>*****GK: This certainly was tremendous as you say.
>Just a cursory look at a dictionary shows the
>following words still current in Romanian:
>"sin"--gresheala (sp)
The spelling is okay (or: gre$eala), but it means "mistake,"
not "sin." Sin is "pacat" [p&-kat] (< L. peccatum).
>"confession"-- spovedanie
Only in the sense of confession to a priest. Otherwise,
"marturisire" is used (incl. within the judicial frame ->
testimony). But this one is related to martyr (since the
early Christians were indeed... testifiers).
>"vespers"---vecernie "gospel" -- Evanghelie (Slavic
>filter?)
Along with the Greek Evanghelie, Sf. Scriptura (or in
plural, Scripturi) has been in use. Participial derivatives
are "scriptura" (the oldest), "scriitura", "scrisoare."
(this one chiefly means "letter").
>"preach"-- propovadni (sp),
i.e. "a propovadui, -ire, -it;" and syn. "a predica"
>and as you noted
>"mass" --sluzhba (religioasa). But the word for
>"priest" seems to be PREOT and that's clearly not
>Slavic.
On top of that, some linguists have remarked its popular
variant "preut" is shared by South Italians (or at least
on Sicily).
If "saint" in Romanian is "sfant"
or the like, and if this is from the Slavic, then must
we assume the word to have been borrowed from a
"nasalizing" Slavic dialect?
I don't know. What relevance would it have? OTOH,
sfânt/a is almost the same word as sânt/a. Only that
[f] in it is the hint that a Slavic idiom once influenced
the word. For example, Sfânta Maria is general Romanian
(i.e. in any province where Daco-Rumanian is spoken).
But there is Sânta Maria (or M&ria) too -- also throughout
the territory (esp. the names of the two Maria holidays,
"Sânta Maria mare" and "Sânta Maria mica"), and Sânta
Maria Orlea, one of the oldest Rumanian churches,
somewhere in the center of Transylvania, on the Eastern
slopes of the western mountains, between Transylvania
proper and the Cri$-Tisa plains.
I myself do not know whether the slavicized word sfânt
got popular from the very beginning or whether it gradually
surpassed (but has never superseded sânt/-a) as a learned
term (due to Slavonic liturgic masses/usage).
>One might perhaps argue this for "carol" (colind
>in Romanian acc. to my dictionary.***
But since the word is older and borrowed virtually by
everybody in the region..., we'll have to postpone the
conclusion... ad calendas graecas. :-)
By the way, colindul or its feminine variant colinda
are preserved in a rhotacized variant, esp. in Transylvania
and Banat, and esp. the feminine, as "corinda" & its
diminutive "corinditza" (with the jocular rhyme "cu
coditza" = the tailed carol). This rotacization of the
l, along with attested cases where Lat. a > o (AFAIK
there are inscriptions with this phenomenon) puts a
question mark on the idea of a Slavic loanword.
George