On the origins of Romanian language

Exactly what I was trying to poin out before being called "unqualified holiday rambler".

Yes Mytzu, I knew that was what you meant the moment I read it.
I guess its a nationalist plot...

Sid, Heliade Radulescu also wrote a grammar book in 1828.
That grammar book was against the current that would later be known as the Latinists.
He was against the ethymological ortography, like Titu Maiorescu was, later on. They were both anti-Latinists.
Here is what Radulescu said:

Later on he did fall in the Latinist camp, as a reaction to the russians and their pan-slavism.
But his initial position was the one that remained in our language, not the Latinist version of words. There was only a handful of words that remained, but they remained because of their neologism character.

If the latinists would have succeded in what you call the "re-latinisation" we would have had the following changes (a few examples):

instead of zboara -- svoala
zburatoare -- svolatoare
muieri -- mullieri
frumuseti -- bellete
sarut -- baciu
aparare -- diffesa
iubita -- amata

The anti-latinist, scientific current was stronger than the latinist activists.

Hope this clarifies a little further the issue.

Hi D13th Mytzu,

Your argument is not with me, but with professional linguists. I am merely the conduit.

They have identified five dialects of Romanian in Romania and three outside.

They have also identified that 38.4% of the current Romanian vocabulary derives from French.

I am still left with a choice of you, presumably a non-specialist in linguistics, or professional linguists. If this is the only choice I have, then I am naturally going to favour the professionals over your personal anecdotes. If, however, you can enlist the support of professional linguists yourself, then your position is much better and I will, of course, have to give it more weight.

There are a number of factors that you might also consider, which may, or may not, have a bearing.

Firstly, Romania has had a public education system teaching one approved form of Romanian for over 100 years. The media presumably do the same. This will naturally erode the use of dialects, which probably means that they are less distinct than they were when the Romanian language began to be analysed systematically a couple of hundred years ago. (This is certainly true in the UK). Furthermore, people will tend to converse with outsiders in the mutual national language, reserving local dialects for talking amongst themselves.

It is also inherently unlikely that a language covering such a wide area as Romanian wouldn't have dialects. Look at French with its Langue d'Oc and Langue d'Oiel (spelling?).

It should also be borne in mind that although 38.4% of the current Romanian vocabulary may be derived from French, it doesn't mean that 38.4% of all words used in everyday speech are of French origin. Take English, for example. About 45% of its vocabulary is derived from Germanic languages while another 45% is derived from Latin (often via French). However, this does not mean that in common speech Germanic- and Latin-derived words are used with equal frequency. The basic English language is Germanic and so the great majority of words used in daily speech are Germanic. The Latin-derived words are later introductions and tend to cover more technical subjects and so are more rarely used.

In Romania, it may well be the same. The core old Romanian words presumably form the bedrock of daily speech, whereas the later French-derived additions are probably of a more technical nature and more rarely used. For example, one presumably uses the word "house" or "home" more frequently in any language than the word for "railway station". My guess is that the Romanian word for "house" or "home" is likely to be of old Romanian origin, because every society needs a word for "house" or "home", whereas the word for station is probably going to be imported, probably in Romania's case from France.

I would suggest that it is perfectly possible for your observation (that most words used in daily speech in Romania are of old Romanian origin) and my observation (that linguists report that 38.4% of the current vocabulary is of French origin) to be right.

Give me notification of when you are next over in London and we can see if we can meet. I am up there several times a year.

Yes, we have been fortunate to preserve our history. This is the great advantage of being an independent island that is difficult to invade. Apart from casual neglect, probably the greatest historical vandalism was done to the decoration of our churches during the English Civil War of the 1640s.

Cheers,

Sid.

Quite bold assumption for somebody picking its sources from a more than anonymous web page ( http://romania.ibelgique.com/langue-roumaine.htm ) which by the way,is not backed up by any "professionals".
What you quote is no more than a traveller guide into an obscure part of this world ,called Romania. In fact , it belongs to a travel site.
Nice attempt on trolling,neverthless.
Take care.
Zayets out

Hi Imperialist,

Now we are getting somewhere.

I can't find much on "Lexiconul de la Buda". However, I can find no indication that French scholars had any direct input into it.

However, I would point out that it seems to have been (1) an inter-language dictionary of the sort you were inclined to reject only yesterday and (2) it seems to describe the language as Vlach, not Romanian. (Is this correct? I can only judge from some very small references on the internet.)

This is an important distinction. There seems to have been a conscious and deliberate effort to dump the term "Vlach" in favour of "Romanian" in the early 19th Century. This was presumably for nationalist reasons, as it helped to make explicit Romania's claims to a Roman descent, which the word "Vlach" would not. The change of the title of the French linguist Vaillant's grammar from "Vlach" to "Romanian" between 1836 and 1840 I would suggest is evidence of this.

Vaillant wrote his own dictionaries and grammars. I gave details of three. I don't know of his influence on other dictionaries.

I didn't invent the term "Re-Latinisation". That was on a link I gave you earlier. You will have to take this up elsewhere. I agree that it is clumsy. Probably "Romancisation" would be a better word, as other Romance languages were much more directly drawn on for new words than Latin itself - most notably French. Would "Romancisation" be agreeable?

My original question about whether your percentages were referring to the Romanian vocabulary today or in the early 19th Century still stands. Do you agree that there is probably a substantial difference between the two? If one only withdraws the 38.4% of later French-derived words from the calculation, the Romanian vocabulary of the early 19th Century would lose about half its words of Romance (ultimately Latin) origin and almost certainly be proportionally rather less Latin-derived than it is today.

Furthermore, there is little doubt that this has been officially sponsored through the Academia Romana, state education and the media. (A similar process occurred in neighbouring countries like Bulgaria, which was subject to Russian Pan-Slavism, as you and I have now both noted).

I have no option but to use internet sources on this subject, because my Romanian-English dictionary has no etymological component.

Regarding the word list you gave (bellete, diffesa, amata, etc.): Were the rejected alternatives already in use in any Romanian dialect? Or were they entirely new proposed introductions? There is a difference between favouring a Latin-derived word already in use in one or more Romanian dialect over non-Latin alternatives in use in other Romanian dialects, and attempting to introduce an entirely new word into the language when all the existing dialects already use non-Latin derived words.

I presume your Latinists were of the latter variety. I am thinking of a more subtle, less fundamentalist approach. A couple of days ago I found an internet source that says that half the Romanian language's Slavic-derived words are archaic - that is no longer in common use. This implies that they may have been gradually marginalised by Latin-derived equivalents. I will try to find it again.

Yup. Chings are much clearer today. Thanks.

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Zayets,

Fair comment. I am no great fan of internet sources myself. However, I don't have any other sources available.

Now, to the point. Do you have any evidence that the site (which is not the only one to quote the 38.4% figure) wrong?

Cheers

Sid.

You ,you,you ... English people
Nice try,I will not fall into this trap.It was you advancing those numbers.I am too lazy to look into my browser history but I have found exactly the same number ,38.4% , but they were saying FRENCH AND ITALIAN ORIGIN.You see? Each their own. All I know is that I have no problem at all understanding Italian where as French I had to learn it in school and later in Quebec.

BTW , I subscribe to what Mytzu said about England/Britain.I am a big admirer.The whole London is made to impress the casual/regular visitor. I for one I was/am impressed,neverthless.

This post has been edited by Zayets on August 16, 2005 11:25 am

Sid, you are making a confusion here - those who lived here (the romanians) did not called themselfs Vlachs (Vlahi) or the country Vlachia (Valahia) but it was called "Tara Romaneasca" which means Romanian Country - this is the term used by local population. Vlahi was a name that foreigners used when talking about Tara Romaneasca.

As for dialects, I assure you one more time that those so called dialects is actually same language/vocabulary/grammair with a differnt accent, I know it is hard for you to understand and the best way to get this is to come here and go in rural areas around the country and make people spell what they say, although they have different accents they are using the same language. As for proffesionals on this matter: how would you say about Academia Romana and our national education system ?

This post has been edited by D13-th_Mytzu on August 16, 2005 11:42 am

Because they hadnt. Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Sincai were pretty much romanian.

-----

First of all, the term vlach was never the self-projected ethnic identity term used by the romanians. It was a term used by foreigners, slavs and hungarians. The romanians have always called themselves roman/ruman.
Wallachia was called Tara Romaneasca (the Romanian Country) by ethnic romanians.
The term "vlach" was passed down from the germans (Welsch) to slavs and hungarians, and it was originally used (by the germans) to designate the romanised celts and afterwards it was used to designate all romanised people (and hence the hungarians and slavs used it to designate the romanised population North of the Danube -- olah, vlach).

So the ethimology of the term "Vlach" itself makes perfectly clear the claim to a romanised descent. The change you note in Valliant's book has more to do with an adequate depiction of the self-projected ethnic identity widespread in the romanian population, than with a mischevous scheme to construct an identity.


I will address the rest of your message later on.

take care

Is also pretty funny the fact that Hungarians say:
OLAH - Romanian
OLASZ - Italian
Coincidence perhaps...

The Latinists wanted to change the orthography by making it follow an ethymological system. Therefore, though the ethymology of the word muiere clearly showed it was from the latin mulier, mulieris, the Latinists wanted the word changed so as to look even more latin -- mulliere.
So this is the closest thing ever to what you called the deliberate efforts to relatinize.
They failed. The Latinist school of thought was aptly defeated by linguists who opposed the artificial changes they proposed.

The second issue you addressed, that of purifying the language of slavic words did not occur, and might be confused by you with the process of changing the chirillic orthography.

The third issue -- the french words.
Like I said, I'll have to check that 30% number with someone specialised. In the dictionary there are words whose ethymology is strictly french, those with ethymology strictly latin, and some with both french and latin ethymology. That 30% could referr to those words with dual french-latin ethymology + those with strictly french one. To clarify the issue I have to find a good source or a better qualified opinion, and that could take some time.
Personally I think that percentage is high.

This post has been edited by Imperialist on August 16, 2005 12:21 pm

Hi Imperialist,

And yet Lexiconul de la Buda seems to have favoured the term Vlach (Please double check this. I have only limited internet sources). Is this because it was published in Hungary?

Actually, what you call your Latinist school wasn't what I was talking about at all. Indeed, I wasn't even aware of it. What I was talking about was the deliberate preferential absorption of words from other Romance sources - predominantly French - with the intention of reinforcing the Romanian language's Latin roots.

The ultimate arbiter of the Romanian language has been the Academia Romana for some 140 years. It publishes the definitive dictionary of the Romanian language. In order to get into this dictionary every word has to survive close official scrutiny. It would appear that an extremely high proportion of the words (the source I gave and the Wikipedia say 38.4% and 38%) that have received its official approval are of modern French derivation. This did not happen by random chance or blind accident.

I have no particular problem with this policy. However, to refuse to recognise it as a part of national policy is surely to blind oneself to the facts.

The Wikipedia also quotes a German source as saying that half Slavic-sourced words in the Romanian language are now archaic. I wonder what proportion of Latin-derived words are archaic?

Back in a minute..............

I still fail to see who say that over 30% are of French origin.The sources you gave are far for being trusted and a Wikipedia is ... just a Wikipedia.Since everyone can post in there makes it very unreliable source.
On another note,Romanians never say

since is very different from

and also from

And another thing,somewords were reintroduced,which was pretty easy,we do agree that French has Latin roots?

.............

I agree that the proposition that words of recent French origin make up 38.4% of the modern Romanian vocabulary is extraordinarily high. I was was rather surprised myself!

However, I don't think that there is likely to be much confusion with words introduced directly from classical Latin. The same percentages list gives 2.4% of the modern Romanian vocabulary being drawn directly from Latin. (A small success for your Latinists, perhaps?)

I imagine that the 38.4% figure includes French words of Latin origin. As most French words are of Latin origin, they will presumably make up a majority of the 38.4% figure. However, this has little significance. What is important is the root via which they arrived in Romanian.

I will be most interested to learn what other more reputable sources say.

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Zayets,

Yup. As I said before, internet sources are not to be too heavily relied upon.

However, the fact remains that these figures are the most specific anyone has posted and no alternative sources are on offer as yet.

If you have such sources, please feel free to share them with us.

Cheers,

Sid.