--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
> I agree with this point of view. For completing the image, one has
to call
> the geographic map for his eyes. Let us see the mountains in the
whole
> Balkan-Carpathian region. Assuming one has the Urheimat of Rom.
somewhere in
> the mountains around Orchid, they need to cross the big plains and
the
> Danube for arriving in the mountain of Carpathian. What I want to
underline
> here? Comparative with the late expansion of the Valahs _on the
mountains_
> until Slovakia and Poland, we don't have a continous mountain area
which
> will allow them to migrate unseen and unfeelt. Or maybe the Slavs
allowed
> them to cross their region , did they? I mean, when herds are
moving, they
> are not on the train and they are in a copule of hours in another
region.
> They are moving slowly, they are eating, they need time.
> Does someone think
> the Slavs have been hapy having the Vlachs on their plains occuping
the
> pastures? I think a such happening is seen as an attack in the
existence of
> every peasant area, even today in the modern times. That is: -
either the
> Slavs have been forced the let them cross their regions, in some
couple of
> years, or the Slavs have been very weak and they could not do
anything
> against them. That for the migrating scenario.
This is all very nice, but don't we need a similar trek to get the
ancestors of the Arumanians to northern Greece?
On *any* scenario we are stuck with displacements that look daunting
from the point of view of our armchairs. I don't see why the movement
of pre-Arumanians from Transylvania to Ohrid would be any easier than
that of pre-Daco-Rumanians from Ohrid to Transylvania (to put it in
simplified fashion). Adherents of the Transdanubian hypothesis tend
to suffer from a congenital failure to take proper care of Arumanian.
But Arumanian is a vitally important part of the puzzle. If you omit
it you are cheating.
What I have in mind, by the way, is not the type of movement that
gets huge numbers of speakers of Rumanian from Ohrid to Transylvania
in one go, although such movements are not unattested; after all
Theodoric and his Goths did something similar in 488. I dealt with
the issue of numbers in an earlier posting and I'm not going to do so
again, but I would like to repeat that you don't need spectacular
numbers to get spectacular results.
We have to allow for the very real possibility that the people
involved were intelligent and purposeful and knew their way around.
If you are going somewhere you make preparations. You select suitable
itineraries and if necessary you make arrangements with local
populations and authorities. It takes foresight and leadership but
who are we to decide beforehand that people weren't capable of that?
In addition there is a lot we can only guess at. Population density
must have been very much lower than the oppressive figures we've
grown used to in the past two centuries, radically diminishing the
risk of conflict (modern experienes are not at all indicative here).
We don't know what was the language of southern Serbia before it
became Serbian, but Rumanian would seem to be the best available
candidate for the role; indeed southern Serbia makes for an excellent
intermediate stopping place. There is much more of this. For
instance, if the traditional picture of early medieval Slavs is
correct they had no interest in pastures and may not have cared a
hoot that they were being disturbed.
Finally it is important to recall the spectacular effect piecemeal
migrations have had on the Balkans, e.g. Vojvodina and Kosovo in the
past few centuries.
But the central truth is always that some pretty drastic migrations
are needed anyhow to get Dacorumanian and Arumanian in their modern
locations starting from a narrowly circumscribed "Urheimat". You're
stuck with migrations whichever way you look at it.
> What I wonder is something else. In the XIV century, as we have
more
> informations, there is no reference, but no reference about any
Slavs in
> actualy Romania. There are mentioned Hungarians, Szekely, Germans
(Saxons),
> but no Slavs at all. That is the question which is interesting and
I pointed
> several times to this. Where have been the Slavs? Was there a big
empty
> space between South Slavs and North Slavs? The usually answer is
that there
> has been no empty place, but the Slavs got assimilated by
Romanians. Well...
> seems in that region everyone was ready to be assimilated. The
Dacians by
> Colonists, the colonists by Slavs, the Slavs by Romanians.
> Or this is just a paper scenario, to weak to be true..
People easily shift to another language if that language happens to
be present. Language shift takes place almost automatically if
circumstances favour it (especially if you are not hampered by
schools dealing in militant national ideologies and preparing the
next generation for yet another round of ethnic cleansing under the
guise of transmitting national values). A bilingual area where, say,
the peasants speak Serbian and the pastoralists Rumanian or Albanian
can easily become monolingual over time depending on which language
is more prominent. Both Rumanian and Hungarian are shot through with
Slavic elements, testifying to non-trivial bilingual periods. After
all, you don't borrow the word for 'snow' (let alone the vocative
ending) from another lanuage unless it is in some sense your own
language.
Willem