>The forms shoed by you with "an" are just regionalisms
>(btw, why do you not present them as regionalsims?)
Because they aren't mere regionalisms. They are in
use on the entire (Daco-)Romanian territory. Only
the standard/official language (influenced by the
subdialect of *your region*) tends to make almost of
everything "-ean". That's why. So, one has to put
up with this and use the -ean suffix in official
texts even in cases where the non-official version
is the -an one (BTW: tzaran, not *tzarean.)
So, irrespective of the etymology, modern Romanian
usage is a (haphazard and whimsical) mixture of
both suffixes -an & -ean (& -ian if pronounced
[i-an] or [i-yan]). So, moldovan is 100% correct
(actually also in the official-artificial language),
whereas *ardelan is a fictitious: in no subdialect
is this acceptable. BTW: a frequent mistake is
*ucrainian [u-kraj-ni-'an]; it has to have the
-ean suffix too (with the ea-diphtong): ucrainean
[u-kra-i-nean]. Whereas: canadian [...i-an] and
american [...-an].
>Accepting the Latin "-annus" as the root for Rom. "ean"
>is a immposiblity because there is no Latin a > e.
If that's correct, I'll accept it. Besides, there's
a related Lat. suffix -enus. (Also relevant in some
cases.)
>The second argument why rom "ean" is not from Latin
>( even if has the same function as the latin suffix)
>is as people showed here, the words which ends in "-ân"
>as in rumân, stãpân, jupân.
It is, after all, a PIE suffix. But AFAIK -ean is rather
influenced by some Slavic pattern. Unlike in the case
of -esc < -isk, -ean has little chance to be deemed as
a substrate remnant (of course you wish it was ;=).
>There is no filiation relation between vjetër and vatër.
>They are from different roots.
So it seems there's no link to batran either.
George