Re: Romanian Loans in OCS?

"alexandru_mg3" wrote:

> Please answer me an additional questions related to this subject.
> You said :
>
>> As stated, there are probably very few loans from OCS in Romanian
>> but a lot of loanwords from South Slavic in Romanian
>
> When I read this I try to take from the romanian dictionary the
> loans from Slavic (OCS or as you said South Slavic, but not later
> loans from sb. or bulg.) to romanian (I used DEX as reference).

Well, you should better look in speciality books. You might try even
older editions of Rosetti's ILR, or works of E. Petrovici, I. Patrut,
and many others.

> I arrived to make a complete list (or almost complete) for the
> letters A and B. Here is :(sorry for the incorrect spellings...)
>
> #----------------------------------------------------------
> # Sl.-A -> 14
> #----------------------------------------------------------
> 01, afurisi ,<ngr. aphorizo <sl. aforisati
> 02, agheasmă ,<sl. agiazma, ngr. agiásma
> 03, aidoma ,<sl.a +vidomû
> 04, aievea ,<sl.a + javì
> 05, aleluia ,<sl. aleluija
> 06, amin ,<sl. aminû
> 07, amvon ,<sl. amûvonû
> 08, anafură ,<sl. [a]nafora
> 09, aprilie ,<sl. aprilí
> 10, arhanghel ,<sl. arhangelû
> 11, arhiepiscop ,<sl. arhiepiskopû
> 12, arhiereu ,<sl. arhierei
> 13, arhimandrit ,<sl. arhimandritû
> 14, arminden ,<sl. Iereminû-dín²

The list is not quite complete: for instance you have "agarean"
(< sl. agarEaninU), "agneT" (< sl. aganici), "agudã" (< sl. agoda)
"apostol" (< sl. apostolU), "avã" (< sl. avva), "azbuche" (< sl.
azU [name of first letter of Cyrillic alphabet] + buki [name of
its second letter]), "(az)bucoavnã" (< sl. azUbukovIno), and I
don't have the pretention to be exhaustive.

> #----------------------------------------------------------
> # Sl.-B -> 30
> #----------------------------------------------------------
> 01, babă ,<sl. baba

[...]

> 30, buiac ,<sl. bujakû


> When I saw this list (I agree that is ONLY the list of words
> starting with A or B), I think that the romanian loans come directly
> from OCS that was used as liturgic language for romanians at that
> time...

What "time" do you have in mind and what makes you think Romanians
used for a long time OCS and not a slightly evolved CS?

> and not, or to be more precise, not especially, to a direct contact
> with a south slavonic population (that of course existed too).

Most probably church-related terms are loans from CS, but that's of
course not valid for the others, which are due to a deep contact with
a South-Slavic layer eventually romanized; the proof is incribed in
several Common Romanian characteristics of Slavic origin.

> Please take a look : all the "A" loans are liturgical terms,

False statement. Agarean, aidoma, aievea, agudã, azbuche are not
church-related.

> and also a lot of "B" words are very related to the Bible
> "expression style" (that is not a "happy" one ... ).

Define "a lot of". From my point of view, in your (incomplete) B-list
there is only one word related to religion ("blagoslovi" `to bless`).
I don't get your point on "Bible expression style". It's just the fact
some terms are sounding archaic (as language of Romanian Bible still
is)? That has nothing to do with those terms being specifically
related
to church: they aren't.

> So I imagine : the romanians hearing each day at the church the
> old slavonic BIBLE texts , and as a result, the meaning of these
> words cannot remains outside them ...

As said, this statement is valid only for church terms and CS. For
the
other words, nothing supports your claim, though it is true one cannot
rule out completely some CS influence for those words more likely to
appear in liturgies.

> My additional question in order to further check this assumption
> is the following :
>
> The great majority of the Slavic loans in Romanian arrived in
> Romanian after Cyril and Methodius Bible or before?

The first layer of Slavic loanwords (those common to all dialects)
are most probably preceeding C&M. These are not very numerous. But...

> As you have explained me :
>> they have some reluctance to admit Slavic loans without metathesis,
>
> seems as an argument that the great majority of Slavic loans
> arrived in Romanian after metathesis so it could be also after Cyril
> and Methodius Bible ...

... actually, one admits usually that Slavic influence on Balkan
Romance (and Common Romanian) became significent around the VII-th
century a.D. and Proto-Romanians lived altogether with Slavs for a
certain amount of time. Rosetti and other advocate that _continuous_
linguistical contact of Proto-Romanians with Slavs allowed them to
"correct" their pronunciation according to what they were hearing.
Thus, there are only a few words in Romanian corresponding to
Slavic words without metathesis ("baltã", "daltã"); coincidence or
not, they are also present in Albanian without metathesis. Whether
one wants to explain them as substratal, or as early Slavic loans
never having undergone that "correction" process it's still under
debate.

> If the great majority of this loans arrived in romanian ONLY after
> Cyril and Methodius Bible, and as I know : the slavic population
> arrive 200-300 hundred years before this, my assumption that the
> great majority of romanian loans were taken directly from OCS Bible,
> has a strong support.

It has not. Slavic influence on Proto-Romanian is obvious from some
morphological facts, present in all dialects: that means there was a
strong linguistical contact with Slavs before C&M. It would be very
strange to have linguistical influence in morphology without any
loanwords: usually one has rather the opposite.

> This assumption could explain also the great impact of Slavonic
> on the romanian language. If we take a look to the hungarian
> loanwords in Romanian (even in Transylvania, where we are SURE for
> a direct contact between the 2 populations for about 800-1000 years)
> the impact is far to be so huge as the Slavonic impact.

Try to use words carefully. Slavic (not Slavonic!) had an important
influence on Proto-Romanian because the Balkan Romance was in a period
of faster evolution, the Slavs were more numerous and interacted much
stronger with Romanians (otherwise they wouldn't have been assimilated
over several centuries). Hungarians arrived in a moment in which the
language was already established and they had a different relationship
with (Daco-)Romanians. The situations aren't similar.

> Because I don't have enough knowledge in this area please give me
> your opinion on this.

The first thing to do is to read some books. If you want to have a
further discussion on Romanian specific issues, I strongly advise you
to join a list dedicated to Romanian language (as r-lang) and keep
this IE list free of OT-like messages.

Regards,
Marius Iacomi


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