> (I think it is this that surprises outsiders about the Romanian
> situation: the dictatorial regime used to stress the transdanubian
> hypothesis with so much brute force and lack of finesse that one would
> expect at least some scholars to have assumed for that reason that it
> cannot be true and to have explored that possibility as soon as that
> became possible.)
So stimmt das nicht. In this respect, the Romanian bolshevic satrapy
did by no means invent the wheel. After a brief while, when it tried to
induce the idea that Romanians were also kinda Slavs after all, it
supported the mainstream theses that had existed before (namely for
abou 100-200 years). But the regime later on (if I ain't wrong, as late
as the sixties) went farther: it supported the thesis of the
ethnogenesis both North and South of the Danube, namely from Greece to
Poland, and from Austria to the Black Sea. Elegant, isn't it? :^)
(Within the non-propaganda frame, there were also scholars (that is way
before the commie regime came to power) who supported theories saying
that the middle and south-Balkan Romanians (Aromanians) had migrated
thither coming from the North. (In any case, it is far more plausible
that they originated from areas which are now thoroughly Slavic, both
Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian.)
> I agree. However, what remains unusual about the Romanian scene is
> the persistence of what looks like forced consensus *after* the
> collapse of the dictatorship fifteen years ago.
Because this consensus, as I stated above, is by no means the invention
of the commie regime or of the Ceausescu phase of it. It is based on
previous 2 hundred years education, and that in turn was based on
previous story-telling, incl. *Hungarian* and other Western chronicles
& traditions. Up to the epoch when Romanians started to imply some sort
of uneasiness, nobody had contested those traditions and legends
regarding their real or alleged Dacian & Roman origin. (Even the
Silesian-German poet Martin Opitz who lived for a while in Transylvania
wrote delirious poems dedicated to Dacia; humanist as well as Hungarian
princelings imagined themselves as Dacian kings - but within that
multinational population only Vlachs (Romanians), a nation not yet
officially acknowledged as that, qualified as the closest to a kinship
to those ancient people who once lived there both as Dacians and as
Roman colonists sent thither by the Roman state. That's what everybody
with a li'l bit of education knew.) The situation started to change in
the 17th c., and only in the 18th c. did evolve books with the
crystalization of the idea that Romanians were a mere bunch of
"Wanderhirte" once parted from Albanians somewhere in remote and
obscure areas in the dark Balkans, and that those nomad shepherds, at
the same time bloody bandits, gradually sneaked from the South into the
kingdom of Hungary, way after the Mongol invasion, and lived for
centuries nearly unremarked until the an 18th c. demographic explosion
(their vigor was/is explained by the fact that they ate cheese :-)).
Unfortunately, up to day, real, genuine, scientific research, reasoning
and speculation are so much intertwined with ideology, politics and
covert jingoistic feelings (of foolish pride and fear/angst at the same
time) that IMHO a true separation is almost impossible. (I first of all
take into consideration the Hung-Rum dichotomy in this respect, for the
other ones, Bulg-Rum and Ukr-Rum are less known to me, but I expect
that these must be strained in similar ways.) Even in the most dry and
concise presentation you can detect biases, e.g. in omissions of some
interpretation, deduction, speculation things or even of facts (e.g.
Hungarian historiographies dealing with the history of Transylvania are
"shy" to present some of the oldest rights to which the Romanian
population was entitled AFA certain fiefs were of concern, despite the
fact that there are documents, at least documents from later lawsuits
in which Romanian communities tried to get back some land from some
barons or counts invoking older rights that had been acknowledged by
earlier kings. Hungarian readers forever will be told of an enormous
influx of Romanian immigrants in the 18th c., but never told that there
is enough documentation to attest that both Hungarian and Austrian
authorities complained at the same time over the exodus of Romanians
who (thusly goes the saying) preferred the Turkish wooden yoke to the
iron one of the Austrians. Austria was a civilization factor over
there, undoubtedly, but that national states evolved in 1919 out of the
moribund multinational empire was no accident.)
> Almost everywhere
> else the disappearance of the dictatorships has given rise to a
> considerably larger variety of opinions (including a lot of crackpot
> opinions and pathological stuff), even in ex-Yugoslavia, with its
> traumatic war.
In Romania, the crackpot part of it has gotten more attention than
under Ceausescu's regime (although this one heavily supported the
proto-chronist dacist-thracist and pre-historic speculations): these
people have now had more access on the markets of printed matter and
"radio-TV-antenna time" (as it is said in Romania) than ever before. Of
course, as anywhere in the world, it is they who have more impact in
the masses (because of the mechanisms of the... yellow press) than the
result of scientific research, which is... dry, complicated, hardly
comprehensible without a li'l bit of training and which never enjoys
the publication of books or booklets in considerable number of copies
(and these are expensive at that). This is valid in the West, but in
the former commie countries this is amplified (the perpetual lack of
funds is far more acute in Eastern Europe).
> (I don't exclude the possibility that Du Nay, whoever he is, may turn
BTW, today I found this brief presentation made by somebody in German
in Wikipedia:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Rum%C3%A4nische_Ethnogenese
> out to be a Romanian. He often makes the common mistake of failing to
> transpose internationally known names or technical terms to a form
> that would be acceptabel in English. In all cases I have seen he uses
> the Romanian form, e.g. the Roman poet "Ovide", or the archeological
> culture "Cerneahov" instead of "Ovid" and "Chernyakhov"
> (or "C^ernjaxov" or some other variety that would be acceptable in an
> English text). I've not yet come across examples where he chooses the
> Hungarian variant. But the number of examples is small and it may be
> a chance phenomenon reflecting his reliance on Romanian sources.)
AFAIR, the author (authors?) chiefly refers to Romanian and Hungarian
expert
literature. To me, the reason for this is that he criticizes Romanian
scholars in general and certain late luminaries in particular. This is
the case of the work regarding one synthesis on Transylvanian history
by Stefan Pascu -- cf.:
http://hungarianhistory.com/lib/pas/index.htm
# Du Nay, Alain and Du Nay, Andr� Transylvania - Fiction and Reality
Download the MS Word for Windows file (199 kB)
# Du Nay, Alain Romaini si maghiari in vartejul istoriei
Available as an MS Word file (479 kB)
# Du Nay, Andr� The Origins of the Rumanians
Download the Word Perfect file (506 kB)
http://hungarianhistory.com/lib/rum.htm
(BTW, if one reads only the captions of the books presented here one
gets the impression that Romanians must be some kind of bloody beasts.
OTOH, Romanians have also been able to put similar lists on display
showing how these "Mongolian hordes" had exploited and tormented the
Romanian nation for thousand years. Moreover: look at the titles of the
works by A. Kosztin. The author's name is Romanian. So, there are also
magyarized Hungarians who at times can be much more jingoistic towards
Romanians than others. :-)) Also: look at the wording, e.g. "cultural
genocide". It is however outrageous, since, regardless of how many
idiocies the Romanian gov'ts and authorities and various kinda people
have done, the fact is that under Romanian govt's the Hung. population
could maintain its language, culture, identity much more than anywhere
else in Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Western Ukraine. The
same thing is valid for the Suebian Germans and the so-called
Transylvanian Saxons (who are by and large of Ripuarian Frank
extraction) - the only Aussiedler group that came and comes to Germany
within the frame of the big repatriations after the WW2, that in most
cases attended schools in German, and in very numerous cases have even
a German Abitur/Matura - which is not the case for the more numerous
ethnic Germans coming from Silezia and other Polish regions, ex-USSR,
ex-CSSR, Hungary and Batchka+Voyvodina (ex-YU). This is a hard fact.
Moreover, in some of the other E-Eur countries, esp. after the WW2 even
speaking the language was forbidden.
(I give these very brief examples only to illustrate what a big role
contemporary politics have always played and that it is difficult to
discuss completely forgetting (re)sentiments. :))
> Thanks for the historical overview, which I'm not going to comment on
> because it is too far removed from linguistics.
I'm aware that I might reach limits of what's getting off-topic. I dare
touch such aspects now and then only based on the part of the charter
of this group saying that, to some extend, general culture/history of
IE people can also be on-topic. (In this case, I mean in this thread,
these collateral aspects are linked to the... fate of the linguistics
and history experts: the degrees of freedom or constraints depending on
"our national interests", ie, of the incumbent political groups that
exert the... leverage and manipulate the legendary "public opinion".)
> Don't forget that it was the Albanian-Serbian relations in Kosovo
> that started things off in the eighties.
As far as this province is concerned. But the previous armed conflicts
were because of the hegemony attitudes of Serbia at loggerheads with
the aspirations of their brethren: Croats and Slovenians (to a lesser
extend, AFAI can understand, the Macedonian Slavs, but even the
Montenegrins to a certain extent, given the fact that these have
traditions of separate statehood, although themselves Serbians).
> Moreover, you can very well
> be convinced of being inherently different from your neighbour even
> if you speak the same language and understand each other perfectly.
That's right, but it's an immensely long way until the threshold where
both groups are able to fight and kill one another the way they are able
to do - and which is nearly incomprehensible to neighboring people
(especially when it is within the same ethnos).
> Croatian and Serbian have never been completely identical and
> attempts to minimize or even eliminate the remaining differences and
Romanians also have never lived in such a big number in the same
state but since 1859 and 1919, as well as for one year in 1601.
However, I dare say that Romanians living in distinct provinces
with distinct histories in the last 800 years wouldn't be able to
fight one another in such a furious, violent, cruel way, to develop
similar degrees of hate, as were able the Serbians and Croats in
twice in the 20th c. and the "papist" and Anglican Irish.
> to push through the use of the word "Serbo-Croatian" (which had
> always been a technical term) in daily life in the fifties and early
> sixties added enormously to mutual ill-feelings.
Yes, but to my amazing in various TV documentaries various big shots
and common people declared to western reporters, after those conflicts,
in which some fought tooth and nail, that in fact they are one nation
(even the Moslems are aware of that, in spite of the fact that for them
the notion of "nation" is somewhat different from that in Christian
national groups).
> Existing differences were small, but quite numerous. It has never
> been possible to speak or write SC in a way that is completely
> neutral. Countless differences show up in derivation.
Then what should, e.g., Germans say, incl. Austrians and Swiss Germans
(who however sat together for decades and decades in order to get a
reform of orthography and, in the end, they issued this mess of a
Rechtschreibung :-))! Or what should say those people who say either...
"tomaaahtow or tomeytow" (as L. Armstrong's song goes :o)).
> The Croatian word for 'female colleague' is "kolegica", the Serbian
> word "koleginica" (or vice versa).
This is almost nothing compared with North and general German
<Brötchen> and South and Austrian German <Semmel>; <Rotkohl> vs.
<Blaukraut>; <Quark> vs. <Topfen> and myriads of other examples, incl.
the parting of the Reich in two in using <to have> or <to be> as
auxiliaries in: <ich habe gesessen/gelegen> vs. <ich bin
gesessen/gelegen>. But nobody pleads for the break-up of the federation
because of that (although the Southerners can't stand "die Preiss'n"
:-)).
> Even so religion was an extremely divisive issue in Holland until the
> late sixties. The entire society had been constructed in such a way
> as to minimize the amount of personal contact between carriers of
> different religions, e.g. separate schooling, newspapers, bowling
> clubs etc.
Oh, that's amazing; after all, it's been a long time since the "30 y.
war" (AFAIK, in Germany these differences betw. both communities aren't
by far no longer as strong.)
> There were even one or two minor linguistic differences. I
> was warned against saying "op vakantie" 'on holiday' because that was
> considered Catholic (I had to say "met vakantie").
Boy-oh-boy, that's shocking! :) (Well, then adopting <Ferien> or
<Urlaub> would help. :-))
> Willem
George