Community hub
0 subscribers7 pages, 0 posts
Recent from talks
All channels
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Contribute something
Welcome to the community hub built to collect knowledge and have discussions related to Common Romanian.
Nothing was collected or created yet.
Common Romanian
View on Wikipediafrom Wikipedia
| Common Romanian | |
|---|---|
| Proto-Romanian | |
| Reconstruction of | Eastern Romance languages |
| Region | Balkans and part of Eastern Europe |
| Era | c. 6th or 7th – 10th or 11th centuries |
Reconstructed ancestors | |
| History of Romania |
|---|
 |
 Romania portal |
Common Romanian (Romanian: română comună), also known as Ancient Romanian (străromână), or Proto-Romanian (protoromână), is a comparatively reconstructed Romance language which evolved from Vulgar Latin and was spoken by the ancestors of today's Romanians, Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Istro-Romanians and related Balkan Latin peoples (Vlachs) during the 6th and 7th centuries CE[1] and the 10th or 11th centuries AD.[2] The Romanian language, the Aromanian language, the Megleno-Romanian language, and the Istro-Romanian language all share language innovations rooted in Vulgar Latin, and as a group they are all distinct from the other Romance languages.[3]
History
[edit]
The Roman occupation led to a Thraco-Roman syncretism, and similar to the case of other conquered civilisations (see, for example, how Gallo-Roman culture developed in Roman Gaul) led to the Latinization of many Thracian tribes which were on the edge of the sphere of Latin influence, eventually resulting in the possible extinction of the Daco-Thracian language, but traces of it are still preserved in the Eastern Romance substratum. From the 2nd century AD, the Latin spoken in the Danubian provinces starts to display its own distinctive features, separate from the rest of the Romance languages, including those of the western Balkans (Dalmatian).[4] The Thraco-Roman period of the language is usually delimited between the 2nd century (or earlier via cultural influence and economic ties) and the 6th or the 7th century.[5] It is divided, in turn, into two periods, with the division falling roughly in the 3rd to 4th century. The Romanian Academy considers the 5th century as the latest time that the differences between Balkan Latin and western Latin could have appeared,[6] and that between the 5th and 8th centuries, the new language, Romanian, switched from Latin speech, to a vernacular Romance idiom, called Română comună.[7][8] The nature of the contact between Latin and the substrate language(s) is considered to be similar to the contact with local languages in other parts incorporated in the Roman Empire and the number of lexical and morpho-syntactic elements retained from the substrate is relatively small despite some ongoing contact with languages closely related to the original substrate, Albanian for example.[9]
In the ninth century, Proto-Romanian already had a structure very distinct from the other Romance languages, with major differences in grammar, morphology and phonology and already was a member of the Balkan language area. It already contained around a hundred loans from Slavic languages, including words such as trup (body, flesh),[10] as well as some Greek language loans via Vulgar Latin, but no Hungarian and Turkish words, as these peoples had yet to arrive in the region.
In the tenth century or some earlier time, Common Romanian split into two geographically separated groups. One was in the northern part of the Balkan peninsula and the other one was in the south of the peninsula where the Aromanian branch of Common Romanian presumably was spoken.[11] This is sometimes considered the upper end of the language, leading into the separate Eastern Romance languages period. A different view holds that Common Romanian, despite the early split of Aromanian, continued to exist until the thirteenth or fourteenth century when all the southern dialects became distinct from the northern one.[12]
According to the theory, it evolved into the following modern languages and their dialects:[1][13]
- Romanian language (sometimes called Daco-Romanian to distinguish it from the rest of the Eastern Romance languages)
- Aromanian (sometimes called Macedo-Romanian)
- Megleno-Romanian (also sometimes called Macedo-Romanian)
- Istro-Romanian
Early attestation
[edit] | It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled Torna, torna, fratre. (Discuss) (December 2022) |
Referring to this time period, of great debate and interest is the so-called Torna, Torna Fratre episode. In Theophylactus Simocatta Histories, (c. 630), the author mentions the words τóρνα, τóρνα. The context of this mention is a Byzantine expedition during Maurice's Balkan campaigns in 587, led by general Comentiolus, in the Haemus, against the Avars. The success of the campaign was compromised by an incident during a night march:
a beast of burden had shucked off his load. It happened as his master was marching in front of him. But the ones who were coming from behind and saw the animal dragging his burden after him, had shouted to the master to turn around and straighten the burden. Well, this event was the reason for a great agitation in the army, and started a flight to the rear, because the shout was known to the crowd: the same words were also a signal, and it seemed to mean "run", as if the enemies had appeared nearby more rapidly than could be imagined. There was a great turmoil in the host, and a lot of noise; all were shouting loudly and goading each other to turn back, calling with great unrest in the language of the country "torna, torna", as a battle had suddenly started in the middle of the night.[14]
Nearly two centuries after Theophylactus, the same episode is retold by another Byzantine chronicler, Theophanes Confessor, in his Chronographia (c. 810–814). He mentions the words τόρνα, τόρνα, φράτρε [torna, torna fratre; "turn, turn brother"]:
A beast of burden had thrown off his load, and somebody yelled to his master to reset it, saying in the language of their parents/of the land: "torna, torna, fratre". The master of the animal didn't hear the shout, but the people heard him, and believing that they are attacked by the enemy, started running, shouting loudly: "torna, torna".[15]
The first to identify the excerpts as examples of early Romanian was Johann Thunmann in 1774.[16] Since then, a debate among scholars had been going on to identify whether the language in question is a sample of early Romanian,[17] or just a Byzantine command[18] (of Latin origin, as it appears as such–torna–in Emperors Mauricius Strategikon), and with fratre used as a colloquial form of address between the Byzantine soldiers.[19] The main debate revolved around the expressions ἐπιχώριoς γλῶσσα (epichorios glossa – Theopylactus) and πάτριoς φωνή (pátrios foní – Theophanes), and what they actually meant.
An important contribution to the debate was Nicolae Iorga's first noticing in 1905 of the duality of the term torna in Theophylactus text: the shouting to get the attention of the master of the animal (in the language of the country), and the misunderstanding of this by the bulk of the army as a military command (due to the resemblance with the Latin military command).[20] Iorga considers the army to have been composed of both auxiliary (τολδον) Romanised Thracians—speaking ἐπιχωρίᾳ τε γλώττῃ (the "language of the country"/"language of their parents/of the natives") —and of Byzantines (a mélange of ethnicities using Byzantine words of Latin origin as official command terms, as attested in the Strategikon).[21]
This view was later supported by the Greek historian A. Keramopoulos (1939),[22] as well as by Alexandru Philippide (1925), who considered that the word torna should not be understood as a solely military command term, because it was, as supported by chronicles, a word "of the country",[23] as by the year 600, the bulk of the Byzantine army was raised from barbarian mercenaries and the Romanic population of the Balkan Peninsula.[24]
Starting from the second half of the 20th century, many Romanian scholars consider it a sample of early Romanian language, a view with supporters such as Al. Rosetti (1960),[25] Petre Ș. Năsturel (1956)[26] and I. Glodariu (1964).[27]
In regards to the Latin term torna (an imperative form of the verb torno), in modern Romanian, the corresponding or descendant term toarnă now means "pour" (a conjugated form of the verb turna – "to pour"[28]). However, in older or early Romanian, the verb also had the sense of "to return or come back", and this sense is also still preserved in the modern Aromanian verb tornu[29][30] and in some derived words in modern Romanian (for example: înturna "return, turn", răsturna "turn over, knock down")[31][32]
Development
[edit]From Latin
[edit]
The comparative analysis of Romance languages shows that certain changes that occurred from Latin to Common Romanian are particular to it or shared only with a limited number of other Romance languages. Some of these changes are:
- reorganization of the Latin vowel system - Common Romanian followed a mixed scheme, with the back vowels o, u following the Sardinian scheme but the front vowels e, i following the Western Romance scheme. This produces a six-vowel system (contrast the Sardinian five-vowel system and Western Romance seven-vowel system).
- resistance to palatalization:[33]
- the palatalization of /tj kj/, which appeared as early as the 2nd–3rd centuries AD, resulted in /ttj/ or /tj/ in intervocalic position and as /tj/ in word-initial position or after a consonant, without giving rise to a new phoneme.
- the palatalization before a front vowel (/k ɡ/ before /i e ɛ/), dated around the fifth century in general, did not occur around this time in Common Romanian (and Dalmatian), and took place after the delabialization of /kw/ /ɡw/ ([*sandʒe] < SANGUEM), the degemination of nn, ll, rr, and the diphthongization of Proto-Romance /ɛ/ to [jɛ].
- the surviving au diphthong was retained and later underwent diaeresis.
- resistance to syncope - Common Romanian kept all the syllables from the Latin word.[34]
- absence of lenition - it retained the intervocalic stops intact. It also showed greater conservatism toward /ɡ/ deletion.[35]
Common features to the four languages
[edit]Collectively described as languages of the Eastern Romance subgroup from a synchronic, contemporary perspective[36] Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian are descendants of the same proto-language from a historical, diachronic point of view.[11][3]
Of the features that are found in all four dialects, inherited from Latin or subsequently developed, of particular importance are:[37]
- appearance of the mid central vowel /ə/ (written as "ă" in standardized Romanian);
- growth of the plural inflectional ending -uri for the neuter gender;
- analytic present conditional (ex: Daco-Romanian aș cânta);
- analytic future with an auxiliary derived from Latin volo (ex: Aromanian va s-cãntu);
- enclisis of the definite article (ex. Istro-Romanian câre – cârele);
- nominal declension with two case forms in the singular feminine.
Comparatively, the dialects show a large number of loanwords from Slavic languages, including loanwords from Slavic languages spoken before the 9th century, at the stage before Aromanian, Daco-Romanian, and Megleno-Romanian separated.[38] Of these words a few examples are:[11][39][40]
- *bōrzdà (Aromanian: brazdã, Daco-Romanian: brazdă, Istro-Romanian: bråzda, Megleno-Romanian: brazdă);
- *nevěsta (Aromanian: niveastã, Daco-Romanian: nevastă, Istro-Romanian: nevęstę, Megleno-Romanian: niveastă);
- *sìto (Aromanian: sitã, Daco-Romanian: sită, Istro-Romanian: sitę, Megleno-Romanian: sită);
- *slàbъ (Aromanian: s(c)lab, Daco-Romanian: slab, Istro-Romanian: slåb, Megleno-Romanian: slab).
Substrate words are preserved at different levels in the four dialects. Daco-Romanian has 89, Aromanian 66. Megleno-Romanian 48, and Istro-Romanian 25.[41]
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ a b Ciobanu, Alina Maria; Dinu, Liviu P. (2016). "A computational perspective on the Romanian dialects" (PDF). Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'16): 3281–3285.
- ^ Sala, Marius (2010). "Romanian" (PDF). Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire. 88 (3): 841–872. doi:10.3406/rbph.2010.7806.[permanent dead link]
- ^ a b Sala, Marius (2012). De la Latină la Română] [From Latin to Romanian]. Editura Pro Universitaria. p. 33. ISBN 978-606-647-435-1.
- ^ Al. Rosetti: "Istoria limbii române" ("History of the Romanian Language"), Bucharest, 1986
- ^ Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă ("Dictionary of the Romanian Language, new series"), Academia Română, responsible editors: Iorgu Iordan, Alexandru Graur, Ion Coteanu, Bucharest, 1983;
- ^ "Istoria limbii române" ("History of the Romanian Language"), II, Academia Română, Bucharest, 1969;
- ^ I. Fischer, "Latina dunăreană" ("Danubian Latin"), Bucharest, 1985.
- ^ A. B. Černjak "Vizantijskie svidetel'stva o romanskom (romanizirovannom) naselenii Balkan V–VII vv; "Vizantijskij vremennik", LIII, Moskva, 1992
- ^ Schulte, Kim (2009). "Loanwords in Romanian". In Haspelmath, Martin; Tadmor, Uri (eds.). Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. p. 234. ISBN 978-3-11-021843-5.
- ^ Brâncuș, Grigore (2005). Introducere în istoria limbii române] [Introduction to the History of Romanian Language]. Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine. p. 62. ISBN 973-725-219-5.
- ^ a b c Vrabie, Emil (2000). An English-Aromanian (Macedo-Romanian) Dictionary. Romance Monographs. p. 21. ISBN 1-889441-06-6.
- ^ Iliescu, Maria (2021-05-26), "History of the Romanian Lexicon", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.471, ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5, retrieved 2024-04-02
- ^ Dindelegan, Gabriela Pană; Maiden, Martin, eds. (2013). The Grammar of Romanian. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-964492-6.
- ^ Theophylacti Simocattae Historiae, II, 15, 6–9, ed. De Boor, Leipzig, 1887; cf. FHDR 1970
- ^ Theophanis Chronographia, I, Anno 6079 (587), 14–19, ed. De Boor, Leipzig, 1883; cf. FHDR 1970: 604.
- ^ Johann Thunmann: "Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der östlichen europäischen Völker" ("Investigations into the histories of eastern European peoples"), 1. Theil, Leipzig, 1774, p. 169–366.: "Gegen das Ende des sechsten Jahrhunderts sprach man schon in Thracien Wlachisch" ("Towards the end of the sixth century, someone already spoke in Tracian Vlachish")
- ^ This view, which suggested that the expression should be taken as such: the language of the country and the language of their fathers/of the natives, thus being a sample of Romanian was supported by historians and philologists such as F. J. Sulzer in "Geschichte des transalpinischen Daciens" ("History of the Transalpine Dacians"), II, Vienna, 1781; G. Șincai in "Hronica românilor și a mai multor neamuri" ("Chronicle of the Romanians and of many more peoples", I, Iași, 1853; C.Tagliavini in "Le origini delle lingue neolatine" ("The origins of the Neo-Latin languages"), Bologna, 1952; W. Tomaschek in "Über Brumalia und Rosalia" ("Of Brumalia and Rosalia", Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, LX, Viena, 1869; R. Roesler in "Romänische Studien" ("Romanian Studies"), Leipzig, 1871; Al. Rosetti in "Istoria limbii române" ("History of the Romanian Language", Bucharest, 1986; D. Russo in "Elenismul în România" ("Hellenism in Romania"), Bucharest, 1912.; B. P. Hasdeu in "Strat și substrat. Genealogia popoarelor balcanice" ("Stratum and Substratum: Genealogy of the Balkan Peoples"), Analele Academiei Române, Memoriile secțiunii literare, XIV, Bucharest, 1892; A. D. Xenopol in "Une énigme historique. Les Roumains au Moyen Âge" ("An historic enigma: the Romanians of the Middle Ages"), Paris, 1885 and "Istoria românilor" ("History of the Romanians"), I, Iași, 1888; H. Zilliacus in "Zum Kampf der Weltsprachen im oströmischen Reich" ("To the struggle of world languages in the Eastern Roman Empire"), Helsinki, 1935; R. Vulpe in "Histoire ancienne de la Dobroudja" ("Ancient history of Dobrugea"), Bucharest, 1938; C. Popa-Lisseanu in "Limba română în izvoarele istorice medievale" ("The Romanian language in the sources of medieval history"), Analele Academiei Române. Memoriile secțiunii literare, 3rd series, IX, 1940. Lot 1946; G. I. Brătianu in "Une énigme et un miracle historique: le peuple roumain" ("An enigma and an historic miracle: the Romanian people"), Bucharest, 1942; etc.
- ^ This view had proponents such as J. L. Pić in "Über die Abstammung den Rumänen" ("On the descent of the Romanians"), Leipzig, 1880; J. Jung in "Die romanischen Landschaften des römischen Reiches" ("Romanian landscapes of the Roman Empire"), Innsbruck, 1881; A. Budinszky in "Die Ausbreitung der lateinischen Sprache über Italien und Provinzen des Römischen Reiches" ("The propagation of the Latin language in Italy and the provinces of the Roman Empire"), Berlin, 1881; D. Onciul: "Teoria lui Roesler" ("Rosler's Theory") in "Convorbiri literare", XIX, Bucharest, 1885; C. Jireček in "Geschichte der Bulgaren" ("History of the Bulgarians"), Prague, 1876; Ovide Densusianu: "Histoire de la langue roumaine" ("History of the Romanian language"), I, Paris, 1901; P. Mutafčief: "Bulgares et Roumains dans l'histoire des pays danubiens" ("Bulgarians and Romanians in the history of the Danubian lands"), Sofia, 1932; F. Lot: "La langue de commandement dans les armées romaines et le cri de guerre français au Moyen Âge" ("The language of command in the Romanian armies and the French war cry in the Middle Ages") in volume "Mémoires dédiés à la mémoire de Félix Grat" ("Memoirs dedicated to the memory of Félix Grat"), I, Paris, 1946;
- ^ Idea supported by Franz Dölger in "Die „Familie" der Könige im Mittelalter" ("The 'family' of the king in the Middle Ages"), „Historisches Jahrbuch" ("Historical Yearbook"), 1940, p. 397–420; and M. Gyóni in "Az állitólagos legrégibb román nyelvemlék (= "Das angeblich älteste rumänische Sprachdenkmal", "The allegedly oldest spoken evidence of the Romanian language")", „Egyetemes Philologiai Közlöny (Archivum Philologicum)", LXVI, 1942, p. 1–11
- ^ Nicolae Iorga, Istoria românilor ("History of the Romanians"), II, Bucharest, 1936, p. 249.
- ^ "Într-o regiune foarte aproape de Haemus, unde se găsesc nume romanice precum Kalvumuntis (calvos montes), unul dintre soldații retrași din cel mai apropiat ținut primejduit strigă «în limba locului» (ἐπιχωρίᾳ τε γλώττῃ) unui camarad care-și pierduse bagajul «retorna» sau «torna, fratre»; datorită asemănării cu unul din termenii latinești obișnuiți de comandă, strigătul e înțeles greșit și oastea, de teama unui dușman ivit pe neașteptate, se risipește prin văi". ("In a region very close to Haemus, where one finds Romanic names such as Kalvumuntis (calvos montes), one of the soldiers retreated from the nearest endangered land shouts 'in the local language' (ἐπιχωρίᾳ τε γλώττῃ) to a comrade who had lost his baggage retorna or torna, fratre ("turn back" or "turn, brother"); given the similarity to one of the customary Latin terms of command, the shout is misunderstood and the host, fearing that an enemy had unexpectedly appeared, disperses through the haze." Nicolae Iorga, Istoria românilor ("History of the Romanians"), II, Bucharest, 1936.
- ^ A. Keramopoullos (A. Κεραμóπουλλου): "Τ ε ναι ο Kουτσóβλαχ" ("Who are the Aromanians"), Athens, 1939: "moreover, the term fratre, betraying the familiarity of the comrades, dismissed the possibility of a military term"
- ^ Al. Philippide, Originea românilor ("Origin of the Romanians"), I, Iași, 1925: „Armata, dacă a înțeles rău cuvântul torna, ca și cum ar fi fost vorba că trebuie să se întoarcă cineva să fugă, l-a înțeles ca un cuvânt din limba țării, din limba locului, căci doar Theophylactos spune lămurit că «toți strigau cât îi ținea gura și se îndemnau unul pe altul să se întoarcă, răcnind cu mare tulburare în limba țării: retorna»" ("The army, if it understood badly the word torna, which also could have been the word that turned back someone who ran away, understood it as a word of the language of the country, of the language of the place, because only Theophylactos says clearly that 'everyone shouted it from mouth to mouth the gave one another the impetus to turn around, yelling with great concern in the language of the country: turn back'")
- ^ „Dar se pare că Jireček n-a cetit pagina întreagă a descripției din Theophylactos și Theophanes. Acolo se vede lămurit că n-avem a face cu un termin de comandă, căci un soldat s-a adresat unui camarad al său cu vorbele retorna ori torna, torna, fratre, pentru a-l face atent asupra faptului că s-a deranjat sarcina de pe spatele unui animal" ("But it seems that Jireček hadn't read the whole page of description by Theophylactos and Theophanes." There one sees clearly that they it wasn't made as a term of command, because a soldier addressed a comrade of his with the words "turn back" or "turn, turn, brother" to draw his attention to the fact that the burden was disturbed on the back of an animal") [...] "Grosul armatelor bizantine era format din barbari mercenari și din populația romanică a Peninsulei Balcanice" ("The bulk of the Byzantine army was formed of mercenary barbarians and of the Romanic population of the Balkan Peninsula") [...] „armata despre care se vorbește în aceste pasaje [din Theophylactus și Theophanes] opera în părțile de răsărit ale muntelui Haemus pe teritoriu thrac romanizat" ("The army about which they are speaking in these passages [of Theophylactus and Theophanes] was raised in part in the Haemus mountains in the Romanized Thracian territory.")[...] „Ca să ne rezumăm părerea, cuvântul spus catârgiului era un termen viu, din graiul însoțitorilor lui, sunând aproape la fel cu cuvântul torna din terminologia de comandă a armatei bizantine" ("To sum up the opinion, the word spoken to the mule driver was a live term, from the dialect [here and below, we render grai as "dialect"; the term falls between "accent" and "dialect" – ed.] of their guide, being almost the same as the word torna from the terminology of command of the Byzantine army.") „nimic nu este mai natural decât a conchide, cum au făcut toți înainte de Jireček, că vorbele torna, retorna, fratre sunt cuvinte românești din veacul al șaselea" ("Nothing is more natural than to conclude, as did everyone since Jireček, that the words torna, retorna, fratre are Romanian words from the 6th century.") [...] „Preciziunea povestirii lui Teofilact nu a fost până acum luată în seamă așa cum trebuie. Totuși reiese clar din aceste rânduri: 1) că cuvântul întrebuințat de însoțitorii stăpânului catârului nu era chiar același cu cuvântul pe care oștenii și-au închipuit că-l aud și 2) că, pe când în gura tovarășilor lui cuvântul însemna doar «întoarce-te», ε ς τo πίσω τραπέσθαι, așa cum susțin cu bună dreptate mai toți cercetătorii români, în schimb cuvântul așa cum l-au înțeles ostașii însemna «înapoi, la stânga împrejur», precum și-au dat seama tot cu bună dreptate Jireček și alți învățați, fiind, prin urmare, după chiar mărturia Strategikon-ului așa-zis al împăratului Mauriciu, un cuvânt din graiul oștirilor bizantine" ("The precision of Theophylactus' story has still not been given the account it deserves. Everything follows clearly from these lines: 1) that the word employed the guides of the master of the mules was not even the same as the word the soldiers thought they heard and 2) that, although in the mouth of their comrade the word meant merely "turn around, ε ς τo πίσω τραπέσθαι, just as all the Romanian researchers still sustain, instead the word as understood by the soldiers meant "turn back, left about!", according to what Jireček and other scholars have correctly understood, being, through its consequences, after even the witness of the Strategikon so in this manner by the emperor Maurice, a word in the dialect of the Byzantine army.")
- ^ Al. Rosetti, "Despre torna, torna, fratre" ("About torna, torna, fratre"), Bucharest, 1960, p. 467–468.: „Așadar, termenii de mai sus aparțineau limbii populației romanizate, adică limbii române în devenire, după cum au susținut mai demult unii cercetători și, printre ei, A. Philippide, care a dat traducerea românească a pasajelor respective, însoțită de un comentariu convingător. Termenii coincid cu termenii omonimi sau foarte apropiați din limba latină, și de aceea ei au provocat panică în împrejurarea amintită." ("Thus, the terms from above belong to the language of the romanized population, that is, the Romanian language in the process of development, as has long been sustained by some scholars and, among them, A. Philippide, who gave the Romanian translation to the respective passages, guided by a convincing commentary. The terms coincide with homonymic terms or very close from the Latin language, and from that caused panic in those nearby who heard it.")
- ^ Petre Ș. Năsturel, "Quelques mots de plus à propos de «torna, torna» de Théophylacte et de «torna, torna, fratre» de Théophane" ("Those words more appropriate than Theophylactus' torna, torna and Theophanus' torna, torna, fratre"), in Byzantinobulgarica, II, Sofia, 1966: Petre Ș. Năsturel "Torna, torna, fratre. O problemă de istorie și de lingvistică" ("Torna, torna, fratre: a problem in the history of linguistics") in Studii de cercetări și istorie veche, VII, Bucharest, 1956: "era un cuvânt viu din graiul populației romanice răsăritene și poate fi socotit ca cea mai veche urmă de limbă străromână; la fel ca și φράτρε ['fratre']. Dar tot atunci se păstra în armata bizantină același cuvânt cu înțelesul de «înapoi», «stânga împrejur», ceea ce a amăgit pe oștenii lui Comentiolus, punându-i pe fugă" ("was a live word in the Eastern Romanic population and could have been reckoned as the oldest utterance of the Old Romanian language; the same also for φράτρε ['fratre']. But still, the Byzantine army retained this word with the sense of "turn back", "left about", as had deluded the soldiers of Comentiolus, putting them to flight") [...] "făceau parte din așa-zisul το⋅λδον, care cuprindea samarele, slugile și vitele de povară. Măcar ei erau băștinași, în sensul larg al cuvântului [...]; ei făceau parte din latinitatea răsăriteană din veacul al VI-lea" ("made up part of the so-called το⋅λδον ['the auxiliary troops'], which includes pack-saddles, servants and draft cattle. Even those were natives, in the broad sense of the word [...]; they formed part of the Eastern Latinity of the 6th century") [...] "Reieșe din aceasta în chip limpede și cu totul neîndoielnic că cel puțin pentru catârgiu și pentru tovarășii lui vorba torna era un cuvânt din graiul lor – la fel cu siguranță și φράτρε – pe când la urechile și în gura oștenilor apărea, cum dovedește Strategikon-ul, ca un cuvânt ostășesc de poruncă. [...]. Cu alte cuvinte, chiar dacă oastea nu a fost alcătuită din băștinași, se aflau împreună cu ea oameni care vorbeau o limbă romanică" ("The result of this clearly and without the least doubt, is that for the muleteer and for his comrades, the word torna was a word in their own dialect – as certainly was φράτρε ['fratre'] – which when it appeared in the ears and mouths of the soldiers, as the Strategikon proves, was a soldiers word of command. [...]. In other words, even if the army had not been made up of natives, it would turn out that those men spoke a Romanic language") [...]„torna era un cuvânt din graiul lor" ("torna was a word of their dialect".)
- ^ I. Glodariu: "În legatura cu «torna, torna, fratre»" in „Acta Musei Napocensis", I, Cluj, 1964: „din oameni care transportau bagajele armatei, rechiziționați cu acest scop și, în sens[ul] larg al cuvântului, erau localnici" ("among the men who transported the army's baggage, requisitioned with such a scope and, in the broad sense of the word, they were locals") [...] „torna era un cuvânt din graiul viu al populației băștinașe" ("torna was a word in the live dialect of the local population") [...] "e cert că cei din jur l-au interpretat ca «întoarce-te», dacă nu erau soldați (și termenul folosit de Theophanes ne face să credem că nu erau), sau ca «stânga-mprejur», dacă erau ostași" ("It is certain those nearby interpreted it as "turn around", if they weren't soldiers (and the term used by Theophanes does not make us believe they were), or as "left about!", if they were soldiers")[...] „exista o verigă sigură între lat. frater și rom. frate" ("there is a sure link between Latin frater and Romanian frate").
- ^ "Dex turna, turna, definiţie turna, dex.ro".
- ^ "Dictsiunar".
- ^ "Societatea Culturală Aromână – Dicționar".
- ^ "Dex înturna, inturna, definiţie înturna, dex.ro". www.dex.ro. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
- ^ "Dex răsturna, rasturna, definiţie răsturna, dex.ro". www.dex.ro. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
- ^ Barbato, Marcello (2022-06-20), "The Early History of Romance Palatalizations", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.750, ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5, retrieved 2024-04-03
- ^ Alkire, Ti; Rosen, Carol (2010). Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 260. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511845192. ISBN 978-0-521-88915-5.
- ^ Alkire & Rosen 2010, p. 260.
- ^ Andreose, Alvise; Renzi, Lorenzo (2013). "Geography and distribution of the Romance languages in Europe". In Maiden, Martin; Smith, John Charles; Ledgeway, Adam (eds.). The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages, Volume II: Contexts. Cambridge University Press. pp. 283–334. ISBN 978-0-521-80073-0.
- ^ Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela, The Grammar of Romanian, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-964492-6, page 4
- ^ Schulte, Kim (2009). "Loanwords in Romanian". In Haspelmath, Martin; Tadmor, Uri (eds.). Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. p. 235. ISBN 978-3-11-021843-5.
- ^ Berciu-Drăghicescu, Adina (coord.), Frățilă, Vasile (2012). Aromâni, Meglenoromâni și Istroromâni: Aspecte identitare și culturale, capitolul Dialectul istroromân.Privire generală [Aromanian, Megleno-Romanians, and Istro-Romanians: Aspects of Identity and Culture, chapter Istro-Romanian dialect.General View]. Editura Universității din București. p. 679. ISBN 978-606-16-0148-6.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Capidan, Theodor (1925). Meglenoromânii, vol. III – Dicționar [Meglenoromanians, vol.III – Dictionary]. Cultura națională.
- ^ Berciu-Drăghicescu, Adina (coord.), Frățilă, Vasile (2012). Aromâni, Meglenoromâni și Istroromâni: Aspecte identitare și culturale, capitolul Dialectul istroromân.Privire generală [Aromanian, Megleno-Romanians, and Istro-Romanians: Aspects of Identity and Culture, chapter Istro-Romanian dialect.General View]. Editura Universității din București. p. 678. ISBN 978-606-16-0148-6.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Further reading
[edit]- Baldwin, Barry (1997). "'Torna, Torna, Phrater' : What Language?". Byzantion. 67 (1): 264–67. JSTOR 44172322. Accessed 25 Mar. 2023.
- Barbu, Violeta (2007). "Torna, torna, fratre: la più antica attestazione della lingua romena?". In: Luca, Cristian; Masi, Gianluca (eds). L'Europa Centro-Orientale e la Penisola italiana. Quattro secoli di rapporti e influssi intercorsi tra Stati e civiltà (1300-1700). Braila, 2007. pp. 25–40.
- Rusu, Valeriu [in German] (1981). "À propos de: Torna, Torna Fratre". In Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte (ed.). Logos Semantikos (in French). Vol. 5: Geschichte und Architektur der Sprachen. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 373–374. doi:10.1515/9783110863048.373 (inactive 1 August 2025). ISBN 978-3-11-008776-5.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2025 (link) - Saramandu, Nicolae (2002). ""Torna, torna, fratre" et la romanité orientale au VIe siècle". Revue des études sud-est européennes (in French). 40: 41–61.
- Tanașoca, Nicolae Șerban (1993). ""Torna, torna, fratre" et la romanité balkanique au VI-e siècle". Revue roumaine de linguistique. 38 (1–3): 265–267.
- Zugun, Petru (2011). "Glose si comentarii la torna, retorna si fratre". Limba Română. 60 (2): 151–161.
| Subdialects |
| ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dialects/related languages |
| ||
| Linguistics | |||
| Periods of historic evolution | |||
| Written form | |||
| Institutions and movements | |||
| Language contact | |||
| Speech communities | |||
| Others | |||
Common Romanian
View on Grokipediafrom Grokipedia
Definition and Scope
Reconstruction and Terminology
Common Romanian, also designated as Proto-Romanian (protoromână), Ancient Romanian (străromână), or română comună in Romanian linguistic scholarship, constitutes a reconstructed proto-language hypothesized as the immediate ancestor of the Eastern Romance languages.[1][3] This stage is unattested in direct textual records but posited through application of the comparative method, which identifies shared phonological, morphological, and lexical innovations across descendant varieties excluding those attributable to later parallel developments or borrowings.[4] The reconstruction posits Common Romanian as the common stock from which the primary Eastern Romance branches diverged: Daco-Romanian (the basis of standard Romanian), Aromanian (also termed Macedo-Romanian), Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian.[5][6] Divergence is estimated to have commenced with Aromanian around the 9th century and continued with the others by the 11th century, based on comparative evidence of retained archaisms and regional splits.[6] The term "Balkan Latin" occasionally appears in reference to this entity, underscoring its origins in the Vulgar Latin varieties spoken across the Roman Balkan provinces, though it denotes a more advanced, localized evolutionary phase.[7] Common Romanian is delimited from the broader Vulgar Latin continuum by its encapsulation of post-imperial innovations confined to the eastern Adriatic-Danubian and Balkan hinterlands, such as adaptations potentially influenced by pre-Roman substrata in those areas, which did not propagate westward.[6][7] This regional specificity distinguishes it from contemporaneous Western Romance developments, positioning it as a distinct node in the Romance phylogenesis rather than a mere continuation of empire-wide spoken Latin.[4] Scholarly consensus, as reflected in works like Ion Coteanu's morphological analysis, employs română comună to denote this shared pre-divergence morphology.[8]Relation to Eastern Romance Varieties
Common Romanian, also termed Proto-Romanian or the common ancestral stage of Eastern Romance, is reconstructed as the immediate progenitor of the four principal Eastern Romance varieties: Daco-Romanian (the foundation of standard Romanian, spoken primarily north of the Danube), Aromanian (distributed in southern Balkan regions), Megleno-Romanian (confined to enclaves in northern Greece and southern Romania), and Istro-Romanian (a near-extinct form in the Istrian peninsula of Croatia). These varieties emerged from a unified speech community that spanned territories both north and south of the Danube during late antiquity and the early medieval period, prior to their geographic and dialectal fragmentation.[9] The Eastern Romance subgroup is delimited by a cluster of post-Vulgar Latin innovations absent in Western and Italo-Dalmatian branches, including the centralized vowel /ʌ/ (orthographically â/î in Romanian), which arose as a shared development from stressed Latin /a/ in closed syllables or specific prosodic contexts during the Common Romanian phase, as evidenced by comparative reconstruction across the varieties. Additional phonological markers include the general resistance to systematic voicing of intervocalic voiceless stops (e.g., Latin *capra yields forms retaining /p/ without obligatory shift to /b/, contrasting Western patterns like Spanish cabra), and differential treatment of Latin diphthongs with limited metaphony compared to Italo-Western developments. Morphologically, the proto-form retained a fuller case system longer than Western counterparts, with genitive-dative syncretism emerging commonly, alongside early suffixing of definite articles derived from Latin demonstratives (e.g., from *ille/*illa). These traits, reconstructed via the comparative method, underscore causal continuity from a single proto-source rather than parallel evolution from disparate Vulgar Latin dialects.[10] Empirical support for this unity derives from isogloss mapping: bundles of shared retentions (e.g., certain Latin consonant clusters preserved intact) versus innovations unique to Eastern Romance form a coherent subgroup boundary, separating it from Western Romance along lines approximating the historical Jireček Line's linguistic correlates, while internal isoglosses (e.g., varying substrate influences) mark post-Common divergence points without negating the proto-relation. Quantitative lexical comparisons reveal over 80% cognacy among core vocabularies across the varieties, far exceeding parallels with non-Eastern Romance, affirming reconstruction validity over alternative diffusion hypotheses.[9]Historical Development
Origins in Vulgar Latin
The conquest of Dacia by Emperor Trajan in 106 AD initiated the rapid Romanization of the region, introducing Vulgar Latin as the primary language of administration, military, and settlement among colonists from various Roman provinces. This spoken variant of Latin, distinct from Classical Latin in its phonetic reductions, simplified morphology, and regional colloquialisms, formed the basis for the proto-Romanian linguistic continuum. Archaeological evidence from over 3,000 Latin inscriptions in Roman Dacia, including funerary, dedicatory, and military texts, reveals early Vulgar Latin traits such as analogical leveling of verb forms, omission of certain case endings, and phonetic shifts like intervocalic voicing of stops (e.g., vita > via). These inscriptions, concentrated in urban centers like Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa and Potaissa, indicate a diverse speaker base including legionaries, veterans, and traders, whose imperfect Latin usage accelerated deviations from classical norms.[11][12][13] Bilingualism between indigenous Daco-Thracian speakers and Latin-using Romans fostered substrate interference, where Dacian phonetic patterns subtly influenced Vulgar Latin pronunciation, such as resistance to certain Latin diphthongs, though lexical retention from Dacian remains limited to under 200 roots. This contact environment in Dacia and adjacent Moesia promoted a Balkan-specific Vulgar Latin dialect, evidenced by shared archaic features with Dalmatian and loanwords in Albanian and Greek reflecting Latin terms adapted in the region (e.g., Latin murus yielding Romanian muchie via phonetic palatalization). Causal realism underscores that incomplete language shift among Dacian populations, driven by demographic mixing rather than total replacement, preserved Latin continuity despite the province's abandonment in 271 AD under Aurelian.[14][15] Grammatical simplifications emerged early, including the erosion of the full Latin case system toward nominative-accusative syncretism and the genesis of postposed definite articles from the demonstrative ille (e.g., illum > -ul for masculine singular). Unlike preposed articles in Western Romance languages, this enclitic form arose from Vulgar Latin proclisis in Balkan contexts, where demonstratives fused to nouns for emphasis, as reconstructed from comparative Romance data and early Romance texts. The neuter gender, while retained in Romanian unlike its absorption into masculine or feminine in other Romance varieties, underwent partial merger: neuter nouns adopted masculine forms in nominative-accusative but feminine in genitive-dative, reflecting Vulgar Latin gender realignments under analytic pressures. These innovations, observable in inscriptional deviations from classical paradigms, highlight the empirical divergence of Eastern Vulgar Latin toward proto-Romanian structures.[16][17][18]Timeline and Key Phases
The formation of Common Romanian is reconstructed to have occurred between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, as Vulgar Latin spoken in the Roman provinces north and south of the Danube evolved amid the empire's retraction, including the abandonment of Dacia in 271 AD, and successive waves of migrations by Goths, Huns, and Gepids that isolated Latin communities without fully displacing them.[1] This initial phase involved the stabilization of phonological shifts distinguishing Eastern Romance from Western varieties, supported by comparative analysis of lexical retentions and substrate influences in modern daughter languages.[19] From the 6th to 10th centuries AD, Common Romanian underwent consolidation under the impacts of Slavic expansions and Avar dominance, during which it absorbed approximately 80 early Slavic loanwords from the Common Slavic period (ending circa 850 AD) while developing analytic structures, such as precursors to the future tense via auxiliaries plus infinitive, as evidenced by uniform retention across Eastern Romance branches.[20] The emergence of the schwa vowel (ă), arising from centralization of unstressed Latin mid vowels, similarly characterizes this phase, inferred through reconstruction since direct attestation is unavailable.[10] No indigenous texts exist from these eras, necessitating reliance on indirect linguistic proxies like toponyms and hydronyms bearing Romance etymologies predating heavy Slavic overlay, alongside external records. Byzantine chronicles from the late 10th century onward reference "Vlachs" (Vlachoi) as Latin-speaking pastoralists in the Balkans, offering the earliest non-linguistic confirmation of continuity for Common Romanian speakers, though such mentions intensify only after fragmentation into northern and southern dialect groups circa the 10th century.[21] Post-10th-century divergence marks the end of the unified phase, with northern varieties separating under distinct pressures.[22]Geographic Extent and Continuity
The territory associated with Common Romanian, the proto-form of Eastern Romance languages, initially spanned the Romanized zones of Dacia Traiana north of the Danube and Moesia Inferior to the south, extending into parts of Thrace during the 2nd to 4th centuries AD, as evidenced by Latin inscriptions and urban settlements in these provinces.[23] This distribution reflects the spread of Vulgar Latin among military, administrative, and civilian populations, with archaeological surveys confirming dense Latin epigraphy in Dacian sites like Sarmizegetusa and Apulum.[24] Hydronyms and toponyms derived from Latin, such as those preserving forms like Admediā evolving into modern Mehadia, further attest to the embedding of Romance nomenclature across this trans-Danubian area prior to major disruptions.[25] Subsequent migrations, including Hunnic pressures in the 4th–5th centuries and Avar–Slavic incursions from the late 6th century, fragmented these communities without evidence of total eradication, as late Roman coins minted post-271 AD and continued ceramic traditions in northern Dacian towns like Napoca and Potaissa indicate sustained local habitation by romanized groups.[26] Genetic analyses of Balkan populations reveal a pattern of Slavic gene flow overlaying substantial pre-existing ancestry, consistent with admixture in Romance-speaking pockets rather than wholesale replacement north of the Danube.[27] Byzantine historical records from the 6th to 10th centuries describe Slavic settlements dominating lowland areas but note peripheral zones with non-Slavic pastoralists, aligning with toponymic persistence of Latin roots amid Slavic overlays in Carpathian and Danubian regions.[6] This continuity challenges models of absolute depopulation after the Roman withdrawal from Dacia in 271 AD, as empirical settlement data— including household debris and burial continuity—demonstrate adaptive romanized survival in upland refugia, decoupled from uniform ethnic mapping and allowing for Romance linguistic retention through the formative phases of Common Romanian.[28] The spatial cohesion of these features across Danube divides underscores a resilient, if discontinuous, substrate for Eastern Romance differentiation by the 10th–11th centuries.[2]Linguistic Features
Phonological Innovations
The phonological evolution of Common Romanian from Vulgar Latin featured distinctive vowel reductions and mergers not uniformly paralleled in Italo-Western Romance branches. Unstressed Latin vowels systematically centralized to schwa (/ə/), a mid central unrounded vowel, reflecting advanced reduction in pretonic and post-tonic positions, as seen in forms like Latin *amīcum > Romanian amic (/aˈmik/, with unstressed /ə/ in derivatives). This schwa phoneme, while akin to reductions in French or Catalan, achieved fuller systemic integration in Eastern Romance, serving as the default unstressed vowel across paradigms.[10] A more unique innovation was the emergence of the high central unrounded vowel /ɨ/ (spelled â or î), arising primarily from stressed Latin /a/ before nasals followed by a consonant, as in Latin campus > Romanian câmp (/kɨmp/ "field"), alongside contributions from other stressed vowels like short /e/ or /i/ in closed syllables. This vowel, absent in Western Romance, represents a Balkan-specific centralization, with mappings confirmed across daughter languages like Aromanian kampu > câmp, delineating an Eastern isogloss. Comparative evidence from Proto-Romance reconstructions shows /ɨ/ filled a gap left by mergers elsewhere, enhancing contrast in stressed positions.[10] Consonantally, Common Romanian diverged by retaining voiceless stops in intervocalic position, eschewing the lenition to voiced stops (/p,t,k/ > /b,d,g/) characteristic of Western Romance (e.g., Latin vītam > Spanish vida, French vie; contrast Romanian viață /ˈve.t͡sʲe/ from vita, preserving underlying voicelessness before palatalization contexts). This retention, evident in isoglosses shared among Eastern varieties like Megleno-Romanian, maintained Latin-like stop contrasts longer, likely due to substrate or regional Vulgar Latin conservatism. Additionally, intervocalic /l/ underwent rhotacism to /r/, as in Latin scāla > scară "stair," a change generalized in Daco-Romanian but partial in southern Eastern dialects, setting it apart from l-retention in Italian scala or Spanish escala. Palatalization of velars before front vowels proceeded robustly, yielding affricates like /tʃ/ from /k/ + /e,i/, as in Latin caelum > cer /tʃer/ "sky," mirroring but independently realizing Romance-wide shifts without the gemination influences prominent in Italo-Western paths. Labialization in velar-dental clusters further innovated outcomes, such as /kt/ > /pt/ in Latin factum > fapt "deed," a assimilation absent elsewhere, evidenced by consistent reflexes in daughter languages. These changes, reconstructed via comparative method across Aromanian and Istro-Romanian, underscore Common Romanian's isolation, with phonological mappings diverging from shared Proto-Romance by the 6th-8th centuries CE.Grammatical Structures
The nominal morphology of Common Romanian featured a marked simplification from Latin's six-case system, reducing to two primary cases: a syncretic nominative-accusative and a genitive-dative, with the vocative often aligning with the nominative. Adjectives agreed with nouns in gender, number, and case, while neuter nouns typically followed masculine patterns in the singular and adopted feminine plural endings, such as the innovative -uri suffix derived from adaptations of Latin neuter plurals in -um. This case retention, atypical among Western Romance languages that fully eliminated inflectional cases, has been attributed to areal pressures from the Balkan sprachbund, where contact with inflecting languages like Albanian and South Slavic reinforced limited synthetic marking amid broader analytic shifts.[29][30] In the verbal domain, Common Romanian developed an analytic present perfect using the auxiliary *a avea ("to have") plus the past participle, replacing Latin's synthetic perfect tenses—a periphrastic construction shared across Romance but adapted early in the Eastern branch. The future tense relied on analytic forms like an infinitive preceded by auxiliaries such as *a vrea ("to want"), though vestiges of synthetic futures persisted in some varieties, contrasting with the more uniform analytic futures in Western Romance. These innovations reflect a partial shift toward analyticity, tempered by Balkan sprachbund dynamics that promoted periphrasis in tense-aspect marking while preserving fusional elements in person and number agreement.[31][32] Syntactically, Common Romanian employed postposed definite articles, suffixed to nouns as in *om-ul ("the man") from Latin demonstrative *illum, a feature emerging via encliticization and paralleled in Balkan languages like Bulgarian and Albanian due to sprachbund convergence. Word order was predominantly subject-verb-object (SVO), with flexibility in clitic placement and object doubling influenced by areal analytic tendencies, facilitating the language's adaptation to multilingual Balkan contexts without full loss of case-driven syntax.[33][34]Lexical Composition and Borrowings
The Romanian lexicon exhibits a high degree of retention from Vulgar Latin, with estimates for basic vocabulary ranging from 68% to over 80% in categories such as adjectives, adverbs, and function words directly inherited from Latin sources.[35] This preservation is particularly evident in agricultural terms like grâu ("wheat," from Latin grānum) and administrative vocabulary such as lege ("law," from Latin lēx), contrasting with Western Romance languages where Germanic superstrates heavily influenced similar domains (e.g., Frankish loans in French military and governance terms). Etymological analyses, drawing on dictionaries like those compiling inherited versus borrowed elements, underscore this core Latin heritage while noting deviations in frequency compared to Italic or Gallo-Romance branches.[36] Early non-Latin elements constitute a minor admixture, primarily from the Daco-Thracian substrate, with approximately 90-160 words proposed as pre-Roman inheritances, including brânză ("cheese"), linked to Dacian forms via comparative reconstruction with limited cognates in Albanian and other Balkan languages.[37] These substrate terms often pertain to local flora, fauna, and pastoral life, such as baltă ("swamp") or copac ("tree"), reflecting geographic continuity rather than extensive lexical dominance. Pre-Slavic Balkan influences add a small layer of shared terms, potentially Illyrian or Thracian, but these remain sparse and debated due to fragmentary evidence from ancient inscriptions and toponyms. Methodologically, tools like Swadesh lists—compiling 100-207 core concepts resistant to borrowing—facilitate quantification of Latin retention in Romanian, revealing over 70% direct etymological matches in proto-Romance inventories when compared across Eastern Romance varieties.[38] Comparative etymology, as applied in specialized dictionaries, further assesses lexical "purity" by tracing sound changes and semantic shifts, debunking notions of Romanian as an isolated Latin remnant by highlighting these targeted admixtures without implying wholesale replacement. Such approaches prioritize empirical word-list alignments over total lexicon counts, which inflate modern loans and obscure inherited stability.[39]External Influences
Daco-Thracian Substrate Effects
The Daco-Thracian substrate encompasses linguistic remnants from the Indo-European languages spoken by Dacians and Thracians in the Carpatho-Danubian region before Roman conquest in 101–106 AD, which interacted with incoming Vulgar Latin settlers. This influence manifests chiefly in the lexicon, where scholars identify over 150 words as probable substrate inheritances, though exact counts vary due to sparse ancient attestations limited to roughly 200 Dacian-Thracian glosses in Greek and Latin texts. These borrowings entered proto-Romanian via bilingualism in incompletely Romanized rural areas, preserving terms for local realities not adequately covered by Latin vocabulary.[40] The affected lexicon centers on pastoral, agricultural, and topographic domains, reflecting pre-Roman subsistence patterns like herding and mountain living. Verified examples include brânză ("cheese," from a form akin to Dacian branzea), copac ("tree," linked to Thracian arboreal terms), balaur ("dragon" or mythical serpent, possibly from balauris), abur ("steam" or mist, tied to hydrological features), and amurg ("twilight," evoking dim light in valleys). Such words lack direct Latin etymons and show phonetic matches to Thracian onomastics or plant names in Dioscorides' herbal treatises, supporting their pre-Roman origin through exclusion of later Slavic or Germanic loans.[40][41] Phonological imprints are subtler and more conjectural, potentially involving consonant lenition or vowel fronting patterns tested against Thracian glosses in Herodotus and Strabo, such as aspirate preservation in words like zăr ("dawn," debated link to zara). Some analyses posit substrate contributions to Romanian's labial vowel shifts or velar softening, as centum-like features in reconstructed Thraco-Dacian deviate from expected satem Indo-European traits, but these remain unproven amid dominant Latin-derived sound changes like diphthongization. Empirical reconstruction falters without extensive corpora, rendering claims of systemic phonological overhaul unverifiable.[41] Causally, the substrate's scope stayed confined by demographic shifts post-conquest, where Latin-speaking colonists outnumbered Dacians, fostering rapid language shift evidenced by 2nd–3rd century AD inscriptions in Latin but absent Dacian. This yielded a minor lexical overlay—under 2% of modern Romanian's basic vocabulary—without altering core Romance grammar or syntax, as comparative data from Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian dialects affirm Latin primacy. Theories positing substrate-driven ethnolinguistic dominance overlook this asymmetry, prioritizing instead verifiable lexical isolates over speculative continuity.[40][3]Slavic and Balkan Superstrate Impacts
The Slavic superstrate on Common Romanian arose primarily from South Slavic migrations into the Balkans during the 6th and 7th centuries CE, with sustained contact extending through the 10th century, leading to extensive lexical borrowing without wholesale grammatical replacement.[42] Approximately 14.6% of the Romanian lexicon derives from Slavic sources, encompassing layers of loans in administrative, religious, and everyday domains that reflect assimilation of Slavic settlers by Romance-speaking populations.[43] Examples include dragoste ("love"), from Proto-Slavic drugъ ("dear") via intermediate forms, and terms like da ("yes") or rob ("slave"), which entered during periods of Slavic political dominance in the region but integrated into a persisting Latin syntactic framework.[44] These borrowings, often mediated through Old Church Slavonic in ecclesiastical and administrative contexts from the 9th to 10th centuries, layered onto an earlier Common Romanian phase, illustrating causal contact dynamics where Slavic terms filled gaps in Vulgar Latin-derived vocabulary for social organization and agriculture.[22] Unlike full language shift seen in neighboring Bulgaro-Slavic zones, Eastern Romance retained a Latin core in basic vocabulary (e.g., numerals, body parts, kinship terms) and inflectional morphology, as evidenced by comparative analysis of core Swadesh lists showing over 70% Romance retention in proto-forms.[44] Balkan sprachbund effects further shaped Common Romanian through areal convergence with Slavic (Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian) and non-Slavic languages like Albanian, driven by prolonged multilingual coexistence in the 7th–10th centuries.[45] Shared calques, such as analytic future constructions (e.g., Romanian voi face paralleling Bulgarian shte napravja), and syntactic features like evidential moods marking inferential knowledge (e.g., Romanian fi-vă forms echoing Bulgarian renarrative), arose from contact-induced diffusion rather than direct inheritance.[45] This convergence, quantifiable in aligned clause structures across 20+ morphosyntactic traits, underscores Romanian's partial integration into the sprachbund while preserving Romance verb conjugation classes, countering claims of Slavic dominance by highlighting selective adaptation over substrate erasure.Interactions with Neighboring Languages
Greek adstratum effects on Common Romanian arose primarily through Byzantine ecclesiastical and administrative channels, introducing loanwords in religious and cultural domains during the early medieval period. A notable example is icoană ("icon"), borrowed from Byzantine Greek eikóna, reflecting the integration of Orthodox Christian terminology as Romanized communities engaged with Byzantine Christianity from the 4th to 7th centuries CE.[46] Similar borrowings appear in related Eastern Romance varieties, such as Aromanian, where Greek terms supplemented Latin-derived religious vocabulary, underscoring the role of church liturgy in lexical exchange.[47] Interactions with Albanian manifested in lexical parallels, particularly around 39 Latin-derived words shared exclusively between proto-forms of Romanian and Albanian, indicating possible contact or parallel evolution in Balkan border regions prior to major Slavic overlays.[48] These include preserved forms like Romanian muiere and Albanian mui from Latin mulier ("woman"), which diverged from Western Romance developments, likely due to shared phonological shifts or areal diffusion in the 6th–10th centuries CE.[49] Non-Indo-European substratal echoes, such as Romanian abur ("steam") paralleling Albanian avull, suggest deeper paleo-Balkan contacts but remain debated as direct adstratum versus inherited substrate retention.[50] Direct Turkish or Ottoman lexical impacts were absent in the Common Romanian era, as Turkic migrations and Ottoman expansion commenced after the 10th century, with borrowings like dulap ("wardrobe") emerging only in later medieval phases.[1] Pre-10th-century interactions with other neighbors, such as Hungarian or early Slavic groups, were limited to phonetic or minor lexical traces verifiable in border dialects, prioritizing empirical reconstruction over speculative diffusion.[51]Divergence and Descendants
Factors Prompting Fragmentation
The fragmentation of Common Romanian around the 10th to 12th centuries stemmed from geopolitical pressures that disrupted the geographic continuity of its speakers, originally distributed across the Carpatho-Danubian and northern Balkan regions. The Magyar incursions into the Pannonian Basin, culminating in their consolidation around 895 CE, created a durable non-Slavic, non-Romance barrier that severed northern speech communities from southern ones, limiting inter-dialectal exchange. Concurrently, Bulgarian imperial revivals—such as under Tsar Samuel from 997 to 1014 CE—intensified control over Thrace and Macedonia, fragmenting southern groups through assimilation and displacement. Serbian expansions, beginning with the Vukan branch's principality in the late 11th century, further isolated pockets in the western Balkans by incorporating them into emerging Slavic polities. These movements collectively eroded the cohesion of what had been a relatively uniform proto-language continuum. Southward relocations of proto-Aromanian populations from Danubian lowlands to the southern Balkans were a direct response to cumulative Slavic and Magyar pressures, as these groups sought refuge from recurrent invasions and settlements. Linguist Theodor Capidan documented such migrations as evasive strategies against 9th–11th century influxes, preserving Romance substrate elements amid intensifying non-Romance dominance. This dispersal not only physically separated subgroups but also exposed them to heterogeneous external substrates, accelerating independent trajectories. Linguistically, the breakdown was precipitated by uneven Slavic superstrate penetration, with southern varieties enduring heavier South Slavic lexical and grammatical overlays—evident in shared Balkanisms like postposed articles—while northern ones retained more insulated features. Proto-Romanian-Old Bulgarian mutualism, initiated post-6th century Slavic arrivals but peaking in medieval phases, fostered divergent alignments: southern dialects integrated deeper into Sprachbünde, whereas northern ones resisted full convergence, dissolving the continuum's mutual intelligibility. Markers of this schism include the onset of clade-specific phonological shifts, such as retroflex developments in Istro-Romanian, attributable to prolonged isolation in Istria amid Croatian encirclement by the 12th century onward. These innovations, absent in core varieties, underscore how fragmentation enabled unchecked local drift unmitigated by prior pan-regional leveling.[52]Emergence of the Four Eastern Romance Languages
Following the fragmentation of Common Romanian around the 10th century, due to geographic barriers like the Danube River and subsequent migrations, the language differentiated into northern and southern varieties, with the southern group further subdividing.[53] Daco-Romanian emerged as the primary northern branch, maintaining continuity in the Carpatho-Danubian-Pontic territories north of the Danube, where it evolved amid Daco-Thracian substrate remnants and Slavic superstrate layers, ultimately serving as the foundation for the standardized language of the modern Romanian state.[1] Its earliest written attestation appears in the 1521 Neacșu letter from Câmpulung, a Cyrillic-script document evidencing post-split phonological and lexical traits distinct from southern branches, such as retention of unstressed /e/ as /ə/ in certain positions.[54] Aromanian, diverging southward as part of the southern group possibly by the 11th century or earlier amid Slavic incursions, became linked to semi-nomadic pastoralist groups (Vlachs) engaging in transhumance across the Pindus Mountains and into Albania and Greece, which facilitated its spread but also exposure to intensive Greek and Albanian lexical borrowings exceeding 20% in core vocabulary.[6] This variety preserved shared innovations like the labialization of Latin /k/ before /e/ to /ts/ (e.g., *ke > tse), but developed unique paths including more conservative vowel systems compared to Daco-Romanian; its survival persists in diaspora communities, with first substantial texts emerging in the late 18th century, such as manuscripts from Moscopole.[5] Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian represent enclave formations from the southern branch, with Megleno-Romanian consolidating in the isolated Moglena valley (modern Greece-North Macedonia border) around the 12th-13th centuries, and Istro-Romanian migrating northwest to the Istrian peninsula (Croatia) by the late medieval period, likely via 15th-century displacements.[5] Both exhibit heightened endangerment from assimilation into dominant Slavic and South Slavic languages, respectively, with speaker numbers below 5,000 each by the 20th century; they retain post-split commonalities like neuter gender preservation but diverge in innovations such as Istro-Romanian's partial loss of case distinctions under Venetian and Slavic pressures.[55] Unlike Daco-Romanian or Aromanian, these lack pre-19th-century texts, relying on 20th-century folkloric collections for attestation.[5] Post-split shared traits across the four include resistance to Western Romance palatalizations and parallel Slavic loan integrations (e.g., over 10% common lexicon like *da for 'yes'), underscoring recent unity, yet unique trajectories—northern isolation for Daco-Romanian versus southern fragmentation—drove lexical and phonological variances, with southern varieties showing greater post-Latin /a/ diphthongization variability.[1][56]Scholarly Debates and Evidence
Theories of Ethnic and Linguistic Continuity
The theory of Daco-Roman continuity posits that a Latin-speaking population descended from the Romanized Dacians persisted north of the Danube after the Roman withdrawal from Dacia in 271 AD, forming the core of modern Romanians despite subsequent invasions. Proponents cite toponymic evidence, such as the evolution of the Dacian-Roman settlement Apulum—capital of Roman Dacia—into the medieval and modern Alba Iulia, indicating settlement persistence in Transylvania through the Migration Period. Hydronyms like the Mureș (from Roman Maris) and Olt (from Alutus) also preserve pre-Slavic forms, suggesting linguistic and ethnic substrata resistant to full replacement by nomadic groups. Archaeological findings of late Roman pottery and hillforts in the Carpathians further support localized continuity, as these sites show gradual transitions rather than abrupt depopulation.[57] Opposing the continuity hypothesis, the migration or immigrationist theory argues that the bulk of Romanized Daco-Thracians retreated south of the Danube during the 3rd to 7th centuries amid pressures from Goths, Huns, Gepids, and Avars, with ethnogenesis occurring in Balkan refugia before a northward return around the 10th–12th centuries. Advocates emphasize the scarcity of Latin inscriptions and Roman material culture north of the Danube post-4th century, interpreting this as evidence of demographic collapse and cultural hiatus, with Romanian first attested in documents south of the river. This view critiques continuity claims as overreliant on indirect linguistic parallels, potentially inflated by 19th–20th century Romanian nationalism to assert ancient territorial rights. However, it has been faulted for undervaluing archaeological continuity, such as Daco-Roman burial inventories and fortified refugia in Transylvania that bridge Roman and early medieval phases without clear Slavic overlays until the 6th–7th centuries.[58] Genetic studies provide empirical grounding, revealing a mixed ancestry in modern Romanians: mitochondrial DNA analyses across historical provinces show affinities linking Transylvanian and Wallachian populations to pre-Slavic Balkan substrates, with haplogroups indicating maternal continuity from Roman-era locals north and south of the Danube. Genome-wide data from 1st-millennium Balkan sites confirm limited Slavic genetic replacement (around 30–50% admixture), preserving substantial Iron Age Thracian-Dacian-like components that align with hybrid ethnogenesis rather than total migration or isolation. Romanian scholarship, drawing on these data alongside linguistics, robustly defends northern continuity as the primary vector for Romanian ethnogenesis, countering Western European skepticism often rooted in source biases favoring Balkan southward models. Causal analysis favors hybrid interpretations: remnant Daco-Roman groups in Carpathian enclaves endured invasions via geographic isolation, augmented by inflows from southern Romance speakers, explaining both genetic admixture and the outlier Latinity amid Slavic surroundings.[59][60]Challenges in Proto-Language Reconstruction
Reconstructing the Proto-Language ancestral to Common Romanian, often termed Proto-Eastern Romance, faces significant hurdles due to the absence of direct written attestations, with the earliest Romanian texts dating only to the 16th century and lacking records for earlier stages.[61] Scholars must therefore rely on the comparative method applied to modern and medieval varieties of Eastern Romance languages, including Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian, which introduces risks of anachronism by projecting contemporary phonetic, morphological, and lexical features backward without corroborating historical data.[62] This approach can foster circular reasoning, wherein assumed uniformity among descendant languages—such as shared innovations in case systems or vowel shifts—is taken as evidence for a monolithic proto-form, potentially overlooking regional divergences or external interferences like Slavic admixtures that obscure the original structure.[63] Early 20th-century efforts in Romanian historical linguistics, building on 19th-century nationalist scholarship, often prioritized ideological affirmation of Daco-Roman continuity over rigorous empiricism, leading to reconstructions that emphasized lexical retentions from Latin while downplaying substrate discontinuities or superstrate disruptions.[64] Such works, influenced by romanticized views of ethnic persistence amid migrations, tended to impose uniformity on sparse cognate sets, yielding proto-forms that align more with modern standard Romanian than with a diverse Balkan context; this has been critiqued for methodological laxity, as the comparative method struggles with semantic shifts and borrowed elements that dilute regular sound correspondences.[62] Contemporary analyses mitigate these pitfalls through computational phylogenetics, which employ automated cognate detection and tree-building algorithms to demonstrate robust clustering of Eastern Romance languages distinct from Western Romance branches, validating shared innovations like the preservation of Latin case endings amid heavy Balkan influences.[65] Prospective advancements hinge on interdisciplinary causal validation, incorporating ancient DNA evidence to test hypotheses of population continuity in Dacia post-Roman withdrawal—such as R1a and R1b haplogroup distributions linking prehistoric Thracians to modern Romanians—and substrate toponymy analysis, where pre-Latin hydronyms (e.g., those ending in -dava or reflecting Daco-Thracian roots) provide empirical anchors for reconstructing non-Indo-European influences without relying solely on linguistic extrapolation.[66] These methods promise to ground proto-reconstructions in verifiable demographic and geographic data, countering the limitations of purely linguistic inference by establishing causal links between genetic persistence, place-name stability, and linguistic substrate effects.[67]Empirical Evidence from Comparative Linguistics
The comparative method applied to the Eastern Romance languages—Daco-Romanian (standard Romanian), Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian—has identified regular sound correspondences and shared morphological innovations diagnostic of their common ancestor, Common Romanian, distinguishing it from Western Romance branches. A key innovation is the plural system, which generalizes Latin nominative plural endings through vowel quality alternations (e.g., singular -o to plural -i for masculines, -a to -e for feminines), rather than the accusative-derived -s suffix prevalent in Western Romance. This nominative-based morphology, reconstructible as *domn-i for 'lords' (from Latin dominī) versus Western forms like Spanish *dominos, reflects a post-Vulgar Latin divergence around the 5th–7th centuries CE.[68][69] Morphological evidence further includes the -uri suffix for plurals of historically neuter nouns, a development unique to Eastern Romance, as in Daco-Romanian timp-uri 'times' (from Latin tempora) or Aromanian vãr-uri 'boars' (from Latin vari), absent in Italo-Western languages where such forms either adopted -s or reanalyzed differently. Phonological reconstructions highlight shared shifts, such as the reduction of Latin unstressed /a/ to schwa /ə/ and the emergence of central vowel /ɨ/ from /u/ in closed syllables (e.g., *lup-u > lup 'wolf'), consistent across descendants and enabling proto-form recovery via internal and comparative analysis. These features, corroborated by dialectal correspondences, support a unified Common Romanian stage predating the fragmentation into modern varieties by the 10th–12th centuries.[10][70] Auxiliary support comes from early loan adaptations, such as Proto-Slavic borrowings integrated into Common Romanian with Romance phonological adjustments (e.g., Slavic *gordъ > gard 'fence', retaining initial /g/ unlike Western Romance lenition), datable to pre-9th-century contacts via comparative Slavic-Romance etymologies. However, the absence of monolingual texts until the 16th century—the earliest verifiable being Neacșu's Letter of 1521, a Cyrillic-script missive from Wallachia—precludes direct verification, compelling reliance on indirect reconstruction and underscoring the need for falsifiable criteria like predictable correspondences over speculative etymologies. Overextrapolation risks conflating areal convergences (e.g., Balkan features) with inherited traits, thus prioritizing subgroup-specific innovations for robust proto-language delineation.[71][54]References
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Romanian_Swadesh_list