>So we have Western Rumanian nea < nÄvem replaced in the east
>by omÄt and zÄpada of Slavonic origin;
It hasn't been replaced, but these were added to it, and, in time,
zäpada has gotten a higher frequency. Today, they possess different
"values" as far as ... style is concerned: in meteo newscasts,
the latter is to be used.
>we have pÄcurar < pecorarius replaced by cioban of Turkish origin
Actually, päcurar has never been replaced (it is still known by
everybody throughout Romania way into Ukraine); only that cioban
has a higher frequency esp. in south and eastern regions of
Romanian. South Balkan Romanian, called Aromanian (or Macedonian-Romanian) also uses päcurar, namely the variant picurar. (However,
Latin pecorem hasn't been preserved; instead ovem > oaie ['wa-je:].
In fact, the Romanian exiled linguist Grigore NandriS referred
to the usage & frequency of these words.
>we have in the west:
>pedestru "wretched poor" (cf. Fr. pietre)
(?!) Pedestru simply means "zu Fuss, and "not mounted". Pedestrime
"infantry".
>sÄmÅ£ < sancti "40 martyrs ";
>încheieturÄ, nodeu, "ankle" compared with the Slavonic gleznÄ
>in the east;
Hm, încheieturÄ is the pan-Romanian word for "joint" (any joint,
articulation + condylus).
>porumb "dove": hulub
In today's Romanian (except for some regional, village usage)
the diminutival variant (suffixed with -ellu-) is used for "dove":
porumbel. Since porumb is chiefly used for "maize, corn". Hulub
is used almost only in Moldavia.
>sudoare "sweat" : nÄduÅeala,
NÄduÅealÄ is only a synonym (quite old-fashioned today). Sudoare
is pan-Romanian (along with its verb, a asuda), interchangeable
with transpiraÅ£ie (a transpira) "perspiration". (NB: (ver)schweiÃen
= a suda (without the a- prefix); SchweiÃer/welder = sudor.)
>This tendency to innovate affects not only the loan-words, but also
>the Latin vocabulary. A study of the geographical areas of
>femeie - muiere "woman", "wife"
Hm, not quite: both of them are pan-Romanian; chronologically,
femeie (variants: fimeie, fumeie) is younger; in older Romanian
(few centuries ago, the word also meant "family"). Today, femeie
is standard in the standard language, where muiere is colloquial,
popular and regional and is, stylistically seen, not interchange-
able with femeie.
>burtÄ - pântece "belly" shows clearly that Transylvania was the
>centre of linguistic expansion.22
The origin of burtä is unclear/unknown. OTOH, the Latin pântece,
today, is more used outside of Transylvania; and burta has a way
higher frequency in pan-Romanian today. (AFAIK, today, pântec(e)'s
highest frequency is in Moldavia, i.e. both west and east of
the river Pruth.)
> Now this evident conservatism of the western peripheral area would not be very eloquent in itself if it were not supported also by other circumstances.
Nandri$ is right AFA the spread of Romanian in a direction SW->NE
is of concern. But his examples are not the best, and not those
used to illustrate the conservatism of some Romance vocabulary
in the West as compared with South-Eastern regions. For example,
a better example would be the word ai [aj] "garlic", for which
outside Transylvania one invented usturoi (from the property of
being "sharp"), which overwhelmed ai. Or, poftim "please; please?",
which is pan-Romanian and the vanishing "placä; placä?" still
used by rural population in Western Transylvania as well as in
Eastern Hungary. Or the almost vanished arinä for "sand", which
has almost completely been replaced by nisip. Or acerä which has
been completely replaced by pajurä and by vultur (in Romanian,
vultur has lost the meaning "vulture": it means "eagle"). Or,
in Moldavia, esp. Northern Moldavia, the word cinä (supper, dinner)
is still today unusual, not used, at the countryside, whereas
in central, Western and South-Western areas it is the standard
word. But there are, OTOH, other series of Romance words that
were preserved outside of the Carpathian arch, and to a lesser
extent in the "inner" territories (from where in some medieval
as well as in the 17th-18th-19th centuries lots of Romanians
emigrated and settled for good areas in Walachia and Moldavia,
a thing that unfortunately has been neglected a bit by many
scholars - even by Nandri$, a Moldavian from Bucovina, who had
good knowledge of his roots, that had been in... Transylvania.)
>The oldest toponymic formations in -eÅti cover almost the same area
-eshti is the mere plural of -esc, which is an almost 100%
equivalent of -esque (e.g. picturesque, kafkaesque), and seems
to be a continuation of -isk- (either from Latin, or from another
PIE "substrate"). Hence the antroponymic suffix -escu (masculine;
its feminine counterpart is -easca), which plays the role of
-son, -sen, Mac, -ov, -ev & the like in other languages. The
toponymic -e$ti is a further semantic development. Albanian has
a parallel occurrence -isht; so that Bucure$ti has a counterpart
in Albania, called Bukurisht. (Not to be mixed up with the slavic
-i$te, which is something else.)
>and archaeology shows that that area was the most densely colonised
>by the Romans, and that Roman life did not cease there altogether
>after the 3rd century.
He refers here to Transylvania and Banat. But Roman and Dacian,
Moesian, Thracian populations still existed *within the Roman
Empire* some centuries on, namely South of the Danube, in the
provinces Moesia Inferior, Dacia mediterranea, Dacia ripensis,
Moesia Superior, Dardania, incl. in cities such as Serdica,
Naissus, Sirmium etc.
>An historical map shows most of the municipia, castra, castella,
>and other Roman settlements concentrated in the western region
>of the Rumania of today, i.e. of Dacia Traiana. Inscriptions
>and vases of the 4th century have been unearthed by recent >excavations in the same region.23
And after that, archaeological evidence became scarce until
it kept mum. (And even free "barbarians" such as Costobocae,
Carpi also took refuge in the Roman empire because of the
waves of newcomers from "Russia"...)
>Many of the above-mentioned Latin elements do not exist in
>the Rumanian dialects south of the Danube
(This kind of simple utterance distorts, and prompts one
to thing of wrong conclusions.)
Here, we oughta make clear that he means the other Romanian
dialects, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian.
Which have been spoken in remoter areas. Immediately South
of the Danube (at least 100-150 km to the South, virtually
up to the Balkan range) the Romanian population has spoken
the same Romanian language (dialect) as North of the Danube
(which has been nicknamed by linguists "Daco-Romanian". The
gap between "Daco-Romanian" and the other three tiny
dialects is aprox. as big as between the Vienna-Munich
Bavarian and the Schleswig and Friesland Low German or
as betw. Czech and Slovakian, or as between Slovenian and
Serbo-Croatian.
The 2nd aspect: the other three peninsula dialects
still have most of the same Romance vocabulary, but they
also have some Latin vocabulary that in "Daco-Romanian"
has vanished for good. E.g. they have aratru "plow", for
which Northern Romanian has plug; cämpänile for which
Romania's and RepMoldova's Romanian has clopote; ma (as in
Italian) which in "Dacoromanian" has disappeared, with the
exception of the idiomatic phrase in Oltenia "ma chea?"
(also spelled "ma chia?") for which standard Romanian has
the synonym "oare?" (meaning "really? indeed? I doubt that!")
and therefore they could not have been brought from south of the Danube if we assume that the whole Roman element left Dacia in a.d. 271 with Aurelian's official evacuation.
This is a non-sequitur discussion, since he very well knew
(as have done all scholars): in fact, the "cradle" of the
Romance population called "Rumanians" or "Vlachs" was a much
vaster territory and the one that stayed Roman Empire province
for another 4 centuries played a far greater role (esp. what's
today's Northern Bulgaria and Serbia, as well as Dalmatia and
Pannonia. Esp. in the Serbian-Bulgarian area called Timoc
(Timacus). In the South up to approx. the isoglosses lines
drawn/proposed by Skok and Jir^ec^ek. That was the area of the
"Romanization". (OTOH, officially, the whole Eastern Roman
Empire, until Constantinople's conquest by Mehmet II in 1453
was ... "Romania"! The "Byzantine Empire" is a mere scholar
invention by westerners in the 18th (!) century. Although
Greek since the 7th century, it preserved this name, the Greek
upper crust was called "Romaioi", and Turks (have) called the
country Rumeli.)
>The south and the north of the Danube are therefore to be regarded
>as the cradle of the Rumanian language.
Yeah, from the Skok-Jirecek lines virtually up to the Northern
Carpathians, from the Dalmatian shores to the shores of the
Black Sea; and perhaps along the main "autobahn" of the time,
Via Egnantia, which played a great role in Roman logistics
during the ages of the Roman Empire. (Note that after Constantine
I, Constantinople was the center of the Roman world, and not
Rome. Note that the Romanian language, in all its 4 dialects,
has the word biserica for "church" (both as "temple" and as
"institution") as a memory of the imperial basilicae of the
Constantine & al.'s times, whereas the Romanian language hasn't
preserved any derivate of the ecclesia, which was after a
while the pan-European term (even in Albanian: kieshë).
>21 G. I. BrÄtianu, Une enigme et un miracle historique: le
>peuple roumain, Bucarest, 1937;
>Walter von Wartburg, Les origines des peuples romans, Paris,
>1941;
>A. Dami, "Théorie de la continuité daco-roumaine"
This secondary literature around 1940 was caused by the
territorial dispute between Hungary and Romania, and was
temporary "solved" by Hitler and Mussolini in 1940: the
so-called "Vienna arbitrage" (a dictate), when Romania had
to cease the half of Transylvania, which became until 1944
a province of Hungary. The Hungarian historiography says
Romanians appeared North of the Danube only after 1200, esp.
after the Mongolian invasion in 1241. And that prior to 1050
there was no Vlach/Romanian presence north of the Danube
whatsoever.
>Atlasul Linguistic Roman (published under the direction of Sextil
>PuÅcariu by Sever Pop), I, 1938, especially maps 272 and 232, and
>Micul Atlas Linguistic Român, I, maps 380 and 314;
>S. Pop, in Bulletin Linguistique, X, Bucarest, 1942, pp. 5-6,
>discusses the implications of these innovations. A survey of Rumanian
>dialects has been published by
>G. Weigand: Linguistischer Atlas des dacorumanischen Sprachgebietes,
>Leipzig, 1909.
>23 S. Puscariu, Die rum. Spr., p. 433, sq.;
>G. I. BrÄtianu, Les origines du peuple roumain:
>les donnies archeologiques, Bucarest, 1939.'
I'm missing Ernst Gamillscheg's essay on the origin of the Romanian
language, based on the finds contained in the "atlasul
linguistic român" (supervised by the Rum. linguist Sextil
Pu$cariu), 1941. With a theory referring to "nucleuses" of
Protoromanian spoken in regions of Banat and Apuseni Mountains,
i.e. in SW of today's Romanian territory.
>Hans Kuhn sees -st as a typical NWBlock, thus also Venetic, suffix.
-e$ti has nothing to do with it (at least directly).
>Hm. Is that the reality behind the German taunt:
>'Rumäne, das ist keine Nationalität, das ist ein Beruf'?
This is a mere (anti-Romanian) joke of modern times. (I don't
think it is older than 100-150 years.)
>cf the finds of hoards of real and fake Roman coins there
That was a "custom". Populations there had done it earlier
as well, imitating Greek coins (esp. those in the colonies
at the Black Sea).
>Those collaborating Thracians
There is no need to think of "collaboration": all those
populations hat... slaves, and thus took part in the
commercial exchanges pertaining to the ... slave markets.
Slave sales and procurements didn't occur only in the
aftermath of wars (prisoners).
>would have communicated with the Romans in a
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin
>Latin which then became a
Latin was in those (many!) centuries what is English today.
And *within* the Roman Empire of course did everybody speak
at least subdialects/sociolects of "latina vulgata".
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language
>and that language was Old Romanian.
Romanian had the fate of any of the rest of the Romance
languages. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumansch-
Grischun etc. are based on the same kind of "Pidgin Latin",
i.e. on simplifications, lexical & semantic transformations,
innovations as well as on massive borrowing of foreign
vocabulary (Germanic in the West, Slavic in the East).
>We are talking mid - 1st century BCE here
In that century, not even the first group to have been
Romanized, the Illyrians, were Romanized linguistically,
let alone the entire Thracoid mass of peoples (among which
the so-called Dacians, Getae, Moessi were dialects speaking
groups, perhaps forming sort of a linguistic "continuum" to
the East, to the Scythian and Baltic populations, and to
Phrygians in Anatolia).
>thus long before http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan
100-150 years isn't long.
>1) some of the evidence used by some Romanian linguist to
>prove that Old Romanian / Dacian was a language closely
>related to Latin
This is sort of an "urban legend" (propagated esp. by a man
called Nicolae Densusianu over 100 years ago). Those substrate
dialects/languages spoken in South-East Europe in the vicinity
of the Roman Empire and of Greece weren't closer to them than
were Balto-Slavic, Scytho-Iranian and Armenian. One of the
best witneys was the renowned poet Publius Ovidius Naso, who
was exiled for many years among Getae, in a port at the Black
Sea. He learnt their language, even wrote in that language, but
unfortunately everything got lost. Yet his account that the
language was "coarse" and difficult has been preserved. If
it had been so close to Latin (sort of a "Proto-Latin" idiom),
methinks Ovidius would have jubilated. And many other Latin
scholars and writers would have written about the linguistic
kinship.
>3) the fact that Romanians didn't Slavicize in the 6th and 7th >century like everyone else (except the Albanians)
What is that "like everyone else"? Greek didn't Slavicize either.
For a quite long time, the Avar and Bulgar-Onogur "upper crust"
didn't Slavicize either. (Some Thracian even spoke their idiom
as late as in the 6th or 7th century - at least according to
some Christian, monasterial, sources.)
>in the Balkans (since they could not identify with the
>Slav / slave cause)
Keep in mind that, linguistically, the peoples of the "substrate"
(chiefly of the Thracian kind) were much closer to Protoslavs
as well to their Scythian (Alan) "Genossen" with whom they had
built "Verbände" of immigrants. Some toponyms and hydronyms
sound so much "Slavic" that, weren't Ptolemy's Geographia, one
would've concluded forever that those names had been Protoslavic.
(E.g. Berzobis > Bârzava, Dierna & Lerna > Äerna in Banat.)
> This situation would have been intolerable to the then free Dacians, thus
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burebista
The phrase "free Dacian" is to be used only in the contest of
later time periods, namely when some territories north of the
Danube were Roman provinces (Banat, Transylvania, Oltenia),
after Trajan's conquest (betw. 106-271). When Dacian living
outside those provinces were ... free and some times dealt with
invasions of those provinces. After Burebista's death, until
Trajan's conquest, there's a time gap of roughly 150 years. In
that time, all Dacians were free (except for those regions
inhabited by Dacians South of the Danube that were already
included in the Roman state territory).
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaeneus
>in order to get a supply of slaves to sell to the Romans
So, you see, peoples in those ancient times had no problem
selling their own slaves to others ("international markets").
>(and these Dacians, whose language, Dacian, was similar to
>Thracian, later, having fled south of the River, became the
>Albanians).
No need for them to be from northern Dacian areas: in the
southern territories (in Dardania, the 2 Moesias,
the 2 southern Dacias etc.) there were enough Dacians.
On top of that, the rest of the territories (called by
the Greek Thracia) also could provide such a population.
But of course, due to the Germanic and Hunic invasions,
various groups of Thracoid, Carpoid, Costobocoid
populations moved into the remnant Roman empire. Later on,
even contingents of "Huns" (e.g. Huni fossatisi), Gepids
et al. "Barbarians" moved thither (even in Italy proper,
where traces can be seen in some kind of domestic animals,
such as the Maremmana shepherd dogs and long-horned cattle
/"Podolia cattle"/ etc.).
George