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Which Romance language sounds more Slavic?
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Quote from: Spartacus
I tried telling some of my family members about it but they cut me off before I could even finish, denying the relatinization and fact that we used Cyrillic once; when I got to the part about the possible Arab colonists, my uncle almost flipped out lol.
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Well, this is what I already told you. Because of the brainwashing, many romanians deny the historical truth and just refuse to hear it. Maybe you can persuade your family members to read the following samples from a book written by Lucian Boia, a longtime professor of history at the University of Bucharest. The book was published in 2001 in english, then in the following years it was also published in its original version (romanian) and in french. In this book there is a chapter named "An Island of Latinity" that deals specifically with the origin of romanians, and that can be almost entirely read online, courtesy of Google Books.
http://tinyurl.com/boia-romania
(shortened URL to the chapter "An island of latinity" that can be read on the Google Books site)
I provide below some excerpts from that chapter, in romanian and english.
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Românii şi-au descoperit latinitatea în secolul al 17-lea. Este perioada cînd slavona, omniprezentă mai înainte în Biserică, în actele de cancelarie sau în primele scrieri cu caracter istoric, se retrage în favoarea limbii române. Se petrece o primă deschidere -- încă limitată -- spre cultura occidentală. Unii tineri boieri merg la studii în străinătate şi ajung să înveţe şi latineşte. În Polonia, de pildă, cu care Moldova întreţinea relaţii strînse. Acolo învaţă Grigore Ureche şi Miron Costin, cei mai de seamă istorici moldoveni ai secolului al 17-lea. [...] Pînă în secolul al 19-lea istoricii români, cu puţine excepţii, nici n-au vrut să audă de vreo componentă dacică a poporului român. Jertfa lui Decebal a fost gratuită. Dacii au dispărut, nu a mai rămas nimic din ei. Românii sînt romani puri. [...] Orientarea latinistă a fost continuată şi amplificată de curentul numit "Şcoala Ardeleană". Contextul său istoric îl constituie anexarea Transilvaniei la Imperiul Habsburgic, urmată la scurt timp de aderarea la catolicism -- în varianta numită "greco-catolică" (catolică de rit oriental) -- a unei părţi dintre români [transilvăneni]. Faţă de ortodocşi, greco-catolicii au dispus de unele facilităţi de ordin cultural şi religios. S-au înfiinţat şcoli româneşti greco-catolice, iar unii tineri şi-au putut continua studiile la Viena şi la Roma. De aici a izvorît "Şcoala Ardeleană", o mişcare culturală şi naţională urmărind scopul de a-i lumina pe români şi de a obţine pentru ei un statut similar cu cel al maghiarilor şi germanilor [din Transilvania]. Printre argumentele invocate, istoria, şi îndeosebi originile, ocupau un loc cheie. Se insista asupra vechimii românilor (anteriori celorlalte grupuri etnice) şi totodată asupra originii lor latine, pur latine.
[...]
Şi iată-i pe cei trei mari istorici ai "Şcolii Ardelene": Samuil Micu (1745-1806), Gheorghe Şincai (1754-1816) şi Petru Maior (1761-1821), făcînd tot ce le stătea în putinţă pentru a-i anihila pe daci şi a pune în evidenţă puritatea latină a românilor. Nu era atît de simplu, fiindcă, în realitate, nici dacii nu au pierit, nici românii nu au cum să fie romani puri (de unde s-ar fi extras atîţia romani puri în lumea romană cosmopolită din secolele 2-3 ?). Pentru a scăpa de daci, istoricii fie îi anihilau pur şi simplu (războaiele ar fi fost de o brutalitate neînchipuită, adevărate războaie de exterminare), fie luau în considerare fuga ori alungarea lor de pe teritoriul Daciei. În "Istoria pentru începutul românilor în Dacia" (1812), Petru Maior propunea o demonstraţie -- prin reducere la absurd -- nu lipsită astăzi de savoare. Întrebarea era dacă unii romani nu s-ar fi căsătorit totuşi cu femei dace. Nu s-au căsătorit, explică Maior, mai întîi de toate fiindcă nu mai rămăseseră daci de nici un fel, nici bărbaţi, nici femei. Dar, chiar dacă unele femei ar fi supravieţuit (bărbaţii fiind, evident, toţi morţi în războaie), romanii nici nu s-ar fi uitat la ele. în genere, ei nu se căsătoreau cu femei de alt neam, cu atît mai puţin cu femei "sălbatice" din Dacia. Românii au moştenit acest gen de exclusivism: nici ei nu iau în căsătorie femei străine. Demonstraţie impecabilă: sîngele românilor este în totalitate roman. [...] Şcoala Ardeleană s-a prelungit în tot secolul al 19-lea, şi nu numai în Transilvania, ci pe întreg teritoriul românesc, prin curentul latinist, aflat în poziţie dominantă pînă după 1870. [...] Istoria românilor [în viziunea latiniştilor] se înfăţişa ca o continuare a istoriei romane. Românii erau romani, nici mai mult, nici mai puţin.
Lucian Boia: România, ţară de frontieră a Europei (editura Humanitas, 2007)
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English translation:
The Romanians discovered their Latinity in the seventeenth
century. This was the period when the Slavonic language, which had
been omnipresent in the Church, in chancery documents and in the
earliest historical writings, began to give way to Romanian. A first,
and still limited, opening towards Western culture occurred; a few
young boyars went abroad to study and acquired a knowledge of
Latin. Moldavia had strong connections with Poland, and it was
there that Grigore Ureche and Miron Costin, the greatest Moldavian
historians of the seventeenth century, went to study. [...] As late as the nine-
teenth century, Romanian historians, with a few exceptions, would
not even hear of a Dacian component to the Romanian people. The
sacrifice of Decebalus had been pointless. The Dacians had disap-
peared without a trace. The Romanians were pure Romans. [...]
The Latinist orientation was continued and amplified by the intel-
lectual movement known as the "Transylvanian School". This
movement appeared in the context of the annexation of Transylvania
by the Habsburg Empire, closely followed by the adhesion to Uniate,
or "Greek", Catholicism (Catholicism of the Eastem Rite) of part of
the Romanian population [from Transylvania]. The Greek Catholics enjoyed certain
cultural and religious facilities which were denied to the Orthodox.
Greek Catholic Romanian schools were established, and a number of
young men were able to continue their studies in Vienna or Rome.
The result was the emergence of the Transylvania School, which
sought to enlighten the Romanians and obtain for them a status
similar to that of the Hungarians and Germans [from Transylvania]. ln their arguments, a
key position was occupied by history, and especially the history of
origins. They insisted on the antiquity of the Romanians (who ante-
dated the other ethnic groups in Transylvania) and on their Latin,
indeed purely Latin, origins.
[...]
The three great historians of the Transylvanian School - Samuil
Micu (1745-1806), Gheorghe Şincai (1754-1816) and Petru Maior
(1761-1821) - did everything in their power to annihilate the
Dacians and highlight the Latin purity of the Romanians. The reality
was not quite so simple, of course. The Dacians had not all perished,
nor was there any way in which the Romanians could be pure Romans
(where could anyone have got hold of so many pure
Romans in the cosmopolitan Roman world of the 2nd and 3rd
centuries?). ln order to get rid of the Dacians, the historians either
simply annihilated them (arguing that the Dacian wars had been
conflicts of unimaginable brutality, veritable wars of extermination)
or considered that they had fled or been banished from Dacia. In his
"History for the Beginning of the Romanians in Dacia" (1812), Petru Maior
proposed a demonstration - by reductio ad absurdum - which is not
without a certain charm for today's readers. The question of
whether some Romans might not have married Dacian women was
answered negatively by Maior, because, in his view, there were no
Dacians left at all. But even if a few women had survived, the
Romans would not have looked at them; in general, they did not
marry women of other races, least of all the "savage" women of
Dacia. The Romanians, Maior continued, had inherited this form of
exclusivity and did not marry foreign women either. Thus he was
able to demonstrate in an impeccable way that the blood of the
Romanians was Roman in its totality. The approach of the
Transylvanian School survived well into the 19th century,
not only in Transylvania but throughout the Romanian space,
in the hands of the Latinists, who were dominant until after 1870. [...]
The history of the Romanians [in the latinist view] was presented as a continuation of Roman history.
The Romanians were Romans - no more and no less.
Lucian Boia: Romania, borderland of Europe (Reaktion Books Ltd, 2001)
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Şi totuşi, "purismul" latin începe, spre mijlocul secolului al 19-lea, să fie pus sub semnul întrebării. Era un semn de maturizare politică şi intelectuală. Odată cu întemeierea României (1859), proclamarea independenţei (1877) şi a regatului (1881), românii au putut constatat că se pot descurca şi singuri, că reprezintă ceva şi prin ei înşişi, nu numai susţinuţi de romani. Totodată istoria şi lingvistica ajung să depăşească faza naţional-romantică, intrînd în etapa profesionalizării. Povestea lui Maior, cu femeile dace ignorate de romani cu greu ar mai fi putut fi susţinută de un istoric responsabil spre sfîrşitul secolului [al 19-lea]. Mai întîi, colonizarea romană începe să fie văzută în complexitatea şi diversitatea acestui proces. Cu regret, dar cu ceva mai mult realism, se acceptă faptul că prea puţini romani puri se vor fi aşezat atunci în Dacia. Coloniştii au fost o populaţie amestecată, aduşi, după cum scria în secolul al 4-lea Eutropius, "ex toto orbe Romano" (din întreaga lume romană). Liantul îl reprezenta, fireşte, folosirea latinei ca limbă de comunicare. S-a isprăvit şi povestea dispariţiei dacilor. La 1860, lingvistul şi istoricul Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu (1838-1907) publica un articol cu titlu provocator "Perit-au dacii?" Răspunsul lui era simplu şi logic: dacii nu aveau cum să dispară. Descoperirile arheologice au adus apoi şi probe materiale în acest sens. Latinismul, cel puţin în formele sale extreme, a fost abandonat, şi s-a ajuns la un consens privind originea, nu pur romană, ci "daco-romană" a poporului român. Românilor a început să nu le mai fie ruşine de daci. Le-au descoperit tot felul de calităţi: nobleţea caracterului, curajul, spiritul de sacrificiu...
[...]
Bătălia originilor s-a desfăşurat, aşadar, între romani şi daci. Abordarea mitologică tinde spre simplificare şi promovează purismul rasial: românii nu pot fi decît romani, daci sau daco-romani. Ideea unui amestec mai complex, etnic şi cultural, diferit, în plus, de la o perioadă la alta, este rareori luată în discuţie. Şi totuşi ceea ce frapează în România şi dă originalitate sintezei româneşti este tocmai multitudinea şi varietatea elementelor care au concurat la aceasta. Mai întîi, chiar componentele aparent simple, dacii şi romanii, ascund o mare diversitate. Autorii antici disting între geţi şi daci, şi unii, şi alţii, ramuri ale neamului tracic. Geţii locuiau în preajma Dunării, mai ales la sud de fluviu, în nordul Bulgariei de astăzi, dar şi în Cîmpia Munteniei, şi în Dobrogea. Dacii îşi aveau nucleul în Transilvania. S-a forjat la un moment dat, în istoriografia românească, sintagma "geto-daci", prin care se sugerează unitatea geţilor şi dacilor, existenţa unui singur popor. [...] Un popor geto-dac poate să existe din punctul de vedere naţional modern, dar nu a existat cu siguranţă în Antichitate. Cei în cauză nu-şi ziceau "geto-daci", iar un popor fără nume este greu de imaginat. Spaţiul dacic era fragmentat, chiar dacă triburile vorbeau limbi apropiate (sau dialecte ale aceleiaşi limbi). În plus dacii nu erau singuri. Sciţii, popor de origine iraniană, s-au aşezat, venind din nordul Mării Negre (din Ucraina de astăzi) în partea de răsărit a teritoriului lor [al dacilor], şi îndeosebi în Dobrogea (numită în Antichitate Scythia Minor). Dinspre apus au venit celţii, un număr dintre ei rămînînd în Dacia. Ceva mai tîrziu, bastarnii (germanici) şi sarmaţii (de origine iraniană, ca şi sciţii) au locuit şi ei pe teritoriul dacic. Despre coloniştii romani să nu mai vorbim: ei sînt de toate originile.
[...]
A urmat, după retragerea romană, timp de o mie de ani, un impresionant şir de migraţii care au cuprins actualul teritoriu al României. "Migratorii" au trecut pe aici, dar mulţi dintre ei nu numai au trecut, dar s-au şi aşezat, convieţuind şi, în cele din urmă, amestecîndu-se cu populaţia autohtonă. La drept vorbind izvoarele [istorice] ale epocii îi menţionează doar pe ei, uitîndu-i pe daco-romani. Este o lungă listă, unde figurează goţii şi gepizii (germanici), hunii şi avarii (veniţi din Asia Centrală), slavii, maghiarii, pecenegii şi cumanii (de origine turcă) şi, în sfîrşit, tătarii (marea invazie din 1241), ultimul val migrator dinaintea întemeierii statelor româneşti. Însă nici după mileniul migraţiilor, românii n-au rămas să trăiască singuri între ei. Spaţiul românesc a atras străini din toate direcţiile, fie în calitate de oaspeţi, fie de cuceritori. [...] Tendinţa în istoriografia românească a fost de a-i privi pe toţi aceştia ca elemente superficiale şi tranzitori, care nu au afectat esenţa sintezei româneşti. Eventual, admiţînd o excepţie pentru slavi. Dosarul slavilor este într-adevăr semnificativ. Ei s-au stabilit pe actualul teritoriu al României în secolele 6-7. În număr şi mai mare, au trecut însă la sud de Dunăre (mai ales după 602, cînd apărarea bizantină pe Dunăre s-a prăbuşit), slavizînd jumătatea nordică a Peninsulei Balcanice. [...] Cert este că asimilarea slavilor nu a însemnat anularea lor, ci îmbogăţirea sintezei româneşti cu acest nou element. Concluzie firească, însă greu de acceptat de istoriografia românească modernă, într-o perioadă cînd românii hotărîseră să termine cu lumea slavă şi să privească exclusiv spre Occident [secolul 19].
Lucian Boia: România, ţară de frontieră a Europei (editura Humanitas, 2007)
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English translation:
And yet, towards the middle of the nineteenth century, Latin
"purism" began to be questioned. This was a sign of political and
intellectual maturity. With the foundation of Romania (1859), and
the proclamation of independence (1877) and of the Kingdom (1881),
the Romanians saw that they could manage on their own, that they
represented something in their own right, without the support of the
Romans. At the same time, historiography and linguistics began to
move beyond the national-romantic phase and become increasingly
professionalized. By the end of the century, Maior's tale of Dacian
women ignored by Romans could hardly be upheld by responsible
historians. In the first place, the Roman colonization began to be
seen in all its complexity. With some regret, but rather more realism,
it was accepted that all too few pure Romans would have settled in
Dacia at that time. The colonists were a mixed population, brought,
according to the fourth-century historian Eutropius, "ex toto orbe
romano" (from the whole Roman world). The common factor among
them was, of course, the use of Latin.
There could be no more talk of the "disappearance" of the Dacians
either. ln 1860, the linguist and historian Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
(1838-1907) published an article with the provocative title "Did the
Dacians Perish?" His answer was simple and logical: there was no
way the Dacians could have disappeared. Archaeological discov-
eries subsequently provided material evidence pointing in the same
direction. Latinism was abandoned, at least in its extreme forms, and
a consensus was reached on the Daco-Roman, rather than pure
Roman, origin of the Romanian people. The Romanians began to feel
less ashamed of the Dacians, discovering all sorts of qualities in
them: nobility, courage, a spirit of sacrifice and so on.
[...]
So the battle of origins has been fought out. The mythological
approach tends towards simplification and promotes racial purism:
the Romanians cannot be other than Romans, Dacians or Daco-
Romans. The idea of a more complex ethnic and cultural mixture,
indeed one which has varied from one period to another, rarely
enters the discussion. And yet what is striking about Romania is
precisely the multitude and variety of the elements which have gone
to make it up.
First of all, even the apparently simple components, the Dacians
and the Romans, conceal a great diversity. The ancient writers distin-
guished between Dacians and Getae, both of whom were branches
of the Thracian people. The Getae lived beside the Danube, espe-
cially to the south of the river, in the northern part of today's
Bulgaria, but also in the Muntenian [Wallachian] plain and in Dobrogea [Dobruja]. The
nucleus of the Dacians was in Transylvania. At a certain point, the
phrase "Geto-Dacians" was coined in Romanian historiography to
suggest a unity of Getae and Dacians, the existence of a single
people. [...] A Geto-Dacian
people may exist from the modern, national point of view, but it
certainly did not exist in Antiquity. The individuals concerned did
not call themselves "Geto-Dacians", and a people without a name is
hard to imagine. ln fact, the Dacian space was fragmented, even if
the tribes spoke similar languages (or dialects of the same language).
Moreover, the Dacians were not alone. The Scythians, a people of
Iranian origin who came from north of the Black Sea (in present-day
Ukraine), settled in the eastern part of their territory, and especially
in Dobrogea [Dobruja], known in Antiquity as Scythia Minor. From the west
came the Celts, some of whom remained in Dacia. Somewhat later.
Bastarnians and Sarmatians (peoples of Iranian origin, like the
Scythians) also settled in Dacian territory. Not to mention the Roman
colonists, who themselves had a wide variety of origins.
[...]
ln the thousand years that followed the Roman withdrawal, an
impressive series of migrations affected the present-day territory of
Romania. Many of the "migratory peoples" in question did not
simply pass through but settled, cohabiting, and finally mixing with,
the native population. Indeed, sources of the time speak only of
them, ignoring the Daco-Romans. The list is long, featuring Goths
and Gepids (Germans), Huns and Avars (from Central Asia), Slavs,
Magyars, Pechenegs and Cumans (of Turkish origin) and, finally,
Tatars, the great invasion of 1241 being the last migratory wave
before the foundation of the Romanian states. However, even after
this millennium of migrations, the Romanians were not left alone;
their space continued to attract foreigners from all directions,
whether as guests or as conquerors.
The tendency in Romanian historiography has been to
regard all of these elements as superficial and transitory with the
possible exception of the Slavs.
The file on the Slavs is, indeed, significant. While they settled in
the present territory of Romania in the sixth and seventh centuries,
they crossed in larger numbers to the south of the Danube (espe-
cially after 602, when the Byzantine defences on the river collapsed),
Slavicizing the northern half of the Balkan peninsula.
What is certain is that the assimilation of the Slavs did not
mean their disappearance without trace, but rather the enriching of
the Romanian synthesis. While this may seem a natural conclusion,
it was hard for modern Romanian historiography to accept it in a
period when the Romanians had decided to finish with the Slavic
world and to look exclusively westwards [19th century].
Lucian Boia: Romania, borderland of Europe (Reaktion Books Ltd, 2001)
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Se înţelege de la sine că Şcoala latinistă, care îi eliminase pe daci, nici nu a vrut să audă de slavi. Într-o fază ulterioară, dacii sînt reabilitaţi, nu însă şi slavii. Hasdeu, susţinător neobosit al dacilor, nu s-a arătat dispus să-i trateze cu aceeaşi îngăduinţă pe slavi. Opţiune aparent curioasă pentru cel care a fost primul slavist român. Hasdeu [care avea o origine foarte amestecată, bunicul patern fiind polonez] era însă originar din Basarabia (aflată atunci sub stăpînire rusească) şi tot ce se poate spune este că nu i-a iubit deloc pe ruşi, văzînd în panslavism o ameninţare (drept care îi îndemna pe români la o politică "pan-latină"). [...] Cîteva decenii mai tîrziu -- atunci cînd spiritul critic progresase şi problema originilor cunoscuse o oarecare dedramatizare --, Ioan Bogdan (1864-1919), primul slavist român cu adevărat profesionist, a prezentat lucrurile într-o cu totul altă lumină. Pentru el, slavii erau "element constitutiv" al sintezei româneşti. "Influenţa elementului slav la formarea naţionalităţii noastre -- scria el în 1905 -- este aşa de evidentă, încît putem zice, fără exagerare, că nici nu poate fi vorba de popor român înainte de absorbirea elementelor slave de către populaţia băştinaşă romană [romanică] în cursul secolelor 6-9".
[...]
Arheologii au fost puşi la lucru [în perioada comunistă]. Aveau misiunea de a dovedi o continuitate [daco-romană] absolută, în fiecare colţ al României, şi au dovedit-o, sau cel puţin au afirmat-o. S-a făcut o confuzie între urmele materiale şi caracteristicle etnice (mai ales limba). În fapt rezultatele obţinute sînt echivoce şi cu dublu tăiş. Se constată după o primă fază de continuitate daco-romană, o răsturnare arheologică completă în jurul anului 600, odată cu instalarea slavilor. Totul se schimbă: aspectul locuinţelor, inventarul lor şi chiar ritul funerar. În mod curios, arheologii din perioada comunistă au tras de aici concluzia unei neîntrerupte continuităţi etnice româneşti! În termeni strict arheologici, nu este continuitate, ci discontinuitate.
[...]
Ca şi România, limba română este inconfundabilă: cu nota ei predominant latină, dar şi cu sensibila coloratură slavă, cu cuvintele orientale care ţîşnesc din cînd în cînd, cu sunetele ei specifice (ă,î,ş,ţ), atît de greu de pronunţat de un străin. Dintre toate limbile, cea mai apropiată de română este italiana. Aş spune că paradoxal, româna seamănă mai bine cu italiana decît italiana cu româna! Un român înţelege ceva cînd aude vorbindu-se italieneşte (totuşi, strămoşii romani!); un italian înţelege mult mai puţin româneşte, derutat de vorbele slave şi orientale, ca şi de pronunţie. În tot cazul, un italian nu va vorbi niciodată perfect româneşte. În schimb, mulţi bulgari deprind româna foarte bine şi o vorbesc fără accent (tocmai fiindcă "tonul" general al celor două limbi este foarte asemănător). Să fie românii mai apropiaţi de italieni sau de bulgari? Cine ar putea spune? De italieni, desigur, prin rădăcinile latine, ca şi prin voinţa unei elite, în epoca modernă, de a privi spre Occident. Dar şi de bulgari, ca şi de alte popoare balcanice, prin substratul trac, prin componenta slavă, prin religia ortodoxă, prin influenţa orientală şi printr-o lungă istorie comună. România rămîne însă România, o ţară greu de clasificat!
Lucian Boia: România, ţară de frontieră a Europei (editura Humanitas, 2007)
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English translation:
lt goes without saying that the Latinist School, having eliminated
the Dacians, did not wish to hear about the Slavs. When, in a subse-
quent phase, the Dacians were rehabilitated, the Slavs were not.
Hasdeu, the tireless upholder of the Dacians, showed no inclination
to treat them with the same good will - an apparently curious choice
for the first Romanian Slavicist! Hasdeu [who had a very mixed origin, his grandfather being polish], however, was a native of
Bessarabia, then under Russian rule; he did not like the Russians at
all and saw Pan-Slavism as a threat (in response to which he urged
the Romanians to adopt a "pan-Latin" policy). [...]
A few decades later, when the critical spirit had progressed and
the problem of origins had been de-dramatized to some extent, loan
Bogdan (1864-1919), the first truly professional Romanian Slavicist,
presented things in a quite different light. For him, the Slavs were a
constitutive element of the Romanian synthesis. "The influence of
the Slav element in the formation of the Romanian nation", he wrote
in 1905, "is so evident that we may say, without exaggeration, that it
is not even possible to speak of a Romanian people prior to the
absorption of Slav elements by the native Roman [Romance] population in the
sixth to tenth centuries!"
[...]
The archaeologists were put to work [in the Communist period] in order to prove absolute
[daco-roman] continuity, in every corner of Romania, and this they did, or at least
so they claimed. ln fact, they confused material traces and ethnic
characteristics (including language), and the results they obtained
were equivocal and two-edged. Following a first phase of Daco~
Roman continuity, there is a complete change in the archaeological
record around the year 600, with the arrival of the Slavs. Everything
is different: the character of dwellings, their contents, even funerary
customs. Curiously enough, the archaeologists of the Communist
period concluded from this that there had been uninterrupted
Romanian ethnic continuity! ln strictly archaeological terms, in fact,
there was discontinuity.
[...]
Like Romania itself, the Romanian language is unmistakable, with its
predominantly Latin note but also its appreciable Slavic colouring,
its oriental words that burst out from time to time, and its specific
sounds (ă, î, ş, ţ) which are so hard for foreigners to pronounce.
Of all other languages, the closest to Romanian is Italian. I would
say that, paradoxically, Romanian resembles Italian more than
Italian does Romanian! A Romanian who hears Italian spoken can
understand quite a lot (those Roman ancestors count for something,
after all); an Italian will understand much less Romanian, confused
by the Slavic and oriental words and by the pronunciation. In any
case, an Italian will never speak Romanian perfectly. On the other
hand, many Bulgarians learn Romanian very well and speak it
without an accent (precisely because the "tone" of the two languages
is similar). Are the Romanians closer to the Italians or to the
Bulgarians? Who can say? They are brought close to the Italians, of
course, by their Latin roots and by the desire of an élite in the
modern period to look towards the West. But the Thracian substrate,
the Slavic component, the Orthodox faith, oriental influence and a
long common history mean that they are close to the Bulgarians and
other Balkan peoples too. In the end, Romania is simply Romania -
not an easy country to classify!
Lucian Boia: Romania, borderland of Europe (Reaktion Books Ltd, 2001)
#########################################
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Quote from: Spartacus
Personally, I don’t think you’re a Hungarian and I realize that your arguments are unfortunately fairly carefully researched, but come on man, give us a break already.
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This quote made me laugh hard. Someone who thinks of him as a romanian says bluntly that a research activity about the romanian history is "unfortunate". That's what I always said, the latinist-communist propaganda worked "wonderfully" and some romanians are finding hard to accept the truth about their origins. Spartacus, I think you are not captive somewhere in a dark room, with a gun pointed to your head and forced to read this thread, unable to take a break whenever you want. But remember, the truth is already out there, for anyone wishing to learn it, and it was out from the 1990's on. You can search the internet and you can find history books about romanians that you can buy and read, that actually anybody from anywhere in the world can buy and read.
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Quote from: Spartacus
It’s becoming painfully obvious to me that this guy might be on to something… Ah, who cares. I find it much more convenient to keep believing what I have been this whole time. In the end, people are just going to believe what they want to, regardless of your constant arguments.
==================================
You are doing a big disservice to all romanians by the assumptions from the quote above. You present the romanians, beginning with yourself, as a people who does not want to learn the truth, and when faced with the truth, they choose to ignore it, continuing to believe in a fictional history created by the latinist-communist propaganda. It is not a normal intellectual behavior for a people in the 21st century, when there are so many sources of information available. Having an open-mind is strongly encouraged, especially for romanians, who were subjected to a strong and prolonged propaganda.
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Quote from: Spartacus
What, should we all bury our heads in shame because we speak a “fake” language, or better yet, stop speaking it at all? It would be an even more foolish or embarrassing move to go the other way and start accentuating all the Slavic and go back to Cyrillic despite the fact that most of the core of the language is Romance-based, and there is essentially little to no mutual intelligibility with any other language; though I don’t completely agree with what they did in the 19th century either (at least it helped draw us away from excessive Soviet influence or association at times). For better or for worse, our language and culture is what it is now, and that’s what we have. It’s gone through many changes over time, but that just makes it all the more unique and special.
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Some romanians want to stop speaking romanian, but not because it is a "fake" language, but because they consider it inferior to english. And no, the modification of the language in the 19th century had no effect on the presumed soviet influence one hundred years later. The soviets did not interfere in linguistic problems in Romania, so the russian words imported in the communist period can be counted on the fingers of two hands, whereas in the same period of time hundreds of words from french or english entered the romanian language. So, the identity of the romanian language was never threatened in the communist period. But it is now threatened by the countless non-adapted imports from english and by the writing without diacritics.
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Quote from: iullian
TROLL-TROLL-TROLL-TROLL
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Your time has expired. Do not expect anymore an answer to your trollistic messages.
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Quote from: Arhimede
When i started using computers 15 years ago i didn't know about language packs, as i started on Ms-dos and it's complementary application Norton Commander. Even the Windows 95 romanian language pack was released later and access to such software was limited in those years.
Learning english terminology as a young teenager than, now it comes very hard to me to use with efficiency a romanian language software.
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It's true, but that was a longtime ago. Nowadays both Windows and Linux are translated in romanian (Windows XP romanian appeared in 2002, MS Office in 1999), and there are a lot of of freeware/shareware programs that are also translated. However, many romanians (even new computer users) do not want to use software in their native language, because they love the english language and want to brag about knowing english (even if this knowledge is superficial). So, all this effort to reromanize the romanian language and to present it as very close to classical latin was useless, the population loves today a germanic language.
I don't think it is hard at all to use software in the native language. There are many computer users from all over Europe that began to use computers with english software, then gradually switched to the native language. And the efficiency is better, because the native language is always easier to understand than a foreign language, regardless of the level of proficiency.
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Quote from: Anonymous user
There is one easy way to avoid diacritics, use the Cyrillic alphabet :) The Cyrillic alphabet was the main alphabet used by the Romanians for centuries and it works great for the Romanian language.
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There is no need to avoid diacritics when writing in romanian. All the european languages written in latin alphabet (except english) have diacritics and all the european computer users (except romanians) use diacritics when writing. The strange situation existing in Romania is not caused by some extraordinary difficulty in writing with diacritics (it's as simple as ăîşţâ), but by pure laziness and disdain for the romanian language.
The cyrillic alphabet may work great for romanian, however, a return to it cannot happen. It took one hundred years to switch from cyrillic to latin alphabet, and even today some bad decisions that were taken in that period affect the writing in romanian. The population would prefer to abandon romanian altogether than switch to cyrillic because of the diacritics. Yes, the situation is that bad.
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Quote from: Anonymous romanian acting as a content thief
[PLAGIARIZED TEXT]
The Ostrogoths of ancient Germany and ITALY and the Visigoths of Eastern Europe and SPAIN spoke Gothic.
[...]
Abjad is still the word for alphabet in Arabic and Indonesian
[/PLAGIARIZED TEXT]
==================================
I already warned the anonymous romanians to not plagiarize anymore, but they don't care, effectively ruining the image of all the romanians, who could gain the bad reputation of content thiefs, of persons unable to display an original intellectual effort, that steal the work of others without giving them the due credit. This also is the result of the propaganda, because in a society fed with propaganda the brain is useless for original thinking, so people lose the ability to think for themselves and so they need to use stolen texts.
Below are the pages from which the "anonymous romanian content thief" took his texts:
http://astroromp.com/skyla/magickal_writing.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system
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Quote from: Mari
Daca ar fi adevarata ipoteza latinizarii fortate a limbii romane ce explicatie se poate da caracterului unitar al limbii romane , caracter care din cate stiu este destul de putin intalnit printre limbile europene. [...] Poate ca vorbim de fapt limba vechilor Daci sau a tracilor .
==================================
Unfortunately you do not write correctly in romanian, with diacritics. So, I cannot give you a full answer. Rewrite the message correctly and I will answer to your message.
It's funny you should mention Lucian Boia's book. I just so happened to check it out from the library yesterday before I even read your post. I read that whole chapter you posted just now. I don't really know what to say. No further comment.
As for the people moving to Italy and Spain, they're mostly gypsies anyway and are giving the rest of the country a bad image with their crime and behavior.
Portuguese and Romanian sound Slavic.
Seeing what you are doing on this forum, I have gotten to the conclusion that your are sick! Get a rest, man and see a doctor!
and Romanian sounds Slavic to some of you? and so what?
To many others they both sound Romance...how long are we going to dispute this idiocy?
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To ravinescu
"Unfortunately you do not write correctly in romanian, with diacritics. So, I cannot give you a full answer. Rewrite the message correctly and I will answer to your message."
Who asked you to give here an answer? I am afraid that you have a too good image about you! Yes, I think that you are infected with stupidity, boy!
@to ravinescu
If you're tired of seeing ravinescu's posts, then don't read them. In fact, stop coming back to this thread. It's that simple.
that ravinescu has put monopol on this forum...but I am going to take your advise, caci de unde nu e, nici Dumnezeu nu cere si cu prostii nu are rost sa-ti prinzi mintea!
@ I didn't know
Ravinescu's contributions are much better composed and thought out than have of the things other posters type. And you should take after ravinescu to use the proper diacritics when typing romanian; otherwise, what you type is just gibberish.
for @Ravinescu
You have said:
"The list is long, featuring Goths and Gepids (Germans), Huns and Avars (from Central Asia), Slavs, Magyars, Pechenegs and Cumans (of Turkish origin)"
One correction here, The Pechenegs and Cumans are not of Turkish but of Turkic origin. There is a big difference between them.
The Turkic people are related to the Magyars, Huns, Mongols and Kazakhs, not to the Turkish people. The Turkish people of today (the ones from Turkey) are mostly former middle-eastern Christian people that have been occupied by a Turkic tribe called "Ottomans" that came from the steppes and imposed Islam and the Turkish language on them.
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