On Tue, Dec 30, 2003, at 01:13 PM, tgpedersen wrote:
> Guess what, you guys: you _still_ haven't answered the question. Let
> me sharpen it a bit: Do you know for certain that these pastoralist
> traditions and glosses (are any of them derivable from Latin?) don't
> go back to pre-Roman times?
Of course they go: the world didn't spontaneously start
to exist only with the advent of the representatives
of the overlords in Latium, Campania, Lucania, Etruria.
> I think there was agreement in cybalist at one time that the
> Romanian language spread from the mountains (Carpathians)
> where it had survived the Slav invasions.
Perhaps there (in some SW regions) too, but certainly and
rather in a broader South Danubian area (esp. in the
provinces Dacia mediterranea, Dacia ripensis, Moesia
superior; then in Pannonia, Dardania, Macedonia & Thrace)
as well. Namely in regions that for further cent's continued
to be Eastern "Romania" both after the official represen-
tatives plus various kinds of "civilians" left (northern)
Dacia Felix for good toward the end of the 3rd c., and
after Odowakar terminated the official Western "Romania"
(2 centuries later).
> Is this pastoralist tradition a relic of that time?
IMHO, this Spring-Fall movements (the transhumance)
are not only a tradition virtually all over the world,
but they are a... must. AFAIK, it's also characteristic
of most of Altaic and Uralic populaces within the
frame of pastoral economy (as opposed to agriculture
economy; Viehzucht vs Landwirtschaft). I don't know
how it was (is) in Skandinavia, but have a look at
the vast region of the Alps: an entire ancient peasant
culture based on "Almauftrieb & Almabtrieb" (with the
difference that it seemingly reaches even higher
altitudes esp. in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France
than in the Yugo, Bulgaria, Romania & Slovakia similar
mountaineous regions).
Because of "political-social" vicissitudes (chiefly
caused by the series of immigration of peoples
attracted by the decaying body of ancient "Romania"),
surviving RomanoidThracoidPannonoidBessoid groups
were more and more constrained to adopt new, primitive
kinds of subsistence/economy, namely the itinerant
pastoral one in chiefly mountaineous regions, which
weren't as attractive to the newcomers, esp. to the
Turkic-Iranic "upper crust" of the newcomers. (Nor
were those regions too attractive to the Germanic
newcomers: numerous toponymic/hydronymic traces in
the Alps - even in South Germany - attesting that
a Romance population stayed as such way into periods
of time when those provinces were gradually Germa-
nized for good; e.g. those containing Walch-, Wals,
Wallis; e.g. Walchensee circa 70-80 km South of
Munich, near the Austrian border means "Lake of
the Vlachs". Of course, other kind of "Welschen"
were meant, not the ones of South-East Europe
(and, I suppose, nor the Rhaeto-Romans).
But OTOH, the words mentioned by Piotr and belonging
to a certain specific vocabulary of Romanian
shepherds are both of Latin and substrate ex-
traction. The verb <a ridica> "to lift; pick up" etc.
< Lat. eradicare. <mãgura> "peak" (of hill/mountain)
is to be compared with Alb. magullë, and seems to
be related to Slav. mogila and to Germanic (I forgot),
that we discussed several months ago. <brânzã> "cheese"
is a typical word from the vocabulary of Romanian/Vlach
shepherds, and borrowed as such into some languages
of peoples neighboring the Romanian speaking areas.
(It's form resembles other words that are shared with
Albanian.) <vatrã> "hearth", cf. Alb. <vatrë> were
mentioned yesterday. And there are further words
belonging to this type of (I'd dare say social)
vocabulary, of which some are again comparable with
Albanian lexems. The Turkic word <çoban> (also compare
the frequent Greek onomastics such as Tsobanoglu) for
"shepherd" has become the strongest in Romanian, although
Latin synonyms haven't been forgotten <pãcurar> and
<oier> (from <oaie> < Lat. <ovem>). <Pãcurar> is much
the more interesting since (1) Lat. pecus, pecoris,
pecorem hasn't been continuated in Romanian, and (2)
it can be misleading: one can misinterprete it as
"whoever deals with pitch" < <pãcura> "pitch" < Lat.
picula. Then the substrate again: a common sheep
disease is <gãlbeazã>; a word with virtually the same
pronunciation we find in Albanian <këlbazë, gëlbazë>.
Und so weiter und so fort.
IMHO, the most outstanding thing as far as the
"Balkanic" substrate is concerned is the *fact* that
neither Romanians, nor Albanians (nor neighboring
today Slavic idioms speaking populaces) don't
***directly*** remember anything of the ancient,
pre-Roman culture and religion/s of the population
from whose vocabulary there are those relics men-
tioned. The Romanization, then the (almost simul-
taneous, and later on reinforced) Christianization
of the entire societies plus the Slavic impact
were so overwhelming that it is almost a wonder
that there some kind of Romance population and
the presumable relics of the Moesian Bessi, i.e.
Albanians survived as distinct populations, i.e.
different lingvistically from Yugoslavs, Bulgarians
and Greek. AFAIK, Romanians don't have any Dacian
or Thracian onomastics whatsoever: it is thoroughly
Christian (plus as much Slavic as it was okayed by
the medieval Church), here and there even Turkic
(Petcheneg and Cuman traces). What can be perceived
as older, even pre-Romanic and pre-Christian is
reflected chiefly in folklore and legends. Otherwise,
zilch. This is why so many people dare postulate so
many fancies claiming all kind of strings of Dacian
and/or Thracian continuity. They give a darn on the
enormous temporal hiatus between ages, caused by
the Christian era -- a long period of time in which
most of the old SE-European population forgot almost
everything of what once had been, while adopting
new cultures and languages. (The same thing happened
to the Romanian and Aromanian speaking population:
between the collapse of the so-called Vlach-Bulgarian
empire of the Asen brethren, 12th c., and the 18th
c. this population was still numerous South of the
Danube; there are many records, especially of in
the archives of the Ottoman sultans. Towards the
creation of modern national(ist) states, in the 19th
and 20th c., most of South Danubian Romanians were
assimilated, so that those who still consider
themselves as such and are able to mumble something
in the language of their granpas and granmas re-
present an... endangered species. Especially between
the 1940s up to 1997 or so, Bucharest Commie and
post-Commie governments gave a darn on them. Now,
some bureaucratic agencies and a part of the press
at least talk of them, and invite some representatives
from among them to show to the "public opinion,"
"Hey, some of us still keep staying around".)
I mean hence the lack of orientation pertaining to
this kind of survivors of Eastern "Romania" (whose
upper crust became Greek towards the end of the 1st
millennium, as well as even replaced by Turkic and
Slavic upper crust, and who practically continued
to live in utter separation for almost one millennium
and a half from Western "Romania". I for one am not
suprised by the distinct status and peculiarities
of the Romanian language, but I'm flabbergasted by
the similarities with Italian dialects, just because
of those approx. 12-15 centuries of separation.
Plain, simple, primitive Romanian (say, spoken by
the most illiterate native-speakers) is still closer
to Italian than is English to Mitteldeutsch and
Oberdeutsch dialects [I don't mention Niederdeutsch
for obvious reasons ;-] -- in spite of those myriads
of local locutional re-inventions and myriads of
Slavisms and/or calques from the "Balcanic Sprach-
bund".).
> Torsten
George