>Is this _technical_? It doesn't appear to be.
No, it isn't.
>I suspect a lot of the words we understand when
>we rely on Latin are borrowed from or re-fashioned on Latin.
That's right. The overwhelming majority of such terms.
Alex's examples had beren concocted on purpose, i.e. to illustrate
that it is possible to create sentences consisting only of
"substratum" phrases. Well, the assertion isn't quite correct,
since those words with no "direct" counterparts in Latin,
Greek, Slavic, but only in Albanian (or neither in Albanian),
are fewer. Nonetheless, even if we wouln't pay attention to
Mr Vinereanu & al.' s lexical list (whence Mr Möller enticingly :-)
quotes), there is indeed a surprising number of "substratum"
words with high frequency & richness of connotations in
modern Romanian usage (I mean the standard language). If I
ain't wrong, French has less Celtic remnants in everyday's
usage than Romanian makes use of from its own so-called
"substratum" heritage.
>'In cazul nostru nu avem decat sa promovam o istorie absolut iesita
>din comun cu care multi, foarte multi s'ar mandri.'
>
>I suspect it is full of recent loans from Latin.
"promovam", "absolut", "istorie", "comun". For "comun", there
is a Romanian old word directly derived from the same radix, a
religious term, "cuminecatura" (that is related to "communicare").
"Caz" must've been transparent for any native speaker, since
it is related to the verb "a cadea, cadere", where "I (am) fall(ing)"
is, subdialectally, said "caz" (standard Romanian: "cad"). So,
it must've been easy to understand the relationship "cadere" (fall)
-- "caz" (case, much the more since in German, a language that
has been spoken amongst Romanians* for more than 800 years,
both "fall/collapse" & "case" = "der Fall" :-).
>Richard.
George
______________________
* I mean the so-called Transylvanian Saxons, and then the Suebians
in Banat and the Germans, numerous until 1940, in Northern Moldavia
"Bucovina" (the Northern half thereof belongs to Ukraine now).