Which Romance language sounds more Slavic?
Original Guest said:
"Addition: Many people think that only the Moldavians are closer to Eastern Europe but people forget that most Moldavians live in Romania rather than in Moldavia. Also the historical Moldavia was the most populous of the Romanian states which means that a Romanian is statistically more likely to be a Moldavian than a Wallachian or Transylvanian and the Moldavian accent that many people call "slavic sounding" is the most common Romanian accent. And the Transylvanian accent is rather slavic sounding too (but with Hungarian accent influences). "
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This is utter nonsense. The predominant accent in Romania is the Southern accent, that is not Slavic sounding at all. In Moldova (Romanian region), only Iasi and Botosani counties have an accent similar to that in Republic of Moldova (Bessarabia). My grandparents on the maternal side, that are/were Moldovans as far as the family can be traced (from villages in Vaslui county), never had a Bessarabian accent. They used regionalisms in their vocabulary, but the accent was very much Southern.
In the cities, the Southern Romanian accent has displaced any regional accent, and this is true for Moldovian and Transilvanian cities as well. In rural areas one can still see traces of regional accents, some of which are somewhat "slavic sounding". But this is the exception, not the rule. OriginalGuest is obviously from Bessarabia and confuses the reality surrounding him with the reality in Romania - there is quite a difference between the two.
@Dan
No, I am not from Moldova or Bessarabia. And yes people tend to lose the "slavic" accent in the cities because the "proper" accent is broadcasted day and night from Bucharest for the peasants to learn :) And I'm quite sure that I am more knowledgeable in the history of Romania than most of my fellow Romanian critics on this forum. And if all what you know about the history of Romania is what is present in the school history books then no, you don't know much about it :).
Lol, Original I get the impression that you haven't even been out of your basement and traveled and seen and dealt with any of these people you're talking about, and are only capable of talking through statistics and figures that you find from god knows where and act as if they actually mean something in the real world.
Sorry to be so harsh, but I just don't like the way you're saying "these people are this and those are that" like you know that well or you're some ultimate authority on this issue just because you found a few websites to support your views.
Basically you seem almost like some wannabe who's saying Romania is the most Slavic country in the world, even more than other ones who actually speak the languages. Kind of strange eh? But obviously no one's going to change your mind so you can keep believing what you want and we'll do the same. So let's just drop this already.
My names is Stanislawski Chaushitsceu and I Romanian and we Romanians peoples are 90% Slav ands only 6% Romans ands Gypsies element!
We Romanians are all typical Slav we haves blond hairs and chinky style eyes and cheeks bone.
The Slavs are not all blond. Southern Slavs from Serbia , Montenegro, etc are look more like the Turks. The racial makeup of the Romanians is southern Slavic and Roma. Hence the name of Romania , which means " land of the Roma people".
it has nothing to do with the roma; and you know that as well as i do. you're just trying to get people heated with that stale joke/association because it's so easy and tempting. it's one of the biggest misconceptions and simply a similarity of words. rom, originally dom, means man in their language, which is a type of northern indian punjabi or something. very few words at all from their language exist in romanian, and most of it ends up being slang of some sort.
oh and btw, there's just as many misconceptions about spain in romania as there are in spain about the latter; unfortunately ignorance is everywhere, with some romanians i met thinking spaniards are some half moorish gypsy type people or that they aren't much different from mexicans. this is probably what the majority of americans think unfortunately, as they're often surprised to hear there's a difference between them. as embarassing as this is, there were some americans i talked to who didn't even know spain part of europe lol. it's sad, people just need more education. i've been to spain and it's a great place with a culture i respect a lot.
Interesting, Petru, that you came fastly to refute that the Romanians are gypsies but not that they are "90% blond slavics" as someone wrote in the message above mine. Are the Romanians insecure people ? I've met quite a few Romanians in Spain by disgrace and very few looked Slavic, at least not like the Polish or Russians. Obviously they look from Southern Europe. And no, they were not gypsies , despite sometimes it's hard to distinguish them.
well the reason i didn't mention what the other guy said is because of course he wasn't romanian and he was being sarcastic or just fooling around and making fun of the discussion on this thread. that was so obvious it wasn't worth even mentioning. i just thought your comment on the other hand was somewhat more serious, since i've heard it from many (mostly hungarians and some italians), that's all. but whatever
and no i don't think most of us do look slavic; that's the whole point of what i'm saying (maybe originalguest does). you're right though.
anyway this is starting to feel really weird just talking about peoples like this; i feel like one of those nutjobs from stormfront or whatever those sites are. the original topic was the language sound.
Regarding the appearance of the Eastern Slavs. WTF???? The vast majority of the Russians and even more so Ukrainians and Belorussians are NOT blond they are have brunette and brown hair. The "Slavic" type is an idealized type and only about 1/4 of of the Eastern Slavs look anything like that.
Moreover this talk was mainly about language, culture and history. And there is some serious misunderstanding about the history of Romania and the Romanian language both among Romanians and foreigners. This situation owes both to ignorance about the history and politically directed distortion of history on the Romanian side. There is no need for a hidden reason behind trying to clarify those things. All what is needed is an open and critical mind.
This is quite an interesting discussion. After looking through these videos and comparing, I'd have to say overall, Portuguese actually sounds slightly more Slavic/Russian to me (just an opinion). I know it's just some weird coincidence and that Romanian actually has Slavic words in it, unlike Portuguese, but to me it sounds more like some rougher form of a Southern Italian dialect or something, mixed with some Eastern European sounds every now and then. Until recently, I didn't even know what Portuguese sounded like. I always assumed it sounded pretty much like Spanish. Guess you learn something all the time.
And after reading some of these posts, I can see there's quite a debate going on about the identity of these people. I can understand some people's, like ravinescu's desire for the truth, whatever that is, but I also understand why some of these Romanians would get angry about the way this is approached and feel like others are intruding on their history. From the few Romanians I have met, they seem like good people, and I don't see why not to believe that their history is legit. But then again, I don't really know much about this so I'll just stay out of it.
Peace
lol that is a kinda funny looking bunch of kids in those pictures from the last page. where is that school anyway? i dont remember having classmates looking that goofy in elementary. whats up with kids these days? j/k. but some of em sort of remind me of the bucharest orphans i've seen for some reason, a problem which thankfully is slowly declining.
dewd said
lol that is a kinda funny looking bunch of kids in those pictures from the last page. where is that school anyway? i dont remember having classmates looking that goofy in elementary. whats up with kids these days? j/k. but some of em sort of remind me of the bucharest orphans i've seen for some reason, a problem which thankfully is slowly declining.
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Those were some kids from a village in Moldova. The pictures were selected by OriginalGuest because the kids in them show some slavic traits. Villages in Romania are rather ethnically homogeneous, and it is not that hard to find a village in Moldova where population exhibits slavic traits. However, this collection of pictures is not a representative sample for the overall population of Romanian children.
@Dan
Central Transylvania. In general in Transylvania people have stronger The faces are mostly representative for Transylvania although in Western and Northern Transylvania they generally look more Slavic than this.
completion: In general in Transylvania people have stronger western features and not that much Slavic blood even though there is a lot of Slavic blood there too. Moldavia and Wallachia have higher R1a than Transylvania.