because many of those romanians have slavic names (last names and/or first names). This opinion of the romanians about themselves (latin people surrounded by slavic peoples) was caused by an intense educational propaganda that took place in schools in the last 200 years. Couple that with an almost general lack of popular interest for the true romanian history and you get a people that can be manipulated very easily to repeat (echo) the official historical propaganda and slogans.
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Quote from: OriginalGuest
In fact the standard romanian alphabet does not even capture all romanian diphthongs and palatalizations used even in the standard pronunciation. In this respect the alphabet is not fully phonetic.
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The romanian alphabet is almost fully phonetic. Actually, romanian developed as a phonetic language probably because it was written in cyrillic alphabet, which has many more letters than the original latin alphabet. So it was very easy to write in cyrillic all the sounds that exist in romanian. When romanian switched from cyrillic to the latin alphabet, there were some big problems caused by the sounds that did not exist in latin, so they could not be written with latin letters. Eventually the new "latin" letters Ă Î Ş Ţ (modified A I S T) were invented to be used for romanian. The letters for those sounds already existed in the cyrillic alphabet (written differently, of course), so the cyrillic alphabet was more suited than the latin one for writing in romanian, which is probably true even today, although nobody envisions a return to the cyrillic alphabet.
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Quote from: Dan
The regional accents barely survive in present day Romania. There are more differences now between the urban and rural accents than among the accents of the historical regions of Romania. I have seen Romanians here associating the Iasi accent with the Moldovan accent (the Romanian Moldova) - this is incorrect. The current Moldovan accent is very weak, and it dissapears when a Moldovan speaks with somebody from a different region (unlike the Iasi accent).
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Pretty much everywhere else the urban accent is standard Romanian.
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Not true. Regional accents are alive and kicking. A person living in a village in Moldova (eastern Romania) has a different accent than a rural inhabitant of Transylvania (western Romania) or Muntenia (southern Romania). Those speaking with a true moldavian accent do not lose it when speaking with a person from another part of the country. The opposite is true. A person from Moldova living in Bucharest and who has lost the moldavian accent in everyday speech, can speak again with that accent when having a conversation with a relative that lives in Moldova (for example his father or mother).
There is no urban accent in Romania, no more that in other countries (people from Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Rouen, Bordeaux, etc. do not have a specific "french urban accent"). The romanian language considered "standard" is actually the language spoken in Bucharest, which is devoid of any regional accent. Those living in Bucharest do not have an "urban accent", they have no regional accent at all, not even one specific to Bucharest (which is a "region" in itself with a population close to 2 million).
Quote from: AI
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.
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Well, yes and no. The romanian identity is a relatively new concept, because the 3 provinces inhabited by romanian speaking people were not united until the 20th century. The union of those provinces occured in two steps. The first step was in 1859, when the principalities of Wallachia (Ţara Românească/Muntenia, the southern part of Romania) and Moldavia (Moldova, the eastern part of Romania) united to form the country of Romania. The second step was in 1918, when Transylvania (Transilvania, the western part of Romania) joined the two other provinces, so that all the territories inhabited by romanian speaking people formed a single country.
Although the population of the provinces of Wallachia (Muntenia), Moldavia (Moldova) and Transylvania (Transilvania) felt always that it belong to the same people (having the same language and similar popular customs), the association with dacians and romans came very late, because a state sponsored educational system for the masses was not in place until the 19th century. So the population of the three principalities knew that they were part of the same people, but the memories related to dacians and romans were forgotten from a very long time. That's because for 1000 years the autochtonous population mixed with migratory populations that settled on the territory. The dacian state lasted for less than 200 years and the roman province of Dacia lasted for 170 years. Both periods are much less than the 1000 years when there was no state at all. And it should be noted that the dacian state was completely destroyed by the romans, which also killed the nobles and the priests. The dacian fortresses (political and religious centers) were demolished and the dacian religion was prohibited, so the dacian civilization was annihilated completely in the roman province. After the romans departed, the same thing happened with the roman civilization, which was also completely destroyed in Dacia (towns became ghost towns and then ruins). The romanian people started with a new civilization, which was not based on the foundation of the dacian or roman civilization. Only much later the romanians (actually the wallachians, moldavians and transylvanians) discovered that they are related to the dacians and romans, and this is because of the history books, not because of lasting memories or continuity of civilization.
The romanian identity built on a daco-roman base is an intellectual construct of the 19th century, it was not based on what the population actually thought about its origins. This new daco-roman identity was propagated in the minds of the romanians through the educational system and this continues in today's schools. It is not that it is a completely bogus identity, but some things are greatly exaggerated, like the roman contribution to the genesis of the romanian people. Today the things taught in schools are much close to the truth than in the 19th century, when for a long time the schoolchildren learned that the romanians are descendants from romans only, and these romans were from Rome and Italy, not other parts of the roman empire. It was a brainwashing on a large scale, and even today some romanians are brainwashed like this. The bad part is that they want to brainwash the non-romanians to believe their propaganda.
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Quote from: AI
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.
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It'a stretch when you think that the name Romania actually existed long before it was used by the romanian state. It was used first to identify all the territories where the latin language was used (territories belonging to the roman empire), and after that it was used for the Byzantine Empire. The Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire no longer exist, but using their name for a modern country was a stretch from a historical point of view. However, it must be noted that the name taken by the new country formed in the 19th century is not Romania, it is România, with an  instead of an A. The true writing should be Romînia, because the sound Î has nothing to do with A, but with I. Now, when a non-romanian sees România, he must think that it is the same as Romania, but it is not, the pronunciation is very different, Î(Â) being nowhere near A in pronounciation. I already wrote about the trick used in the romanian language to write the sound Î as  in the middle of the words, in order to make people (especially non-romanians) believe it is an A with a circumflex accent.
The names of the countries do not always reflect their main ethnic component. The franks were not a big part of the population that inhabited the former roman province of Gallia, but because franks ruled the country for a significant amount of time, they gave it their name (France), even though the population was mostly of celtic (gallic) origin. The bulgarians have their name after a turkic tribe that ruled the country before being assimilated by the slavic population, which formed the majority. So it's not a problem if Romania is named România, the problem is the fact that some romanians don't know history and say that they are descendants principally from romans. It's like french or bulgarians saying they are principally descending from franks (germanic tribe) or bulgars (turkic tribe).
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Quote from: AI
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.
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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.
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You have understood the historic evolutions that took part in this part of Europe. But tell that to the brainwashed romanians like Dan, who believe they have nothing to do with the surrounding populations, because Romania "was an insulated country", a "latin island in a slavic sea", just like it was taught in schools 150 years ago.
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Quote from: Ruman
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. [...] all words listed (ro) are romanian words of slavic origin):
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Romanian is not a slavic language, but a romanic language with an important slavic influence. Romanian has a lot of words of slavic origin, just like you have demonstrated with the list posted above (although "cioban" is not of slavic origin, but of turkic origin, probably from the petchenegs or cumans).
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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
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Here you are wrong, because Titu Maiorescu was against the excessive latinization of the language, he was against the purging of words of slavic origin. Believe me, I have read all his writings on the subject. Those who wanted to transform romanian in a ressurected latin were the members and followers of the politico-cultural movement named "Şcoala Ardeleană" ("Transylvanian School"). Their names were Samuil Micu, Petru Maior, Timotei Cipariu, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, etc. In contrast, Titu Maiorescu strongly resisted the idea of purging the words of non-latin origin, especially slavic.
Ruman, in the quote you have provided, Titu Maiorescu was making a point, he was not saying that it would replace all the words of slavic origin if he had some suitable replacements. Of course these words could be replaced with french or italian ones, said Maiorescu, but the new words could not have the expressive power of the genuine romanian words (of slavic or other non-latin origin), used by the population for 1000 years or more, so it would be a mistake to replace them.
Alecu Russo was also an intellectual from the 19th century who decried the idea to expel from romanian the words of non-latin origin. His opinions (written in romanian) can be read on the internet.
http://tinyurl.com/russo-romanian
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Quote from: Dan
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.
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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.
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The population resisted the change, because it was stupid to replace words that had been in use for a thousand or more years. It's like today the intellectuals wanted to replace the romanian words with english ones, so the romanians would have to say "I love you" instead of "te iubesc". No matter from what language are taken the neologisms, the population likes much more the genuine romanian words, regardless of their origin. It is true now and it was also true in the 19th century.
The words "voievod", "vodă", "cneaz", "jupîn", "boier" were not dropped from the language, they are used even today. But the concepts they designate have disappeared from everyday life, because the political system and the administration have changed. It' like in french, where the words "marquis", "baron", "comte", "duc" are present in the language, but are used only in historical contexts, because the times have changed. It's a situation very similar to romanian, where "voievod", "vodă", "cneaz", boier" are used only in movies or literary works that describe events happening 200 years or more ago.
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Quote from: Dan
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.
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Of course there are proofs that the romanic people (left after the retreat of the romans) cohabitated with the slavs. But you, Dan, do not want to open an history book, so you have no possibility to find that. You can even open any history textbook and you will find out that the slavs were assimilated. I will give you a quote from a history textbook used today for the 13-14 years old schoolchildren:
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Etnogeneza românească se înscrie în procesul general european de formare a popoarelor şi limbilor neolatine. Ea s-a desfăşurat într-o lungă perioadă de timp, la nord şi sud de Dunăre, şi a avut drept coordonate esenţiale sinteza şi simbioza daco-romană şi asimilarea slavă. Născută o dată cu poporul care o vorbeşte, limba română este fundamental romanică, dar păstrează elemente dacice şi influenţe slave.
Poporul român
Dacii, care atinseseră un anumit nivel de civilizaţie înainte de cucerirea traiană, au dăinuit sub stăpînirea romană; ei s-au integrat în viaţa economică şi socială a noii provincii, alcătuind totodată suportul influenţei pe care imperiul a exercitat-o în timp asupra teritoriilor din afara Daciei romane. Elementele romane cu rol primordial în romanizarea dacilor au fost în principal soldaţii şi coloniştii; din sinteza lor cu autohtonii au rezultat daco-romanii. Cei mai mulţi dintre ei au rămas să vieţuiască la nord de Dunăre, după retragerea aureliană, reprezentînd baza continuării procesului de romanizare în condiţiile procesului migrator. Menţinerea legăturilor cu Imperiul roman şi răspîndirea creştinismului şi-au exercitat influenţa romanizatoare asupra teritoriului de la nordul fluviului pînă la începutul secolului al VII-lea, cînd s-a interpus prezenţa slavilor. Înscrisă într-o succesiune îndelungată de migraţii, trecerea masivă a slavilor în Balcani a făcut să crească ponderea elementului romanic în fosta Dacie şi a dus la asimilarea elementelor slave rămase. Rezultatul acestui îndelung proces a fost apariţia poporului român, eveniment pe care istoricii îl apreciază ca fiind încheiat în linii mari la sfîrşitul secolului al VIII-lea. Analiza etnogenezei româneşti pune în evidenţă încadrarea sa în procesul general european de formare a popoarelor neolatine: italian, francez, spaniol, portughez, etc. (doc 1)
[Precizare din partea mea: doc 1 e un tabel unde sînt prezentate "Entităţile etno-lingvistice neolatine europene", adică popoarele (românii, francezii, italienii, spaniolii, portughezii). La fiecare e menţionat substratul, stratul şi adstratul. La români substratul este "daco-moesic", stratul este "latin", iar adstratul este "slavic (meridional)". La italieni substratul este italic, stratul este latin, iar adstratul este germanic. La francezi substratul este galic, stratul este latin, iar adstratul este germanic. La spanioli substratul este celtiberic, stratul este latin, iar adstratul este germanic. La portughezi substratul este lusitan, stratul este latin, iar adstratul este germanic.]
Sorin Oane, Maria Ochescu - Istoria Românilor, manual pt. clasa a VIII-a (Editura Humanitas Educaţional, 2005) - pag. 40-41
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Quote from: Dan
Since the marriage vows were read in OCS for almost 1000 years one would expect than even the village idiot would understand some centuries down the road that he had to say 'Da' when he heard 'lyubvi' and 'nevesta'. So why it did not happen for Hungarians? because, to put it in their own words, they truly suck at foreign languages.
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You really are believing that the marriage vows in Romania were read in old church slavonic ? You are the only one to believe that. Do not confuse religious sermons with marriage vows, they are completely different things. The explication for hungarians not learning latin words from the latin used in the catholic church is a very funny one. Actually hungarians learned latin and they also wrote in latin, much more than the romanians wrote in old church slavonic. The hungarian literature written in latin is much more important than the romanian literature written in slavonic. But the hungarian ordinary population did not cohabitate with a latin speaking population, so that's the explanation for the lack of a latin influence in hungarian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_literature
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Quote from: Dan
In regards to the church use of 'pizda', you really have a naive view on how foreign words get into the language. Back in medieval times the church had to give family planning advice to women and the monasteries often offered homebirth services, and so 'pizda' was a perfectly safe word in a foreign language required for conversation while performing such services, much like 'vagin' is used today in Romanian. Later on, when the medicine adopted 'vagin', 'pizda' entered slang.
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Come on, stop making a fool of yourself. The church has never and will never give family planning advice. The church is against all forms of family planning, the church wants as many children as a woman can have. Even in present times, some years ago, the catholic church opposed the use of condoms for SIDA prevention in Africa, because by doing that it meant that fewer children would be born. And no, the church was not a provider of homebirth services, this was a service provided in the old times by midwives, named in romanian "moaşe".
And the romanian medical term for "pizdă" is not "vagin", but "vulvă", so you really have no idea what you are saying. Check the dictionary definitions (in romanian):
http://tinyurl.com/pizda-ro
http://tinyurl.com/vulva-ro
Really, you are trying hard to fabricate evidence, but you are not an expert of the romanian language, so you fall short of the truth.
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Quote from: Dan
Romanians had mostly Biblic names in Medieval times the most popular ones being Ion, Gheorghe and Maria (John, George and Mary). So most of the names were not Slavic. The Orthodox monks had Latin, Greek and Slavic names. Slavic names like Tihomir, Tihon or Slavicized names like Gavril, Daniil, Arsenie etc were common among monks, and of course OCS had to do with their spread.
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The names you mention (Razvan, Mircea, Dragos, Vlad, Bogdan, Radu etc), were nobiliary names for people of mixt or non-Romanian ethnicity. These names became popular in late 19th century when the Romanian peasantry became aware of the names of their historical leaders. Once again, these were not popular names for Romanians in Medieval times, they don't prove cohabitation with Slavs.
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No, you are again very far of the truth. There are a lot of written documents left from the medieval times and many contain names. This is because even at that time people had land properties and traded things, in short they needed to have some written documents to prove they were the owners of the traded lands or goods. So if you take a look at some old documents you will encounter plenty of romanians with slavic names that had no relation to the church (Stanca, Preda, Drăghici, Dragolea, Staico, Vlad, Voicu, Stan, Bratu, Stoica, Dobromir, Stanciu, Oprea, Neacşa, Radu, Pîrvu, etc.). The documents are not only about high ranking people, they are also about ordinary people.
You must understand that the orthodox church was never a slavicization factor (agent) in Romania, just like the catholic church was never a latinization factor (agent) in Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, etc.
If you really want to see some old medieval documents written in slavonic and transcripted in the contemporary romanian alphabet you could buy the following books:
Constantin Giurescu : Despre boieri şi despre rumâni (Editura Compania, 2008)
Ion Soare: Documente slavo-române păstrate în arhivele din Oltenia (Editura Scrisul Românesc, 2005)
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Quote from: JGreco
On this forum, it seems like there is a separation between pro-Slav versus pro-Latin/Romance camps. Does this same vehement opposition occur in country.
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There are not two camps in Romania, one pro-Slavic, the other Pro-Latin. There are however two camps, one pro-Truth and the other pro-Propaganda. Those that want to present the historical truth about the romanian people and language are reading history and language books written in recent times, after the fall of communism (1989). Those that want to lie about the history and the language of romanians use 100 years old propaganda, that no rational person would believe today. Unfortunately the brainwashing that began in the 19th century persists in some romanians, even though the recently written books are much more objective than 150 years ago.
There is a book published in 2004 by a professor of history at the University of Bucharest that describes the modification of romanian textbooks between 1831-1878, going from a theory that romanians are descending only from romans, to a theory that romanians are descendants in equal parts from romans and dacians. Today the texbooks acknowledge also the contribution of the slavs, but not on par with the romans and dacians, although from a genetical point of view the slavic contribution is much more important than the roman one.
http://ebooks.unibuc.ro/istorie/murgescu/cuprins.htm
(book in romanian about the modification of the official discourse about the origin of romanians - links to PDF files with full text)
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Quote from: Dan
In Rep of Moldova almost half of the population is made of Russian native speakers (even most of the Ukrainians living in Moldova are Russian native speakers). These Slavic populations fear any tighter political relation between Romania and Moldova. They truly believe the Tsarist/Soviet fabrications about the history of Romania and Moldova, used to lay claim over these lands.
Ruman and ravinescu are excellent representatives of this line of thought. They believe that Romanian lands were once called Russovlahia, that one third of the population was Slavic in Medieval times, that present day Romanian is an artificial language made by Freemasons and Imperial Austrians to hinder legitimate Russian claims over Romania.
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I am from Bucharest, capital of Romania, not from the Republic of Moldova. And I present only the truth based on historical texts and on the opinions of the romanian historians of today, that I have read.
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Quote from: Ruman
P.S.: Ravinescu I salute you and thanks for the usefull links. I am happy that I am not alone :D.
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Well, I salute you too, even though I do not share all of your opinions. Many people want to know the truth about the history of romanians, just check the two massive threads about that topic on the romanian forum Softpedia:
http://forum.softpedia.com/index.php?showtopic=593236
http://forum.softpedia.com/index.php?showtopic=80323
There is also a thread about the slavic influence on the romanian people and civilization:
http://forum.softpedia.com/index.php?showtopic=569037
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Quote from : AI
I agree that there appears to be an intense and spirited divide between Romanians who wish to identify more with Latin Europeans and those who see themselves as closer to Slavs and other Eastern Europeans.
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No, there is no such divide. The great majority of romanians want to be perceived by the strangers as Latin Europeans, not Slavs. It is funny, because many of those romanians have slavic names (last names and/or first names). This opinion of the romanians about themselves (latin people surrounded by slavic peoples) was caused by an intense educational propaganda that took place in schools in the last 200 years. Couple that with an almost general lack of popular interest for the true romanian history and you get a people that can be manipulated very easily to repeat (echo) the official historical propaganda and slogans.
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Quote from: OriginalGuest
In fact the standard romanian alphabet does not even capture all romanian diphthongs and palatalizations used even in the standard pronunciation. In this respect the alphabet is not fully phonetic.
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The romanian alphabet is almost fully phonetic. Actually, romanian developed as a phonetic language probably because it was written in cyrillic alphabet, which has many more letters than the original latin alphabet. So it was very easy to write in cyrillic all the sounds that exist in romanian. When romanian switched from cyrillic to the latin alphabet, there were some big problems caused by the sounds that did not exist in latin, so they could not be written with latin letters. Eventually the new "latin" letters Ă Î Ş Ţ (modified A I S T) were invented to be used for romanian. The letters for those sounds already existed in the cyrillic alphabet (written differently, of course), so the cyrillic alphabet was more suited than the latin one for writing in romanian, which is probably true even today, although nobody envisions a return to the cyrillic alphabet.
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Quote from: Dan
The regional accents barely survive in present day Romania. There are more differences now between the urban and rural accents than among the accents of the historical regions of Romania. I have seen Romanians here associating the Iasi accent with the Moldovan accent (the Romanian Moldova) - this is incorrect. The current Moldovan accent is very weak, and it dissapears when a Moldovan speaks with somebody from a different region (unlike the Iasi accent).
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Pretty much everywhere else the urban accent is standard Romanian.
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Not true. Regional accents are alive and kicking. A person living in a village in Moldova (eastern Romania) has a different accent than a rural inhabitant of Transylvania (western Romania) or Muntenia (southern Romania). Those speaking with a true moldavian accent do not lose it when speaking with a person from another part of the country. The opposite is true. A person from Moldova living in Bucharest and who has lost the moldavian accent in everyday speech, can speak again with that accent when having a conversation with a relative that lives in Moldova (for example his father or mother).
There is no urban accent in Romania, no more that in other countries (people from Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Rouen, Bordeaux, etc. do not have a specific "french urban accent"). The romanian language considered "standard" is actually the language spoken in Bucharest, which is devoid of any regional accent. Those living in Bucharest do not have an "urban accent", they have no regional accent at all, not even one specific to Bucharest (which is a "region" in itself with a population close to 2 million).