>[Moeller] And if thracian "z" shows a paralel with latin "d"
Rather the Thracian Z has a... G correspondent in kentum
languages. Whereas Latin Ds tend to turn Z in... Romanian. Not
only in, say, deus > dzeu > zeu, but in today's Romanian
such as in "(s)cadea, (s)cadere + crede, credere": "eu (s)cad,
tu (s)ca_z_i"; "eu cred, tu crezi" (to fall+to subtract; to believe).
>[Moeller] cânii sânt , and not "sunt" . The normal romanian
>speak with "sânt" and not with "sunt.
The spelling "sunt" has been in use with an interruption between
1954-1992 ("sînt"). The pronunciation /sunt/ is okay, although
the real, "inherited", is (you're right) /s1nt/. Initially, the spelling
"sunt" initially (prior to 1900) had a circumflex on "u". (What's
interesting: earlier, when Romanians used the Romanian
"kyrilitsa", for /s1nt/ the font "b", that one with the bigger
serif, as in Bulgarian, was in use; but this was actually meant
to be read /s@.../!)
As for your spelling "sânt", you either spell "sunt" or "sînt".
"Sânt" is has never been a correct spelling.
>Literary: sunt, eshti, este, suntem, suntetzi, sunt
>Regional: mis, iashti, ie, stem, stetzi, s
Come on! These are the "shortened", subdialectal, variants.
On top of that, "mi-s", "iasti" /yaSt/ aren't common occurrences
in *all* subdialects (especially not in *yours*, but in *mine*).
Your "ie" is nothing else than the phonetic transcription of "e",
the short form of "este". And "e" is as high style as "este".
(Matter of elementary school learning.) "S'tem, s'tetzi" are
rather recent, rather *slangy* than subdialectal shortening forms,
and, on top of that, rather restricted to some areas in South-Eastern
Romania, around the capital. "-s" is a pan-Romanian short form
of "sunt" or "sînt" (if you prefer), in constructions like these "io mi-s"
(eu îmi sunt = I am + a Dative pronoun that is added only sub-
dialectally, never in standard Romanian, and not throughout
Romania); <plural substantives or adjectives behaving like
substantives>+ "-s". Example: "Casele-s vechi." = "Casele sunt
vechi." (The houses are old.)
Except for "mi-s", all other "-s" constructions are accepted in
official/high-style Romanian. "Ia$ti" (= e$ti) is an archaic form, it
is barely in use today. Somewhat more frequent: "iaste" (= este)
in regional spoken Romanian.
>"Io mis din deal d'aciela. Si voi stetzi adushi acushi. Cine-i
>ãia ?
Cine__-S__ aia! Cine-i ãia is wrong... grammar.
>The way tha folk speak is not determined by linguistic rule.
It is! Any native speaker uses almost all rules of his/her language,
without having to know what a substantive, a verb etc. is.
>But the "educated people " consider rude this way to speak
There is a differentiation between regional, subdialectal, as well
as slangy talk and the official lingo (of, say, law, press, manual
texts). Not only in Romanian, but in other languages as well. As
simple as that. And this has nothing to do with Thracian derivation,
nor does it throw away the conclusion that the Romanian verb
for "to be" stems from Lat. sum, esse, fui.
George