fortuna11111 wrote:
> Alex, that's a very interesting discussion for me. However, the
> Romans and Greeks, and the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire are
> different concepts, at least in Bulgarian. The Romans are
> called "rimljani", the Greeks are "gUrci", the Byzantines (who are
> wrongly called Greeks by many) are called "romei". I have no idea
> how the word "rimljanin" appears in Old Bulgarian, but you have made
> me note the difference between "rimljanin" and "romej". And now I am
> wondering why this difference.
>
> Eva
It seems to me that the Greek sources shows an "e" for "Rome" and
Romans. At least in koine it is presented with Rém-, references I gave
in a previous post. The Greeks called themself "romey" this is clear and
well known. The romanians have been always for bulgarians ,"vlasi".
These living south of Danube "beli vlasi" and the other in north the
"cerno vlasi".
But "mlia-" is indeed a Slavic rendering how Piotr explained .
Now, about the difference. The Byzantine empire as the slavs came, it
was an Empire but inside of this have been a lot of folks. They have
spoken several languages and the poor Slavs have had problems in
understanding how can be "one folk" with many languages. In that time,
the slavs have been speaking one and the same language, eventualy with
very smal difference but stil the same language. In this way, they tried
to differentiate _after language_ the folks inside of the empire. The
romey (greeks) could not be vlasi since they speak different languages.
The vlasi could not be Latins since they speak too a different
languages. The term "gUrci" seems to be like in aromanian "gret,i" where
"t,"= in bulgarian "c".
BTW, which is the name in Bulgarian for Albanians ? The romanians use
the "arnãut" which is a turkish loan (arnavud) which desemned the
mercenar Albanians soldier in the Turkish army. I guess the term
"rumunzko/rumânzko" in all slavic languages is a new one from the own
way of romanians to call themselvs.
Alex