> The subject is the “plausible scenario” of proto Romanian emerging
in the mountains South (Southwest) of Danube and then the speakers migrating to
today Romania.
> The question is have you real proves for this
scenario? Has anyone?
There is no hard proof either way. There is some
circumstantial evidence, and each of us has to decide which interpretation of it
makes the most sense.
> 1. The simple fact of Romanian being a romance language is not
proving for this scenario.
No, but the fact that Romanian is particularly close to
Dalmatian and to the Latin substrate in Albanian suggests a historical
connection. Close, I mean, in terms of shared phonological innovations and
lexical peculiarities. Romanian also shares a number of non-Latin isoglosses
with Albanian. I would say that Romanian appears to be the descendant of a
West Balkan Latin dialect that absorbed a local substrate related to Dacian,
while Albanian is the very same Dacoid language strongly influenced by
West Balkan Latin, but not to the point of losing its identity. The adstratal
influence of South Slavic is strong in both.
> 2. After leaving some place, people have some nostalgia that often
generates some customs that are transmitted from generation to generation. One
example is the girl name Dacia that is used today in Italy, Spain and Americas.
While I do not know the story behind this name, it makes sense that the habit
was started by nostalgic Dacians. It seems that the Romanian customs do not
point to anything like that. By the way, the name Dacia is fairly popular in USA
too. Actually, according to the census, more popular than Valentine.
I don't follow: do you think was it started by nostalgic
Dacians who emigrated to the USA, or what? First names spread like viruses; in
our times they are given according to the latest fashion rather than ancient
family traditions. I suspect the name became popular among Italian-speakers
thanks to the feminist writer Dacia Maraini (b. 1936). It appears to be a
pseudo-Classical modern name; if it were genuinely old, it would be something
adjectival like Dacisca, Dacica or Daca.
> 3. In this scenario Dacians are basically foreigners to proto
Romanians and their ancestors, so there should be some linguistic traits about
this “foreignership”. Something like the English word “dagger” and the
French “dague” which probably came from the Latin “daca” that meant “Dacian
knife”. Only foreigners (in relation to Dacians) could call it “_Dacian_
knife”. Are you aware of some “foreignership” traits related
to Dacians in
Romanian?
If the scenario is true, Dacian was no longer spoken in Dacia
when the Proto-Romanians colonised the country. It had been dead for several
centuries.
> 4. A migration, even a slow migration, which according to this
scenario happened not too long ago, something like seven centuries, should be
remembered in folklore. It is not.
It may have been considerably earlier than that; anyway, there
is no reason to expect that it would have been remembered for ages, especially
if the migrating people were transhumant shepherds who moved with their flocks
to the highland pastures in summer and to the lower areas in winter and
often moved in search of good pasturage. Migration was, so to speak, their way
of life. The nomadic Rom people apparently had no remembrance of their
Indian homeland by the time they appeared in Europe.
> 5. As this scenario puts it, proto Romanians and their language
survived in the high mountains South and Southwest of Danube protected of Greek
and Roman influence and shielded from barbarians. The same thing could be
accomplished, with no travel at all, in the high Carpatians North of Danube. No
Greek or Roman influence. The migrating barbarians could not reach them because
their big and swift horses, very good in the plains, were worthless in the
mountains.
The "barbarians" were not all steppe cowboys riding swift
horses. Consecutive waves of Celtic, Germanic and Slavic migrations
penetrated the Carpathians without much difficulty. Some of the "free
Dacians" apparently lingered on in the northern Carpathians but were
linguistically absorbed by the Slavs in the end. It seems, however, that until
the tenth century Slavic colonisation was sparse in mountainous areas southwest
of the Danube, so that the the Proto-Romanians and the Proto-Romanians were able
to maintain their linguistic identity there.
> 6. I understand that “no prove” is not equivalent with prove.
However, the lack of proves should raise some big questions. Does it?
See the first comment.
Piotr