The Romance Languages Comparison

only by a few Aromanians... but Northern part of Balkan Peninsula on both North and South of Danube were for centuries inhabitted by both Romanians and Slavic Bulgarians and they were part of a common kingdom long before establishment of Romanian states... see First and especially Second Bulgarian Empire rising from the revolt of Asen brothers (Vlachs)... and the Christian church, as an institutional one, was implemented by Slavic Bulgarian missionaries, even if Christianity was present long before that... that was the moment when Romanian language changed dramatically

In Romania it is quite common to have family names of Bulgarian origin, like Dobre (Good in Bulgarian) or Pârvu, Pârvan (The First)... for example

Why do people bitch so much at Romania for the westernization that happened in the mid 19century?

Do you know that the same thing happened in Greece? many many of the words used to be turkish before but they have been DRASTICALLY(and i really mean it) reduced because they denoted notions regarding the ottoman ruling.

It's a wonderfull thing and happened everywhere. People changed words for uninteresting stuff like chancelor or administrator or scribe that came from turkish/(slavonik in case of romanians) but they kept the really important stuff like love, feelings, persons.

Especially today there are a lot of latin borrowings in salvonik languages? Should we be mad? NO. It's just makes Europe united and stronger.

The borrowings in Romania were taken from french anyway not italian, frech was the international language by then. If they took a lot of words what's wrong with that? Modernisation is welcome.

It's that "saeculum" phenomena, civilisations immitate the best civilisation. If you look at english... 50% words coming from latin and it's stil classified as germanic.

Post I.Millenium borrowings dont really matter in the classification of a language.

Even if romanian would return to it's state before the 19th century it would still be a romance language. Cyrilic/Greek alphabet you say? So what? They dont use germanic runes in german they use latin, they dont use arabic in maltese( semitic language ) they use latin. They dont use ancient vietnamese in Vietnam they use latin. They use latin for polish and polish people can understand russian....

Indeed romanian has 3 declensions from latin, cant really say if classical or vulgar, i would say just latin spoken by the colonists/soldiers that stayed there. The neutral gender is actually a pseudo-neutral like in slavonik or germanik languages.( singular neutral gender - male form ; plural neutral gender - feminine form ). It is not like in latin or greek when the neutral gender is completely different.

Romanians are orthodox? Thats great! ( coming from a greek hehe ). Maltese speak semitic and are some of the most fanatic roman-catholics. Not to mention the philiphineses or afrikans.

Why dont you get over romanian? it's just a language like any other.Closest to classical latin? well, there's no classical latin in eastern europe. The declensions were preserved because its a general trend in eastern europe to have declensions, unlike in the west. Those conservative italian dialects that preserve declensions and/or neutral genders are closest to classical latin.

I see some over-excited romanians folks around here, calm down , nobody disrespects romanian,nor prais it, just a language like any other, it's just a fact that it cant be close to classical latin simply because it's eastern romance. It is a fact that of all 6 important romance languages it has retained the least latin words( i've see numbers around 75% ) but this is just because it hasnt been in touch with any other romance language since a long time. It's still a romance language.

French , portuguese and romanian are probably the romance languages that sound the most different from latin. Does it change the fact that they are romance? Hell no!

To the italian( a.p.m.r. something) guy, if u criticise romanian from borrowing so much during the 19century why dont you criticise the whole world? how can you stand yourself speaking english? Should i be mad on all the world for "stealing" a TON of greek words? NO! IT's great! Just prooves Greece has been very important in the Antiquity. Am i a 100% ancient greek? NO. the barbarian invasions have mixed so many blood in europe you cant imagine... Should i stop using the language and alphabet of the great ancient greeks? No. They are my soul, if not blood, ancestors. I might be descending from a slavik prostitute and a visigoth warrior but as long as they have embraced and continued the greek culture where's the difference?
P.S. I made some exagerations to make myself better understood.

This is how things work, borrowings from the best.
I'm bored off all these romance languages of your , same words everywhere... Get over yourself :)

Discuss some poetry or something in here not silly stuff, geezeez if you think you might be speaking the holy language of Zoroaster or Tenotchitlan READ READ READ before saying anything silly here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages). Bye!

Dante Alighieri did the same modernisation with Italian language. Unifying all the dialects so they can have a strong and very well known language. Of course he did it 400 years before Romanians, but for god sake, I'm not sure if you'd find 100 people knowing to write, in Romanian states of those days.

At Kosta. I find your post as being fair enough. ;)

Dante Alighieri, along with Giovanni Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Niccolo Macchiavelli used their native Florentine (Tuscan) dialect to produce great works of literature that spread throughout all of Italy, which at that time (the late Middle Ages), introduced the Florentine dialect throughout Italy. However, The Sweet Tuscan of Dante
(which is roughly Modern Italian) did not make much of an impression on most Italians of the late Middle Ages. It wasn't until the late 1800's (around the time of Italian unification) that the Florentine (Tuscan) dialect became widely known through the literary works of Italian patriot Alessandro Manzoni, and the great operatic composer Giuseppe Verdi. It was around the 1860's, and 1870's that the Florentine (Tuscan) dialect began to be recongnized as the standard form of Italian. In fact , there was a movement at the time (late 1800's) that pushed for a return to Latin as the standard language of Italy. Wouldn't that have been interesting!!! But, as fate would have it, Tuscan was chosen as the dialect that would become the language of the newly formed Italian state. The Italian language was always Latin based. The Italian language was not radically changed back to Latin. It was fine tuned, or merely tweaked. I'm not badmouthing Romanian. I've studied it, and I'm still studying it. It sounds a lot like Italian. I first became intereste in the Romanian language in the late 1980's when I read for the first time that Romanian is a Romance language that is similar to Italian. I was very intrigued. I guess you could say that I discovered the hole in the macaroni. I also remember reading in the Encyclopedia Britannica that Romanian was, to some degree, changed back to Latin. Anyway, these forums have been discussing this topic too much (ad nauseum). Wether Romanian was changed or modernized a little bit, or a bit more doesn't concern me anymore. I'm a huge fan of Latin, and Romance Languages and Romanian is certainly one of them. I hope that that Latin island amidst a sea of Slaves maintains its Latin speech and Latin identity.

Most of the "re-latinization" of Romanian was made by adopting the same type of neologisms borrowed from Latin (or French, Italian) in most European languages--more technical/modern. Many of these neologisms were not necessary for a mostly illiterate population living in the dark ages, but it became necessary to start adopting them in more modern times. What would be more natural than adopting them from the mother tongue Latin and the Romance sister languages? These words have been very organically absorbed by Romanian, very naturally getting all the necessary declensions and conjugations.
There are some Latin words that have given 2 or more words in Romanian. "Inchide/Inchidere" means "to close/closing", and "include/includere" means 'to include/including'. Both come from the Latin "includere", but the former is the old Romanian preservation of the original Latin word, while the latter comes from the "re-latinization".

Excellent post, Kosta.
I'm happy reading every now and then some common sense on this forum. I consider this obsession with the past my fellow Romanians show on this forums as unhealthy.

"Să zic şi eu, ca Rădulescu odinioară: „scrieţi, băieţi, numai scrieţi!“, ar fi desuet. Poate ar fi mai bine: „Scrieţi, băieţi, numai scrieţi BINE! " -- citat dintr-un articol al Romaniei Libere

Honestly, I would rather be a Dacian, speaking Dacian than this romance language. There is no reason to be proud of being of Latin descend. I'm feeling this way especially because I don't like the natural inclination of Romanians towards corruption, superficially, mafia relations, lack of discipline which are usually exercised by the Latin nations in general, and by Italians in special. Obviously, the Latin people have an incapacity for understanding the principles of civic moral, of social and human respect. They are people you cannot relay on, you cannot trust. I don't have any intention to inflame any spirits here but seeing how many opinions are filling up this forum with anger, hate or bullshit - (like that Californian polyglot of only 15 years of age, or that Italian dilettante, apam, who discovered the world of Latinity , a dilettante who after a few lessons of Romanians he feels totally free and prepared to make philological statements and linguistically presumptions), I couldn't stop myself to not point out the followings:

1. Who ever wants to know about Romania and its origin - hit the book, read more, lecture deeper, do researches. Romania did exist under exactly this name since the Roman Empire was present at south of Danube. Romania was a province of this Empire made of Thracians tribes.

2. Italians are Latin in the same amount and at the same level as the Romanians are. Latium - that's where the name Latin came from, was an area including Rome and some surroundings but not the whole Italic peninsula. - Hit the Book again! Start with Latin language first, before analysing Romanian, if you really want to add something valuable to your actual knowledge level. You will discovered that the same way as the Thracians (Dacians) have been conquered by the Romans, the other nations from the Italic peninsula (Umbrian, Etruscans, Sabine etc), have been conquered as well, only much more earlier. These conquered nations were not of Latin origin and they spoke different languages. The Etruscans for example, are considered by many historians today, as being of Thracian origin, do you know that, Mr. APAM? Do a profound study of the actual Italian language and see in what proportion is Latin! You will be surprised by what you'll discover. The fact that Romanian is not all the way close to Italian it doesn't mean that Italian is the etalon for Latin . The same rule applies to Spanish, French, Portuguese etc. After becoming an expert in linguistics, compare these languages to Latin and see what you get for conclusions. Other ways you remain what you are now, a dilettante.

3. Romania has chosen Orthodoxy as confession since Hungary was Catholic. It is known that Hungary's irredentism manifestation was early on opposed by Romanian patriots. They have chosen orthodoxy because the only support they had was given by the Eastern Roman Empire, (Byzantine Empire). For details, hit the book, again.

4. To make statements about Romania, its people, language and history, you cannot limit yourself at learning a few words in Romanian. Do more and be sure that you have enough knowledge and good linguistically control to afford expressing opinions on this matter.

5. Vlad Tepes (the impaler) was a nation hero and his reign has nothing to do with Transylvania. Don't limit yourself at Bram Stoker's novel. Vlad was the prince of Wallachia only. He was the first cousin of Stefan the Great, who liberated him from the jail where in a persuasive way, Matei Corvin, the king of Hungary, put him; Matei Corvin being himself a cousin of both, as well. For Romanians , Vlad Tepes is the ABSOLUTE Prince because he put on throne the biggest Prince a Romanian Province has ever had - Stefan the Great.

6. Bianca, Stefan the Great was 47 years on power and he had "only" 36 warfare which eventually all were won by him. It is right that after each win, he built a church. In his fights against the Turks he was always left alone by his Christian "brothers" from the west, including the Pope of Rome. He was always receiving only letters of encouragement from these western Christians. He struggled fighting continuously the Turks, and the other Romanian princes (Mircea the Oldest, Iancu of Hunedoara, Vlad the Impaler, Michael the Brave etc) did the same. They sacrified their life to protect their nation against Islam. But they didn't save only their nation, they saved the western nations as well. While these Romanians were fighting, the westerner were free to developed their culture, arts, to conquer new lands and territories, to make slaves the African and American natives. When they became too bored by too much of Michelangelo and Da Vinci's works, these westerners came over Romanians as well and tried to occupy their land as the fights against the Turks and Tartars were not destructive enough for Romanians. Not only once they had to fight the Turks, the Tartars and the Westerners, (as Turks allies), in the same time. And they prevailed to beat them all, in the same time. That's why Stefan the Great was named the Great. We didn't steal anybodies language or anything else. Costa pointed out some things, very smart. But to understand what he was saying, you need to read more, mister apam, you need to learn more. Then If you really want to understand what differentiate the Greeks from the Romanians for example or both from the Albanians or the Slavic nations, you need to read at least the history of Balkans, sir.

7. Wallach (or Welch) is the name given by the foreigners (especially Germans) to the Romans. What Romanians are calling " Tara Romaneasca - The Romanian Land ( - Tara from the Latin, Terra), the Germans and British are calling Wallachia (or Walachia). Is that a Romanians wish? Think about it!

8. The Dacians (Thracians) were tall, blonde with blue eyes and very fierce fully warriors. Spartacus was one of them. Many of the Roman Emperors where of Thracian origin. Coincidentally the Slavic nations are generally blonde as well but not generally with blue eyes. How are the Romanians today? Tall, blonde with blue Eyes? Very little are like that, the majoority is medium sized, rather dark hair with dark eyes than blond or brown. What is this telling you? Who are they looking alike , Gypsis? You realy need more study!

10. I appologize for being so long and for the mistakes. The form was the last thing I was paying attention to!

In response to sergiu, or whoever you really are, you said that the Umbrians, Etruscans, and Sabines were not Latin. Well you're 2/3 wrong Mr. Sergiu. Yes, the Etruscans were not Latin at all. It has been hypothesized that the Etruscans came from Lydia in Asia Minor, and it has been proven that they weren't Indo-European and they didn't speak an Indo-European language. The Umbrians, as well as the Sabines however, were very closely related to the Latins of Latium. The Umbrians, the Sabines, as well as the Samnites, the Marsi, the Faliscans, the Oscans, and the Villanovans of the Po Valley all spoke languages that were very similar to Latin. That is a proven fact sir. Why don't you crack open your history books and give it a look see, okay???

Errata: Paragraph 2, 7th row, please read Samnits and not Sabins.

Completion to the previous posting:

1. According to tradition, the Latins and Sabins founded Rome in 753 BC. Rome was lead by 2 kings: a Latin king and a Sabin king. After it’s conquest by the Etruscs, it was lead by them.

The conquest of Italy was accomplished after long wars against the:

- Etruscs (the first half of the 4th century)

- Gals- they invaded Italy from the north

- Samnits (the 2nd half of the 4th century BC)

- Southern Greeks (the 3rd century BC) - From Naples to Sicily, the Greeks founded their own colonies.

After those wars, Rome became the ruler of the entire Italy. Now, you can see how Latin pure the actual Italians are.

2. English language: As a result of the Norman Conquest and other events in English history, it has been heavily influenced, more than other Germanic languages, by French and Latin. Therefore, English is not the result of "stealing words " as, in a superficial manner, it has been said on this forum. In fact, Britain was 400 years under Romans occupation.

3. During multiple famines episodes in their history and because of the country's general poverty, (before joining EU), numerous Italians emigrated first in other European countries including Romania, (mainly in the south, in Galati, Braila, Timisoara and Oltenia's surroundings), then in North America where trough individuals like Alfonso Capone they became famous and wrote a very special history.

Pizza migrated to America with Italian immigrants in the later half of the 19th century. By the turn of the century, Italians had begun to open their own bakeries and were selling groceries as well as pizza. Gennaro Lombardi opened the first true U.S. pizzeria in 1905 in New York City at 53 1/3 Spring Street (Lombardi's is reopened today at 32 Spring Street).
But it wasn't until after World War II when returning GI's created a nationwide demand for the pizza they had eaten and loved in Italy that pizza went public.

The nations where they moved into, opened the arms and welcomed them. If all these Italian products had a name already, why bother them to search for other names? It is not this a helping hand given again by the locals who made the emigrants life easier by absorbing their words and allowing them a smother integration?

Personally, I don't like Pizza, nor Pasta. But I'm enjoying the Balkan cuisine more than anything else. What is this telling you? That every nation likes and considers its cuisine, the best. It is a matter of long time exposure, of habits and culture to a specific cuisine to develop the tastes. Therefore to say that one cuisine is better than the other it is a very relative thing..

On the other hand, The Original Pizza Was Probably not Italian
Pizza is basically a meal prepared in a plate made of bread. This idea actually dates back to the 16 century Greeks who eat flat round bread (plankutos) backed with an assortment of toppings.

True mozzarella is actually made from the milk of the water buffalo and was imported from India in the 7th century. It was not widely available as a cheese product in Southern Italy and Campania until the second half of the eighteenth century. Polenta is not Italian either. The Romanians are eating Mamaliga (the equivalent word for Polenta) since the corn first penetrated Europe. Mamaliga was the bread for Romanian peasants since 14 century when they never heard about Italians because these didn't exist as a nation before 1861. (By the way, Romania's first unification has been realized in 1600 by Michael the Brave who was then perversely assassinated by Austro-Hungarians which dismantled this unity with this occasion ; then in 1859 they unified again 2/3 of the country, 2 years earlier than Italy, completing the act in 1918, when Transylvania could join the rest of the country).


4. The Romans, what makes so many Latin descendents proud about have been the biggest copiers and thefts of all time. They build their culture copying to a huge extend from the Greeks, the culture, religion and social life structure. They borrowed from the Greeks, every single God , changed the names and called them Romans Gods. Even the first idea of armies structures and organisation was borrowed from the Greek - Macedonian Armies. The famous "Phalange" was the inspiration moment for the later Roman legions organisation and fighting approach. Nothing was original at Romans, except their immense arrogance. It is nothing to be proud of when you think that everything what the Romans created was based on war crimes, on other nations expenses. There is more than stealing to talk about when we speak about the years of richness exploitations which to other nations belonged. In Dacia only, for more than 100 years they exploited salt, gold, silver, iron etc. Special salt rations given early Roman soldiers were known as "salarium argentum," the forerunner of the English word "salary." With other countries resources, the Romans have built and strengthen the city of Rome. What can be seen today in Rome should give you as a tourist a moment of sadness, and not of admiration. It should be a moment of thinking at the memorable times when other nations suffered huge disasters, and genocides. I invite you to make a comparision between the ALexander the Great nature or empire and the one of Romans, especially the western Roman Empire who had the capital in Rome. Crimes of violence made the streets of the larger cities unsafe. Even during PaxRomana there were 32,000 prostitutes in Rome. Emperors like Nero and Caligula became infamous for wasting money on lavish parties where guests ate and drank until they became ill. The most popular amusement was watching the gladiatorial combats in the Colosseum. These were attended by the poor, the rich, and frequently the emperor himself. As gladiators fought, vicious cries and curses were heard from the audience. One contest after another was staged in the course of a single day. Should the ground become too soaked with blood, it was covered over with a fresh layer of sand and the performance went on. Cooruption was born within the Roman Empire.
One of the most difficult problems was choosing a new emperor. Unlike Greece where transition may not have been smooth but was at least consistent, the Romans never created an effective system to determine how new emperors would be selected. The choice was always open to debate between the old emperor, the Senate, the Praetorian Guard (the emperor's's private army), and the army. Gradually, the Praetorian Guard gained complete authority to choose the new emperor, who rewarded the guard who then became more influential, perpetuating the cycle. Then in 186 A. D. the army strangled the new emperor, the practice began of selling the throne to the highest bidder. During the next 100 years, Rome had 37 different emperors - 25 of whom were removed from office by assassination. This contributed to the overall weaknesses of the empire.

For years, the well-disciplined Roman army held the barbarians of Germany back. Then in the third century A. D. the Roman soldiers were pulled back from the Rhine-Danube frontier to fight civil war in Italy. This left the Roman border open to attack. Gradually Germanic hunters and herders from the north began to overtake Roman lands in Greece and Gaul (later France). Then in 476 A. D. the Germanic general Odacer or Odovacar overthrew the last of the Roman Emperors, Augustulus Romulus. From then on the western part of the Empire was ruled by Germanic chieftain. Roads and bridges were left in disrepair and fields left untilled. Pirates and bandits made travel unsafe. Cities could not be maintained without goods from the farms, trade and business began to disappear. And Rome was no more in the West. Since 476 A.D. Rome was led by Germans. That's telling us how early and how much the allogen elements influenced the actual nation of Italy. How much of the Latin blood is present today in the Italians venes. On the otehr hand, how many Slavic chieftowns controlled the Romanian provinces ? How much of Slavic elements influenced the Romanian verb? I mean verb, not noun!

How did the Eastern Roman Empire manage to last up until the midle age era (1453)? What has differencieted it from the Western Roman Empire? These are answers you have to look for , by yourself.

5. Please allow me now, to cite here an observation made by Melodie Hanners, about Romanian language. (Linguistics)

"I have been asked many times, What language do they speak in Romania— Russian? To the surprise of many however, the answer is no. Romania, the small country in the center of Eastern Europe, has its own, very beautiful language. Romania is unique in that it is the only Eastern Block country that speaks a Romance language. A. N. in his book Outline History of the Romanian Language says, "Romanian is the only Romance language which has developed in the Eastern part of Latin Europe" . The history of Romanian can be traced through different periods of outside influence on the language. The first period I will look at is the Dacian period. The Dacians were the first known civilization to live in the area where Romania is now situated. The second period is the Romanization— following the Roman conquest of the Dacians. After the Romanization was a period of Slavic influence on the Proto Romanian of that time, followed by a Re-Latinization movement during the 19th Century. Romanian reflects the turbulent history of its native speakers. It illustrates the story of a nation of survivors".

The Dacians’ main activity was agriculture. They also engaged in viticulture, or the cultivation of vinyards. They were skilled craftsmen in working metals to create tools and weapons. The Dacians were also known for their cattle and their bee-keeping.


Linguists have studied the Romanian language to find which words come from Dacian origin. They have discovered one hundred and sixty words with this origin.

These terms cover a very wide area beginning with the human body (buza = lip; ceafa = nape; grumaz = neck; guea = goitre), the family (copil = child; prunc = baby; zestre = dowry) . . . agricultural, pastoral, viticultural, piscicultural activities (mazare = peas; tarina =tilled land; baci = shepherd making cheese; mînz = colt; strunga = small gate through which sheep are passed to be milked; tzarc = enclosure . . .gard = fence), the physical environment (magura= lone hill or mountain; mal = bank) the flora (brad = fir-tree; copac = tree) . . . Certainly the number of these terms will increase following subsequent research; they will also show us other aspects of the linguistic inheritance; scholars already consider as belonging to this inheritance the suffixes, (attention -ESC, -e,o, te, which are so frequent in Romanian and characteristic of it.

It is interesting to note the types of words that remain in the language from the Dacian era. The Sufix ESC, remember, is of Dacian and not Slavic origine. It is natural for words to remain from a proto language that have to do with the body and familial relations because these are common topics of conversation in every civilization. This Dacian vocabulary tells us the story of an industrious people who worked the land.

Slavic Influence

During the 7th century and throughout the 9th century the Slavs came to the Dacia area. The Sclavini engaged upon ever closer relations of cohabitation with the Romanized native population both North and South of the Danube. This is an important point, because not only did the Daco-romans adopt Slavonisms, but the Slavs learned Latin. Often we hear coinages such as Spanglish to describe some concepts. Romanian is the only Romance language that has failed to preserve carus, amare, sponsa, etc., replacing them by drag, a iubi, nevasta, logodna (= betrothal), a logodi (= to betrothe).

Românul crede în Dumnezeu, în îngeri, în zîne si a fost botezat de preot la biserica . . ." (The Romanian believes in God, in angels, in fairies, and was baptized by a priest at church . . .). The bold italicized words are all of Latin origin. This is showing how many spiritual and religious words come from their Latin roots. Negruzzi, a famous author from teh 16 century goes on to show how many words showing weakness and infirmities come from Slavic. Of course, as we have already seen, some of the words referring to love and relationships have their roots in Slavic, so not all Slavonisms were harsh words.

Modern Romanian

Romanian continues to change even now. As all languages do, and as Costa mentioned before, it borrows many words from other languages. Since the Revolution in 1989, Romania has been opened up to a whole world that they only could have imagined before. They are now (as most European countries are) influenced greatly by American English. On any given Friday a Romanian could wish you a "week-end bun" meaning, "good weekend."

Romanian is, indeed, as Negruzzi said, a cloth woven with many different threads. But the Romanians of today have come to accept the more "coarse" threads and recognize their "cloth" as a unique, beautiful tapestry that illustrates their history. Romanians are survivors. Their history is filled with stories of being conquered by stronger civilizations, but the Romanians are still with you today. Their language shows this. From the core of Dacian words to the Latinization and the Slavic influence, the Romanian language tells the story of a nation of survivors.

The Romanians survived but I wish more Dacians would survived with them!

Verzeihung for being so long!

P.S. Liviu, if you prove superior attitude and don't like when you're Romanians fellows are taking positions here, switch the channel, it's so easy! Thank you!

"c'est quoi une sonorité « latino » ? "

I think what he was trying to say by "latino phonetics" is that which is common to Latin, Italian, and Spanish/Portuguese, which features a lot of pronounced "o"s and "a"s and "i"s etc., at the end of words. Besides that, there are the rolled "r"s, which are instead nasalized in French. French sounds very flat, and nasalized to foreign ears, whereas Spanish or Italian do not sound that way. Hey, je comprends votre question!!! But that doesn't mean I understand most of your Martian tounge.

En el passado, hace solamente un o dos siglos, el "r" frances era "rollado".
En muchas regiones campesinas se encontran mucha vieja gente que continua a hablar con este tipo de "r".

Por otro lado, el frances no es todavia un idioma "plato" - Con el accento del norte lo es, pero no es en todo lugares lo mismo. Deberias ver a las pelliculas de Marcel Pagnol.

So in the south, the folks still roll their "r"s? I never heard that before.

Pombal tinha plenos poderes do rei de Portugal para reerguer a economia do país. Decidiu garrotear a rica colônia e dentre seus atos mais famosos consta a expulsão dos padres jesuítas, os "paladinos" da educação nos tristes trópicos. Em vinte anos a contar da expulsão dos padres-educadores havia dois professores em toda a Bahia. Maior retrocesso na educação, impossível. Grande parte das escolas foi fechada. As bibliotecas dos conventos caíram no abandono ou foram destruídas. As fogueiras de livros na era hitlerista nos chocam, mas a obra de Pombal foi muito mais profunda e duradoura.

" So in the south, the folks still roll their "r"s? I never heard that before. "


Algunos viejos si. Pero no es solamente en el sur, pero tambien en el norte. Es mas en los lugares muy campesinos.
La gente menos de 70 anos generalmente no usa los "r" rollados.

En muchas regiones de Quebec la "r" es rollada tambien.

"En muchas regiones de Quebec la "r" es rollada tambien."

I did not know that.

"Algunos viejos si. Pero no es solamente en el sur, pero tambien en el norte. Es mas en los lugares muy campesinos.
La gente menos de 70 anos generalmente no usa los "r" rollados. "

Why do only the older generations do this?