cristi mindrut wrote:
>don't use the romanian Dex with too much confidence though,
>since it was made specifically to induce the opinion that
>romanian and russian are brothers, so romanians have no
>reason to try to free themselves from CCCP-USSR. the Dex
>was made in the "comunist" era, and it remained so to this
>days. It wasn't really updated, just reedited.
This is only some sort of... urban legend. In spite of
the fact that DLRM (Dictionarul Limbii Romîne Moderne)
and its successor DEX (Dictionarul Explicativ al Limbii
Române) were compilated during the commie era, they are
solid linguistic works, their authors being the finest
academic linguists Romania had at that time; moreover,
these dictionaries are by no means new concoctions, they
are based on what had been published before their editions
(of the 50s, 60s, DEX 70s ff.). For example, inter alia,
on Atlasul Lingvistic Român, that was finished towards
the end of the 30s, and the team was coordinated by the
great Sextil PuScariu. When among the authors you have
scholars such as and Grigore BrâncuS, Ion $iadbei,
and when the finishing was supervised by such titans as
Dimitrie Macrea and Iorgu Iordan, then you gotta...
încremene$ti in awe! ;^)
In spite of the vicissitudes, that existed indeed (esp.
in the 50s), these are very good works. However, etymology
isn't their main purpose; therefore, the etym. notes
are very brief, and in uncertain cases the authors even
refrained from giving the extant hypotheses. For thorough
presentations and speculations on etymology there have been
other works. But that what's in DLRM and DEX reflects
that what had been reached (not only by Romanian research)
up to the printind of those editions.
Unfortunately, especially after 1970, and to an extreme
extent in the 80s and after 1990, in Romania and Republic
of Moldova (let alone the exile world in the West) there
have circulated lots of adventurous and utterly stupid
etymologies, based on protochronism (that wreaks havoc
in some Romanian social strata). Those who propagate them
are either ignorant enthusiasts, or ignorant... business
people who know how to exploit a... market made of people
fond of attractive prose (fairy tales).
>but i don't have a slavic Dex, to say more
>on this, i just suppose it comes from latin "moriri" too.
There are some Slavists and Slavic linguists among the
members of Cybalist, so they'll reveal the Slavic aspects
of the term.
George