>nom. ea /ja/
Both in this case, as in most -ea- diphtong environments,
the overwhelming majority of DR native-speakers pronounce
it not as /ja/ but as /ea/. An /ea/ diphtong per se. Those
who pronounce it /ja/ though... are perceived either as
foreigners or, if everything else (grammar, style & lots of
idiosyncrasies) is OK, as members of marginal subdialectal
"pockets", chiefly situated in westernmost & northeasternmost
areas (i.e. towards the Hungarian and Serbian border as
well as towards the Ukrainian border; or, in other terms,
they belong to the big subdialectal groups of greater
Transylvania and Moldavia).
OTOH, the West. Transylv. subdial. I can confirm further
pronunciation: [jae] (it sounds close to Engl. "yeah").
Moreover, in the same subdial. areas, people use a second
word meaning "yes," with the same pronunciation, and
which in official Romanian can only awkwardly be rendered
as <ie>. (So both words, "she" and "yes" are, in this parti-
cular and geographically limited, case homophonous.)(The
etym. of this regional "yes" is unknown to me. So, I can't
tell whether it has to do with <e> [je] < <este> "is".)
>Arromanian has wã > o also after /(e)a/ (stella > *steawã > MR
>steao), against DR steá, with loss of -w- [*steawã > *steaã > stea].
<steauã> also in pretty vast areas of the DR dialect; in a similar
way as is the case for <ziuã>. The restriction to <stea> actually
reflects the South-DR subdialects spoken in Muntenia (including
the capital) and Oltenia via the literary (i.e. standard) language.
So, a Southerner will say "Vãd" or even "vãz o stea" [stea, not
*stja!]. North of the Carpathian range, people will also say "Vãd
o steauã" ['stea-w&]. (This applies to many other words ending in
-ea: -ea <-> -eauã.)
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
George