>One should read. I expected Sorin will tell you more here. Since
>it seems he is not online I have to make some references here:
>
>A magyar nyelv történeti - etimológiai szótára
(Dictionar
>istorico-etimologic al limbii maghiare), DEM, Budapesta, Editura
>Academiei Maghiare, 1970, în vol.II, p. 1034. The word "nyam"
>appears first in the Hungarian texts in 1881. In Romanian the word
>"neam" is to find: Codicele Vornotian, Tetravanghelul lui Coresi,
>Palia de la Orastie, Noul Testament de la Balgrad, Ioan Zoba din
>Vintz, Ioan Neculce. The word is thus attested begining with the
>first Rom. writtings (XVI century). If this is not enough, one
>should read in te A magyar nyelv történeti that the Hungarian
>word "nyam" is mentioned as "Román eredetu". (loan from Romanian)
Oh, my gosh, if you didn't take this seriously, it'd be a
pretty good piece of... satiric prose. (Da haste inne schoene
Falle getappt, meen Jong :-) "nyám" is a mere slangy-colloquial
suburban term. I didn't know, until your quotation, that it
actually entered the Hung. language more than 100 years ago.
I knew of it. But I thought it wasn't older than 30-60 years.
Do you know in which context I got to hear it? Whenever
Hungarians talked in a derogatory way of Rumanians wishing
to point out that "them Oláhs again spread everywhere with
their Mishpoke" -- for it is this derogatory sense that's
ascribed to this "nyám", sort of "crowd, gang, despicable
throng of numerous relatives." Of course, on the other hand,
numerous Hungarians, esp. those who speak Romanian, know
very well, without browsing a linguistics book, that the
Romanian word "neam" is akin to the Hung. word family of
"nem" ("nemzet" & the like), as well as the fact that the
mockingly made borrowing "nyám" is a variant thereof.
(The phonetics of "nyám" is understandable promptly to any
Hungarian speaker: for a Hungarian it is unnatural and im-
possible to utter [neam] spontaneously, since the Romanian
diphtong [ea] - I underline [ea], not [ja] - is as exotic
as some sound from Chinese or Kishuaheli. That's why, to
a Hungarian [ea] is [ja:], and an [n] cannot be followed
by a [ja:] without altering the [n] into a [ñ]. From the
Romanian phonetics viewpoint, [ea] is the result - in very
numerous cases - of a further transformation of an "open"
[e], i.e. of [æ], a sound that exists as such in about 50%
of the extand Daco-Romanian subdialects, where there's
no need to make of it an [ea], unlike in the standard,
official, kind of the Romanian language. But this <neam>
is an exception in those regions: it contains this pan-
Romanian diphtong.)
Hung. <nem> is a big family of basic words, as you can
see on the list put on display by the Sztaki-online dictionary.
(Lacking a Hung. etymology dictionary, I don't know whether
the substantive is based on the verb <nö> [nö:] "to grow,
to breed," and whether it's related to <nö> [nö:] "woman.")
By contrast, Rum. <neam> is a solitary occurrence in the
Romanian lexical thesaurus (only with the meanings "clan"
and "nation," but without the other meanings extant in
Hungarian: "breed" & "sex" and "Geschlecht" in the sense of
"Adelsgeschlecht" => aristocracy, as is the derivation
<nemes> ['næmæS], which is at the same time a second name
in many a Romanian case as well, as was that of the young
actor Cãtãlin NemeS who was shot thrice in Cluj-Napoca
during the so-called revolution in December 1989, and who
survived.)
The Romanian notion of Latin origin, that's to be seen
as the appropriate synonym for <neam> is <nat> or, with
def. art., <natul>. "Tot natul" = "Tot neamul". It also
contains the idea of "born, breed," (compare Lat. nasco
+ natus est, of which Romanian has conserved only the
noun <natul>, and instead of which Romanian has made and
used another past participle for the verb: <nãscut>).
So, only in <nat> (a word which is today restricted to
Romania's south-western subdialects, and which is lesser
and lesser used: kinda living fossil) you can see this
relation - that's given in Hung. <nem> too, incl. "sex,"
-> <nemi> "sexual" -, but which is completely opaque
in <neam>: only a Romanian who speaks Hungarian can see
the kinship - to the rest of Romanian native-speakers,
<neam> means "clan" and "nation", period, they don't see
any further relationship and connotations in it.
>One interesting aspect here should be the plural form of the
>word which is "neamuri" [...] "nemoris" [...]
What do you mean? "-uri" is a common plural for Romanian
neutral substantives. It's simply added to "neam," the
noun itself stays unaltered.
>word_ but has the phonetical aspect of the Rom. word. The
>PIE root could be derived from the PIE *nem1 as well.
What's outstanding is that Romanians couldn't accept the
word phonetically as [n] + the vowel [æ] without
diphtongating the vowel.
This is quite surprising (at least to me), since esp.
the Romanians living together with Hungarians have never
had problems of rendering this [æ] which is characteristic
to their subdialects -- and, by the way, which is not
existent in Alex's own subdialect. Moreover, an interesting
aspect in connection with this: colloquially, and esp.
within the so-called "lower classes", people in Alex's
region as well as in other South-Romanian regions use
a strange double negation made of Romanian words (<nu>
etc.) plus a <neam> [the same pronunciation, with diphtong,
as if it were the <neam> with the meanings "clan, nation"].
Well, this second "not/nope" is nothing else than the
Hungarian negation <nem> [næm]: "no, nope, not".
I deem it a strange phenomenon, since to Romanians living
North & West of the Carpathian range, i.e. throughout Banate
and Transylvania, the double construction "nu + neam" is
unknown; or they hear/read it only when used now and then
by native-speakers from other regions. An example:
"El nu stie neam" signifies "El nu stie deloc"
(whereby <neam> and <deloc> mean "not at all").
>Ah, Scuipã în sân!
Usually, a woman does that. Then, you can also posses
a <sân>, but you don't have <sâni> unless you undergo a
hormonal treatment for transsexual purposes. (And remember
the Moldavian scato-joke: "Stii bancu cu sânii?" :-)
>Alex
schoenes W-E,
George