>Sure you can: in the prefix în-, ãn-. The î- of Daco-Romanian here
>developed out of a schwa (ã), the same way that it did in îmi (ãmi),
>îtzi (ãtzi), îszi (ãszi), îi (ãi). The prefix in- (VL > en-) first
>was reduced to n- (cf. ex- > s-), and then acquired a prosthetic
>schwa.
In today's D aco-Romanian subdialects (esp. in Moldova and to
a lesser extent in Transylvania), there is still a schwa in many cases
where the standard language has [î]. So, that these two vowels are
actually very close. So that Aromanian "ãmi, ãtzi, ã$i, ãi" don't
sound that strange/outlandish to Romanians. In some Romanian
regions peasants say a "grãu," not "grâu" (wheat). And even
in the standard language there are variants, equally accepted:
"mãnãstire - mânãstire", "sãnãtate - sânãtate", "mânã (hand", but
"mãnu$ã" (glove), "pârâu" - pãrãu, parãu (brook, rivulet). So,
I actually don't understand why Alex is so impressed by î/â
versus ã [&] in Romanian.
(These are sort of... Umlauts that are even today, within the
DR dialect, in numerous cases interchangeable. Some difficulties
in standard pronunciation and writing, with distinction between
ã and î/â, tend to be shown by Mo ldavians, either from Romania
or from the M. Republic. e.g. întãi instead of întâi < Lat.
*antaneus < Lat. ante.)
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
George
PS: a curiosity: in the R. cyrillic alph. writing (that
was abolished for good only in 1860), the verb "sînt(em)" (he,
she, it is; we, they are) was written "sãnt" without exception
(the font "b" with strong serif you see in "B&lgaria" was used
for that, while for î/â other... 3 fonts were in use).