# history of Romanian vowels ǎ and â/î



## Nino83

Hello everybody. 

I read that the Romanian vowel ǎ [ə] derives from unstressed Vulgar Latin "a" (unless at the beginning of a word), like in "păros" and "albă" but in "ăsta" it is stressed. Where does this vowel come from? 

The Romanian â/î [ɨ] derives from the Vulgar Latin "in", "an" and "ri" and from loanwords, like in "înspre", "cânta" and "coborî" but in the word "cârnat" (from Latin "carnacius"), there is an unstressed "ar". 
What is the history of this vowel? 

Thank you


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## merquiades

I noticed this particularity too.  Perhaps there was a slight Slavic influence in it's development.  Both of these vowels exist and are quite frequent in Russian.  _ǎ_ [ə] is the equivalent of Russian _о_ and _а_ in all unstressed syllables and _â/î_ [ɨ] is the same exact sound of the Russian _ы_, all of which are normally stressed (it's often a plural marker), and often but irregularly _и_ too.  Is this just a coincidence?  Or is it a direct Slavic influence as found so often in many of Rumanian's loan words?


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## Nino83

Regarding to stressed ǎ [ə], I've read that "The sound [ ə ] and the letter ă seldom occur in a word-initial position. The most common examples are the colloquial forms of some demonstrative pronouns: ăsta this, ăştia these, ăla those, ăia those." 
In those words, there is a Vulgar Latin closed /e/ (istam, illam, or in other Romance languages questa, esta, quella, aquela). 
Sometimes, when preceded by a labial consonant and followed by a back vowel (i.e other than /e/ or /i/) in the next syllable, /e/ became /ǎ/, but this is not the case. 
nominativ-acuzativ 
singular ăst astă 
plural ăști aste 
genitiv-dativ 
singular ăstui ăstei, astei 
plural ăstor ăstor 

About â/î [ɨ], there are Slavic loans which have this vowel but the word "cârnat" comes from Latin. 
There are Latin words which have this vowel in other contexs, not only before nasal or after "r". 
According to these rules, this word should be pronounced "cǎrnat" instead of "cârnat". 
It's difficult to find in the web some work about it.


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## irinet

Hi,
Since the topic is about my language, I thought that I may be of help,  or may not since I have never taken this into consideration, despite of many unanswered questions hanging over the scholastic changes during time. 

So, I will start by getting closer to the unstressed vowel 'a' that became the stressed sound 'ă' when found initially  in the only acceptable position as of a pronoun to refer to the _masculine gender_. 

Since the rule says that this is not possible, but we,  as well as you, could find it, this means that it is not academic so, the rule does not apply that way. 'Ăsta, ăla (masculine)'  are non-academic, vulgar instances of my language as you said, therefore, one that uses colloquialisms should not apply to the rule, but could simply overextend the rule to distinguish the opposition *feminine versus masculine*. 

*What I think is that, there is a gender-based reason behind all these, as for the feminine we have 'asta', while for the masculine 'ăsta'.*

That is my personal argument for using 'ă'  instead of 'a' initially. 

More than that, '_*ă*sta_' /+ the regional instances '_*i*sta_/_*ai*sta_' (both stress on the vowel 'i', and inclining to say both masculine), ăla' are used pejoratively, so the stress is changed. We also have the colloquial adjective '*astă* [the short form of '*această*'] carte' (feminine) -  'this book'. 

I could also say that when these two change position ('ă'-'a') from the final to the initial position, then,  the 'ă' sound simply moves with the stress for a more effective message,_ but the gender-based motivation stands out clearly better. In the word '*acesta*' (masculine), the group 'ce' is dropped, and we get the feminine '*asta*'. In '*aceasta*' (feminine), the letter group 'cea' drops, and we get the same *feminine pronoun.*_ Consequently, the vulgar _masculine adjective _will be '*ăst* băiat' -  'this boy', too.


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## ahvalj

merquiades said:


> I noticed this particularity too.  Perhaps there was a slight Slavic influence in it's development.  Both of these vowels exist and are quite frequent in Russian.  _ǎ_ [ə] is the equivalent of Russian _о_ and _а_ in all unstressed syllables and _â/î_ [ɨ] is the same exact sound of the Russian _ы_, all of which are normally stressed (it's often a plural marker), and often but irregularly _и_ too.  Is this just a coincidence?  Or is it a direct Slavic influence as found so often in many of Rumanian's loan words?


(1) Both vowels sound very different in Russian and Romanian, at least for a Russian native speaker.
(2) The area in Slavic where unstressed _o/a_ become an _a_-like reduced sound is not contiguous with Romanian and never was so in the past.
(3) The primary source of the Slavic _y_ is *_ū_, whereas in Romanian this sound has developed most often from _a_ and _i_. 
(4) I may he wrong, but I have an impression that 99% of Romanian borrowings were made from South Slavic at the time when the latter had already lost its _y_ by merging it with _i_, so that Slavic borrowings in Romanian have _i_ in the place of the etymological Slavic _y_ (I haven't noticed a single instance of _î_<_y_ here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_influence_on_Romanian).


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## Nino83

irinet said:


> Hi,
> Since the topic is about my language, I thought that I may be of help,  or may not since I have never taken this into consideration, despite of many unanswered questions hang over the scholastic changes during time.



Thank you, irinet. 
I appreciated your answer. 
Are there other Romanian words where there is a stressed ǎ [ə]? 

Could you list me some words where the â/î [ɨ] is not before a nasal consonant or after an "r"? 

On this page  it is said that 



> spelling î or â indifferently refers to at least two, if not even three or four phonetic instances: *â/î proper* ( gîde, rîde ); *nasal â/î* ( gînd ) and, perhaps, â/î + semivowel ( pîine, cîine )



The third (pîine, cîine), as far as I know, is a feature of some dialects which was taken in the standard language, so there are, more or less, two origins: nasal "î" and proper "î". 
I'd like to know more about the latter. 

I've found this article http://dexonline.ro/articol/Alf_Lombard_-_Despre_folosirea_literelor_î_şi_â but I don't understand Romanian very well, so I don't know if there is some answer about etymology. 
This article speaks about spelling reform of â/î.


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## irinet

Firstly, I need warn you that I am not into the Phonetics... . 

Yes, in short,  the A Lombard's article you found in "Dex" is about the historical changes (etymological vs phonetic principles) of the four letters with the *circumflex accent, **a*, *e* (posterior 'e' dropped in favour of the sound 'ă' ), *î*, *u* that used to represent 'î' /â, and how we gave them up in favour of the *posterior sound,  'i'*.

I have also noticed that you are interested in 'c*âr*nat'. It is supposed to have the origin either from the Albanese 'Kernacke' (with the accents on the vowel 'e'), or from the Bulgarian 'kurnace'. There is also 'krnata', I don't know where from. Unfortunately, the Latin 'carnaceus' seems not to fit too well, as you've been asking yourself. 


Unfortunate twice for today, I must confess that I don’t know the difference between the nasal 'î', and the proper 'â/î'. But we have 'pâlp*â/î*+-ie(followed by a diphtong; =flicker), pâlp*â/î*+-i+-re (the stressed '- i'), scârț*â*ie,'fâsâi', 'fâșâi, dârdâi' (the stress on 'i') and' tic*ă*ie' (the clock ticks), 'dăinuie' (=long-lasting).  Not so many though. 

We do have many other words with '*â'  before the 'r' -  'âr'*: _pârguite (=ripe), pârloagă, cârd, cârcoti,  cârcei (=a muscle stress), cârciumă (=restaurant), pârtie(slope),  desăvârși, bârnă, sârmă, cârlig, cârnat, cârtiță(the animal that mushes),  stârni_. Even 'ârî'-group: 'pârî(=telling on), mârîi/mârâi')(that' s an onomatopeic verb of a dog's anger: 'mrrrr').
There is also the Slavik word '*stâlp*' where we can identify '*âl*' (dentals + 'â'). Other words '_mâl, câlț'_. One more rare group: '*âs*' with fricatives as in '_pâslă (noun), fâșîi/fâșâi, câștig (=win), v*â*j*âi*'_ (onomatopee verbs). And again the occlusive velar 'c' + '*â'* + 't/ț' in: '_cât/e, câți_'

Now, about the stressed sound 'ă' in initial position, I don't think that we have words like these in academic language.

As to Ahvalj 's example of 'râu'(=river) from above, and as far as I  know, the origin is Vulgar Latin '*rius*', and not 'rivus',  that gave us 'rîu'. I am not sure if 'per' + 'rius'  could give 'pârîu' (=a smaller river). 

I am hoping that I have been of some help.


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## ahvalj

One more thing concerning the relationships of the Slavic y and Romanian _â/î_: the shift _a_>_î_ is attested in Slavic borrowings as well, e. g. _župan_>_jupân _"patron", _smętana_>_smântână _"sour milk" (Shevelov GY · 1964 · A prehistory of Slavic: the historical phonology of Common Slavic: 381 — https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJYUZ1ck5vdWE2Q1U&authuser=0), which suggests that this shift in Romanian postdates the first borrowings (in particular, _smętana_ was borrowed in its post 10th century South Slavic form, otherwise it would have shown a vowel between _s_ an _m_). I had already pointed at the absence of Romanian _î_ as a substitution of the Slavic _y_ in borrowings — Shevelov (ibidem: 380) mentions two cases when the Slavic _y_ results in the Romanian_ î_: after _r_ (_rys_>_râs_ "lynx") and _h_ (_xytr_>_hâtru_ "waggish"), of which the first is shared with the fate of the Latin _i_ after _r _(_rivus_>_râu_), and the second is unusual in occurring after the borrowed consonant _h_, which, being velar, may have caused the same development, so I am unsure whether even these two instances of _î_ continue the Slavic sound or were recreated within Romanian.


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## Nino83

Thank you, irinet. So this vowel is present in many different enviroments. 



irinet said:


> Now, about the stressed sound 'ă' in initial position, I don't think that we have words like these in academic language.



And are there stressed 'ă' in other positions or it is only an unstressed vowel?


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## irinet

I  could only think of two academic instances, which find final 'ă' as a stressed vowel: a) in the past tense forms that  we have of the  verbs: 1) 'crea' - 'creă', and 2) 'perpetua' (inf.) -  perpetuă' (3rd person sg, simple perfect). b) And found initially with the present tense of the same verb 'to create', in the 1st person,  plural: 'cre'ăm'.  

Mind that we have the unstressed 'ă'  in 'per'petuă mișcare' (=continuous movement), where the word is an adjective. 

Or the noun in the plural - 'ouă' (eggs), and the past tense 'o'uă' (hatched). And both show the unstressed 'ă'. The same is for the verb 'luă' (= he took).

Hope that I've helped.


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## Nino83

Thank you, irinet. 
Then, we can say that ǎ [ə] is normally an unstressed vowel (except for the simple perfect and some other word) while â/î [ɨ] is often before "nasals", "i", "r", "l", "s" and after "r".


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## irinet

Mostly welcome. 
If you have been doing your research on these vowels and their vicinity, perhaps you can draw some conclusions as well. 
Since I am not a linguist, I cannot be sure of any further details. 

I would have liked you could have more Romanian contributers here, too. More views to your questions would have been better than one or two.

I have a question for you, though. Why are you interested in this?


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## Nino83

irinet said:


> I have a question for you, though. Why are you interested in this?



Just curiosity. I can speak French, Portuguese and Spanish and after studying the phonological changes from Vulgar Latin to Romance languages, it is now easier for me to guess the meaning of new words in those languages (expecially in French, where often morphology changed a lot and it is not easy to guess where the word comes from). 
On the other hand, Romanian â/î is a sound which is not present in the other four languages. 
I'm just curious about it.


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## irinet

Thank you, Nino. I am happy to see that there are people interested in my language evolution.


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## robbie_SWE

irinet said:


> [...]I have also noticed that you are interested in 'c*âr*nat'. It is supposed to have the origin either from the Albanese 'Kernacke' (with the accents on the vowel 'e'), or from the Bulgarian 'kurnace'. There is also 'krnata', I don't know where from. Unfortunately, the Latin 'carnaceus' seems not to fit too well, as you've been asking yourself. [...]



Sorry Irinet, but linguists are quite certain that the term does come from Latin _*carnācius_ or _*carnāceus_ because it has cognates in other Romance languages. For instance Portuguese *carnaz*, Spanish *carnaza*, and Sicilian *carnazzu*. The popular form cârna*ț* (see so*ț* < Latin _socius_) and the fact that the word exists in Megleno-Romanian *cărnat *(N.B. the presence of *ă*) also suggests that it indeed is of Latin origin.


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## irinet

Hi, 

You may be right about the word.  My explanation about "cârnat"  is provided from a dictionary of Etymology.


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## Muhafaka

Nino83 said:


> ăsta
> 
> ăştia
> 
> ăla
> 
> ăia




Each of those words are the shorter versions for:

acesta (masculine) / aceasta (feminine)

aceştia (masculine) / acestea (feminine)

acela (masculine) / aceea (feminine)

aceia (masculine) / acelea (feminine)

All the shorter versions are kinda rude. Is like speaking down upon someone, used to take someones person in vain or it works well when bad mouthing someone. Don't use the shorter versions when you get more skillful, chose the longer version to be more respectful.


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## Muhafaka

And yeah, don't use the longer version for objects, only for people. But use the shorter versions "ăsta" ( translation: this/of this/this one ) / "ăla" ( translation: that/of that/that one ) for objects / animals.


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## francisgranada

As far as I understand, today _ă_ and _â_ represent two different sounds while _â_ and _î_ sound equally. If so, then my question is if they were (supposedly) pronounced differently in the past? In other words, what is the algorithm or the reason of the different spelling (two letters) of the same sound?


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> As far as I understand, today _ă_ and _â_ represent two different sounds while _â_ and _î_ sound equally. If so, then my question is if they were (supposedly) pronounced differently in the past? In other words, what is the algorithm or the reason of the different spelling (two letters) of the same sound?



Etymology. 
Most "â/î" derive from "a" before nasals and in other enviroments.


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## ahvalj

See also here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_alphabet (î versus â).


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## Muhafaka

Nino83 said:


> Etymology.
> Most "â/î" derive from "a" before nasals and in other enviroments.



As a native romanian I can tell you we can see the difference between "î" and "â". Most romanians don't notice it because their brains are wired in that way, but is there, to have something and not noticing it. But if you would do some advanced software recordings, you would see that "â" has a silent "a" in its structure and is a bit longer in length than "î" because usually romanians tend to say "î" faster than "â". And this "î" is pronounced differently only when it is near the letter "i" or "n" or maybe some others, those are the most obvious like "îi" and "în". But if you put a romanian to pronounce a word that has "â" in the middle of the word like "manânc" ( eating ) that person will have the tendency to make the word sound like the "â" from "mâneca" ( sleeve ) that sound somewhat different because "manânc" has those 2x "n" 's before and after "â", and it has the uncontrollable audacity to sound like "î" from the beginning of words, like in "începere" ( starting ) but it still sounds like an "â" because a romanian makes it sound like it, in a forced way. But the simple explanation is that "â" you pronounce it on the head and "î" you pronounce it on the chest. But if you would put a romanian to say a word like "începere" (starting) or "încăpere" ( room ), but not with "î" at the begging but with an "â", you will get something different. If they know the word starts with "â" just by telling them they might pronounce it like an "î" but some will pronounce it like an "â", but if you show them on paper the word starting with "â" their brains are wired to pronounce it "â", but some if are stubborn will pronounce it "î". And the 3rd test would be to ask a romanian to tell you a word that starts with "î" and you on your paper to have "â", but without telling them or showing them and they will pronounce it 99% like they know it is with an "î". But yeah.. as I said the simple explanation is that "â" you pronounce it on the head and "î" you pronounce it on the chest.


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## francisgranada

ahvalj said:


> See also here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_alphabet (î versus â).


Thank you. In fact, many times ago, I had the impression that _â_ was used only in the word _român, Rom__ânia _and the derivatives. According to this article it was really true for a certain period.


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## Nino83

Muhafaka said:


> As a native romanian I can tell you we can see the difference between "î" and "â".



Could you write the difference with IPA symbols? 
All the transcriptions I've read say that these letters are pronounced in the same manner, i.e [ɨ].


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## Christo Tamarin

In my half-a-century-old manual (Romanian for Bulgarians), I remember the following claim:



> The vowel "î" is written as "â" only in the word "român" and in its derivatives in order the country name "România" to look better.


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## francisgranada

The above mentioned Wikipedia article says that _"The letters î and â are phonetically and functionally identical. The reason for using both of them is historical, denoting the language's Latin origin"_. 

Isn't it possible that some people make the difference in the pronunciation of _î _and _â_, being influenced by  the actual spelling itself?


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> Isn't it possible that some people make the difference in the pronunciation of _î _and _â_, being influenced by  the actual spelling itself?



It is one of the things I thought.


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## Muhafaka

Nino83 said:


> Could you write the difference with IPA symbols?
> All the transcriptions I've read say that these letters are pronounced in the same manner, i.e [ɨ].



As I said, the pronunciation difference between "î" and "â" depends on the other letters in the word. But usually "î" has a shorter length because almost all romanians have wired in their brain to pronounce it "on the chest" and "â" will be spoken "on the head". I don't know the exact terminology for "on the chest" or "on the head" , I know singers do sounds "on the head" ( top of the mouth / ceiling ) and "on the chest" ( the vibration stands on the chest/neck and pronounce while exhaling and not keeping the sound on the top of your mouth ).

So basically is the same sound but with different vibrations pronounced.


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## Muhafaka

francisgranada said:


> The above mentioned Wikipedia article says that _"The letters î and â are phonetically and functionally identical. The reason for using both of them is historical, denoting the language's Latin origin"_.
> 
> Isn't it possible that some people make the difference in the pronunciation of _î _and _â_, being influenced by  the actual spelling itself?



Probably some american or british philosopher wrote that Wiki page. But I can tell you that I am working on a video game and making a new language from modern romanian + latin and I can tell you the new alphabet that I created has at least 5 new letters. And by new letters I mean taking some of the already available letters from romanian and decomposing them in 2 letters, so from letters that have 2 sounds I make them separate. I want it to be as phonetical as possible, so there cannot be any confusion about anything.


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## irinet

francisgranada said:


> The above mentioned Wikipedia article says that _"The letters î and â are phonetically and functionally identical. The reason for using both of them is historical, denoting the language's Latin origin"_.
> 
> Isn't it possible that some people make the difference in the pronunciation of _î _and _â_, being influenced by  the actual spelling itself?



The Wikipedia article is perfectly right! 

The fact that we used to interchange those letters during the history, and now we have them both in writing does not mean that we used to pronounce in one way in the remote past or in a different way more recently, or both ways in the present century. How can this be happening so fast?! 

It's only related to the Latin origin, and to our academic staff' urge to showing off two decades ago. We had a strong debate at that time. I still think that bringing those letters together by simply setting new rules up for them was stupid, and now I  can see it's also misleading for you.

Muhafaka , I really cannot understand why you say that those letters do not share the same phonetic symbol?! And what does this relevant topic have to do with your software game in which case I believe you _create and recreate things_?!

And I suppose we don't have the same wireless system either as many of us are not hearing disturbing noise into our heads!


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## Muhafaka

irinet said:


> The Wikipedia article is perfectly right!
> 
> Muhafaka , I really cannot understand why you say that those letters do not share the same phonetic symbol?! And what does this relevant topic have to do with your software game in which case I believe you _create and recreate things_?!
> 
> And I suppose we don't have the same wireless system either as many of us are not hearing disturbing noise into our heads!




<...> maybe you in Bucuresti may have never thought of accents and stuff like that. But here in Iasi / Suceava region, musicality of the words has a way of interpretation. There is more than one version for many letters of our alphabet, and the biggest example is that all the consonants have almost the same damn  [consonant] + [â] sound attached to it when pronounced individually. For example a word that ends in a consonant you will see that there will be a silent [â] after it that your body has the tendency to express it, but you don't! There is an abstinence reaction that makes those words when ending in consonants to have a silent sound of [â] but not expressed totally, like cutting your speech or interrupting your pronunciation at 10 - 20%.


But because you are a romanian you can practice what I will tell you now and you can see the results. For "_â" use your 'head voice' ( pe cap ), and for "__î" use your 'chest voice' ( pe piept ).

But before doing that... try pronounce a few words with "__î" and _"_â", so you can analyse during and after. I'm not talking out of my ass here, I'm just more in to the details about this subject. It is a certain musicality attached to our language ( romanian ) and just because we have the letters that we have in our alphabet and we call it phonetic it does not mean it is complete._


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## irinet

First and foremost, <...>, I think that the discussion should be about standard Romanian! With the varieties of language, this may be a different topic, don't you think?!

Anyway, it depends on what Nino wants to find out from us in  his post.

There are four allophonic instances of the sound:
1. [ɨ̥] partially or totally devocalised; I suggest  'hâd'.  
2. [ɨ]  central position : 'prâslea', 'prânz'.

3. [ʷɨ̹] slightly labial when  preceded by a short [w]. See example of  [luˈʷɨ̹nd] -  'luând';

4. [ə̯ɨ̞] slightly  closed when preceded by a short [ə].  See: 
[ə̯ɨ̞ˈnalt] - 'înalt'. 
(source: Wikipedia) 

Hello, Iași! 
Here's Galați, addressing to you a request. Which from above are 'on the chest' and which 'on the head'? 




Muhafaka said:


> There is more than one version for many letters of our alphabet, and the biggest example is that all the consonants have almost the same damn [consonant] + [â] sound attached to it when pronounced individually. For example a word that ends in a consonant you will see that there will be a silent [â] after it that your body has the tendency to express it, but you don't



Spelling the alphabet and uttering words are two different aspects, one is phonetic and the other is phonological. So, I would think that by considering sound patterns and their vicinities and their various position in words will depart us from the etymological viewing upon the two *letters* at the beginning of our alphabet.

On the other hand, 
1.How do you pronounce, words like 'picant' , 'măcar', 'parc'?! Do you have the same final [î] after each consonant,  which you suppose it is refrained? 
2. And how is the word 'park' pronounced by the British? Do you think they have the same [î] there?
With less aspiration, how can we not stop in time? Residuals are not phonemes, you know? Snoring, neither. 

And again, I strongly doubt that this is related to the Moldovian register. 

What you are saying, makes me instantly think of the Gypsy language, and the influence it has to the way they speak in Romanian.


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## Muhafaka

irinet said:


> Hello, Iași!
> Here's Galați, addressing to you a request. Which from above are 'on the chest' and which 'on the head'?
> 1.How do you pronounce, words like 'picant' , 'măcar', 'parc'?! Do you have the same final [î] after each consonant,  which you suppose it is refrained?
> 2. And how is the word 'park' pronounced by the British? Do you think they have the same [î] there?
> With less aspiration, how can we not stop in time? Residuals are not phonemes, you know? Snoring, neither.
> 
> And again, I strongly doubt that this is related to the Moldovian register.
> 
> What you are saying, makes me instantly think of the Gypsy language, and the influence it has to the way they speak in Romanian.



Ok... I'l take them in order..

- Well first of all is historically about what sound or letter was first and the one added later, "î" or "â". But what I can tell you is that "î" is the "on the chest" and is the low frequency letter, so basically "î" can never have a pitched sound. Even if I know that we have a pitched expresion "âu", but I don't think it can be "îu" since we go the word "parâu" and we can make a pitch sound of that "âu". So yeah that means "â" is the letter that is "on the head" and is the letter that can reach the high pitched sound, but that does not mean we have do to it pitched, usually both "î" or "â" when pronounced normally seem to have the same frequency. And yes I think "â" was before "î", historically speaking.

- Next!... "parc" seems to have a "hî" or a "chî" sound at the end of it. For "picant" seem to have a "h" or "îh" at the end. And for "măcar" this one seems bat s%!^ crazy, seems like a word from an arabic world, but to keep it short and not to get in to details lets just say it has just a silent "â" at the end.

- The "park" in british you have "hâ" or "châ" since the "â" seems a bit of higher frequency and needing to be "on the head" sound.

- We cannot stop in time, I think that residual thing is a design flaw or a control issue that we haven't figured it out.

- Moldovian, gypsy, hungarian... and not only those. We are exposed to many other languages in our media, especially Tv. I think we are exposed to at least 6-7 languages. English, Italian, French, Hungarian, Russian, German, Turkish, Spanish, Gypsy and this are the major ones not to mention that many zones with accents that we have in our country that are similar to what americans, british, scotish, irish have but ours seem to be more than 4-5. What I can say is that romanian people have a challenge on their hands each day when they check out what is on the Tv.


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## danielstan

@nino d'Angelo,
I will state my opinions on the matter and answer some of your questions.

I anticipate here the conclusion: the "ă" and "î/â" are an internal spontaneous evolution of Romanian language (and its Balkanic dialects) under the general tendency of closing the vocals in the Eastern Vulgar Latin (which later became Romanian).
So, in some situations the Latin vocals have evolved as:
lat. _a _> rom. _ă_ > î/â
lat. _o _> rom. _u  _ (e.g. lat._ cognatus _> rom. _cumnat_)
lat. _e _> rom. _i   _ (e.g. lat._ bene _> rom. _bine_)

As other Romanians said, the "ă" in stress syllable is a rarity in Romanian and used in non-academic words (popular variants):
_ăla_ (proper form: _acela_ = it. _quello_), _ăia_ (_aceia_ = it. _quelli_), _ăsta_ (_acesta_ = it. _questo_), _ăștia_ (_aceștia_ = it. _questi_), _ălălalt_ (_celălalt_ = it. _l'altro_), _ăilalți_ (_ceilalți_ = it._ gli altri_).
I see a similarity with the Italian expressions
_sta sera_ / _questa sera_

Romanian linguist Al. Rosetti consider these sounds as an internal development of Romanian language under the influence of the Dacian substratum, although the hypothesis of an import from the neighboring South Slavic languages has been explored and rejected.

Bulgarian has "ă" very frequently used, also in non-stressed position.
E.g. _Б*ъ*лгария_
Also Albanian (although not a Slavic language) has the sound [ə] noted with "ë", also in non-stressed syllable.
E.g. lat. _camisia_ > alb. _këmishë_ (cf. rom. _cămașă_)

The fact that 3 Balkanic languages have this remarkable feature ("ă" in unstressed syllable) is a reason to believe in the action of a pre-Latin substratum (Dacian for Romanian, Thracian for Bulgarian, Illyrian for Albanian) in the region.
From another hand:
Bulgarian has "arrived" in Balkans (probably in the 8th century, I am not sure) later than Albanian and after the Romanian "was born", so the action of a Thracian substratum centuries after the Thracians have been Latinized is dubious.
Also the Thracian, Dacian and Illyrian languages have very few glosses attested usually in Greek sources (Greek alphabet does not have a letter for "ă").
Conclusion:
The action of a paleo-Balkanic substratum on Romanian, Bulgarian and Albanian as explanation for the "ă" in unstressed syllable seems a good explanation, but cannot be demonstrated without doubt.


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## Christo Tamarin

danielstan said:


> Bulgarian has "ă" very frequently used, also in non-stressed position.
> E.g. _Б*ъ*лгария_


Actually, unlike Romanian, *Bulgarian does not distinguish A and Ъ in a non-stressed position*. In Bulgarian, in non-stress positions, whether to write A or Ъ - this is just a matter of orthography.



danielstan said:


> Also Albanian (although not a Slavic language) has the sound [ə] noted with "ë", also in non-stressed syllable.
> E.g. lat. _camisia_ > alb. _këmishë_ (cf. rom. _cămașă_)


What about Albanian? Does Albanian distinguish *a *and* ë *in non-stressed positions?

*About Bulgarian*. Some centuries ago, Bulgarian had three vowels, same as Romanian has now. Those were: A, Ъ, Ѫ. All the development in Bulgarian can be reliably explained in the Slavic background, so no Balkanic substratum is necessary.

The A, Ъ, Ѫ are traced reliably back to protoSlavic and PIE.

In Serbian, Ѫ has merged into U (У), and Ъ has merged into A.

In Bulgarian, all the three A, Ъ, Ѫ have merged into one in non-stressed positions. In stressed positions, just Ѫ has merged into Ъ, and now we have A and Ъ still distinguished in stressed positions. In 1945, the letter Ѫ was removed from the Bulgarian alphabet.

In Bulgarian, in stressed positions, A and Ъ had the same implementation as they have now during the recent millenium, at least.



danielstan said:


> Bulgarian has "arrived" in Balkans (probably in the 8th century, I am not sure) later than Albanian and after the Romanian "was born", so the action of a Thracian substratum centuries after the Thracians have been Latinized is dubious.


Slavic emerged at the middle Danube: present day's Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Western Romania, Northern Serbia.

Bulgarian (i.e. Slavic) arrived to the Southern and Eastern Balkans in the 7th century, under Heraclius the Roman emperor. I would not suppose any Thracian substratum.

By the way, a natural language like Romanian or Bulgarian or Albanian cannot be born. It always evolves.



danielstan said:


> Conclusion:
> The action of a paleo-Balkanic substratum on Romanian, Bulgarian and Albanian as explanation for the "ă" in unstressed syllable seems a good explanation, but cannot be demonstrated without doubt.


In my opinion, *such an explanation is not necessary at all*. Bulgarian can be entirely explained in Slavic background - this is sure. Romanian could also be explained in Romance background. If needed, Bulgarian could be engaged for the explanation, and that would be enough.


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## danielstan

Well, thank you for the explanations on Bulgarian and you have convinced me the Thracian substratum is not to be blamed for its phonological evolution.
I studied the Chyrilic alphabet used in Romanian texts written in *O*ld *C*hurch *S*lavonic starting with the 13th centuries and there I found the same letter  Ъ  used for both sounds [ə] noted with _ă_ and [ɨ] notted with _î/â_. The letter Ѫ was not used.
By "OCS" in Romanian documents I mean a language which approximated the language of the brothers Cyril and Metodius of the 9th century, but had a good amount of words from languages of the 13th centuries (Serbian and Bulgarian words in Wallachian documents, Ucrainian and Russin words in Moldovan documents).
I thought the Bulgarian never had an [ɨ]...

When I said between quotes the Romanian language "has been born" I meant the event (which cannot be precisely situated in time) when the Vulgar Latin spoken in Balkans has became a Romance language, i.e. proto-Romanian (a.k.a. common Romanian, spoken at north and at south at the Danube up to Jirecek line).
This event is approximated (with imprecision, because of the lack of written texts) in the 7th or 6th centuries,
but is reconstructed with the first and most radical phonetic rule that governed the evolution of Romanian:
- the rhotacism of intervocalic /LL/ => a phonetic rule that affected almost all Romanian words of Latin origin (there are very few exception of religious and savant words of Latin origin which could be explain as imports from Latin to South Slavic and further to Romanian),
but has not affected any Romanian word of Slavic origin.
e.g. lat. _scala _> rom. _scară _(rhotacism)
but slavic _mila _> rom. _milă  _(no rothacism)

Q1: Do you pronounce the letter  Ъ in _Б*ъ*лгария  _same as the letter  Ъ in _Рум*ъ*ния_?
What about the letter  Ъ in _С*ъ*рбия_?
Q2: I always heard (on Bulgarian TV) the word _пари _("money") pronounced as _п*ъ*-ри_ ("_pă_-_ri_", stress on 2nd syllable), although the spelling is with "_a_". Is this word an example of what you said before, that "_a_" in non-stressed syllable is pronounced "_ă_"?
If so, is this spelling with "a" a spelling corresponding to an earlier stage of Bulgarian language where "a" in unstressed syllable was pronounced [a]?


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## ahvalj

Yet, what happened to the pre-Slavic population of Moesia? Was it exterminated like Indians in the USA or Argentina? Or did it switch the language to what is now known as Bulgarian? Anthropology and genetics seem to strongly suggest the latter. In this connection, we inevitably come to the conclusion that descendants of the same Daco-Moesians to the north of the Danube now speak Romanian, whereas to the south of it they now speak Bulgarian. Regardless of whether the Daco-Moesian (and Thracian) was preserved to the time of the Slavic invasion, and to what extent, the pronunciation habits of native Daco-Moesian and new Vulgar Latin speakers in those lands should have been pretty similar, so the palaeobalkanic substrate could have influenced some aspects of the phonetic development in both Romanian and Bulgarian in a comparable way.


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## danielstan

Well the Thracians at the  south of Danube have passed through 2 major languages shifts:
- once from Thracian to Vulgar Latin after the incorporation of Balkan Peninsula in Roman Empire (from 1th century BC to 7th - 8th century AD)
- second, the latinophone populations described above have switched to South Slavic languages after the arrival of Slavs in Balkans.

The Slavs have inhabited (mixed with Romanians) also the teritory of Romania at north of Danube (there are a lot of Slavic toponyms in Romania), but they have been assimilated by the Romanians in the end.

There was a Bulgaro-Romanian bilinguism at north and at south of Danube (proven by_ linguistic calques_ that exist in Romanian (that I know of) and possibly in Bulgarian (I have not studied them)).

Even today there are small "islands" of latinophone populations which speak Romance languages (Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Istro-Romanians) in a big Slavic "sea" (but also there are Aromanians in Greece and Albania).
The process of assimilation of the Balkanic latinophone populations was gradual and continuous up to our days.

I would give the paleo-Balkanic substrata some merit in the evolution of Romanian, Bulgarian and Albanian only if the phonetic changes could not be explained in other credible ways.

For Romanian language remains valid the observation that the vocals inherited from Latin had the tendency to close (in some contexts),
for all 3 sets of vocals:
_a _> _ă_ > î/â
_o _> _u 
e _> _i_
So we have this linguistic fact (of closing the vocals in Romanian in some contexts) and this could be explained in 3 ways:
- internal evolution of the language (without any particular influence from substratum or from neighbor languages), but justified by the "human" laziness (reducing the effort of opening the mouth when pronouncing vocals)
- paleo-Balkanic substratum (hypothesis to be considered, but it cannot be proved without doubt as the glosses we know from Dacian and Thracian are a few and possibly wrongly reproduced in Greek or Latin alphabet)
- influence from neighbor languages (out of the question, in my opinion)


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## Christo Tamarin

danielstan said:


> I studied the Chyrilic alphabet used in Romanian texts written in *O*ld *C*hurch *S*lavonic starting with the 13th centuries and there I found the same letter  Ъ  used for both sounds [ə] noted with _ă_ and [ɨ] notted with _î/â_. The letter Ѫ was not used.
> By "OCS" in Romanian documents I mean a language which approximated the language of the brothers Cyril and Metodius of the 9th century, but had a good amount of words from languages of the 13th centuries (Serbian and Bulgarian words in Wallachian documents, Ucrainian and Russin words in Moldovan documents).


You mean there are Romanian words in the texts in OCS and in those words the sounds [ə] was noted with _ă_ and [ɨ] was noted with _î/â_. If so, this was a text from about 1800 (+-50). At that time, in Bulgarian, Ѫ had been merged into Ъ already.

This is not actually related to the Romanian language. Some centuries ago, on the territory of present day Romania there was Slavophone population among with Romanophone and Hungarophone ones.

The letter Ѫ was used in Bulgaria/Wallachia/Moldova only. Russians and Serbian wrote OY instead. In modern ChurchSlavonic, even in Bulgaria, the Russian edition dominates and the letter Ѫ is not used. It was used in modern Bulgarian until 1945. Here is an inscription in Bulgarian from 1230 where we can see all the three vowels A,Ъ,Ѫ.



danielstan said:


> I thought the Bulgarian never had an [ɨ].



Considering old languages, we can never be sure of the exact sounds. 

The modern Romanian [ɨ] evolved from a very old -AN-, eg.
The Slavic/Bulgarian Ѫ evolved also from -AN- or from -ON. The old Slavic Ѫ sound is preserved in modern Polish, approximately -ON-.

In Bulgarian, the development should be -ON- > -ЪN- > -ЪN-, approximately. 

There was a stage, probably at -ЪN-, where the Bulgarian Ѫ and the predecessor of the Romanian [ɨ] coincided. At that stage, in both Bulgarian and Romanian, there were the three vowels A,Ъ,Ѫ. 

This thesis is supported by another fact. In 18th century Romanian textx written in Curillic script, these letters A,Ъ,Ѫ were used appropriately: .. ПѪЙNѢ ..



danielstan said:


> Q1: Do you pronounce the letter  Ъ in _Б*ъ*лгария  _same as the letter  Ъ in _Рум*ъ*ния_?
> What about the letter  Ъ in _С*ъ*рбия_?


At present day, yes. There is just one sound Ъ in Bulgarian heard in _Б*ъ*лгари, Рум*ъ*ния _and_ С*ъ*рбия. _
You can freely use the Romanian _ă _sound. Actually, the Bulgarian Ъ has a very wide range of implemetation. As I have already mentioned, in unstressed positions, any implementation between A and Ъ (including A and Ъ) are acceptable. In the stressed positions, you are free to use Romanian Ă, Turkish I or Albanian Ë without noticed foreign accent.

*Some note about the word Romania*. In its modern meaning, it is a neologism. In the inscription of 1230, this word Рѡманиѫ is met (in Accusative) with a pure stressed -A- sound as in Greek. The meaning was "the country of Constantinople, the Roman Empire". The modern meaning of the Romania dates from the 19th century. If the Christian Eastern Roman Empire (a.k.a. Bysantium) had survived, its recognized name would be Romania. In the 19th century, that name was free to be usurped by the unified Wallachia and Moldova.



danielstan said:


> Q2: I always heard (on Bulgarian TV) the word _пари _("money") pronounced as _п*ъ*-ри_ ("_pă_-_ri_", stress on 2nd syllable), although the spelling is with "_a_". Is this word an example of what you said before, that "_a_" in non-stressed syllable is pronounced "_ă_"?
> If so, is this spelling with "a" a spelling corresponding to an earlier stage of Bulgarian language where "a" in unstressed syllable was pronounced [a]?


Yes, in Bulgarian, in unstressed positions, whether to write A or Ъ (or Ѫ before 1945), this is just a matter of orthography. 

Especially for the word _пари, _it is a loanword from Turkish and has no ancient spelling in Bulgarian.


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## Christo Tamarin

ahvalj said:


> Yet, what happened to the pre-Slavic population of Moesia? Was it exterminated like Indians in the USA or Argentina? Or did it switch the language to what is now known as Bulgarian? Anthropology and genetics seem to strongly suggest the latter. In this connection, we inevitably come to the conclusion that descendants of the same Daco-Moesians to the north of the Danube now speak Romanian, whereas to the south of it they now speak Bulgarian. Regardless of whether the Daco-Moesian (and Thracian) was preserved to the time of the Slavic invasion, and to what extent, the pronunciation habits of native Daco-Moesian and new Vulgar Latin speakers in those lands should have been pretty similar, so the palaeobalkanic substrate could have influenced some aspects of the phonetic development in both Romanian and Bulgarian in a comparable way.


Yes and no.

The pre-Slavic population of Moesia at time when Slavic came (the 7th century) was either Romanophone or Hellenophone. The Christianity in the Roman Empire did not allow other languages to survive on that territory.

However, two notes arise.
Note_1: The Upper Moesia, now in Serbia, was a territory of native Slavophonia, most probably.
Note_2: These were Romans who first gave the name Moesia to that territory. Before Romans, there were no Moesia or Moesians in Europe at all. Before Romans, a country with that name existed in Anatolia (Asia Minor).

This was about Moesia. Now about Dacians. There are claims in the history that Dacians were really exterminated as they opposed to the Romans. Nothing is known in fact. Anyway, a reasonable view at that topic could be the following: Dacian do not exist in the reality of the linguistics. Dacian is entirely in the zone of the imaginary things. E.g., same as Moesian - there was no Moesian in Europe for sure.

Anyway, this is an off-topic perhaps. We can continue the discussion at another place.


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## danielstan

Well, Hristo, is a pleasure to discuss with a Bulgarian aspects of the history of Romanian and Bulgarian language, because those languages clearly interracted in the past and have influenced each other.
I got from you an important information that was wrongly understood (misunderstood) by may Romanian historians:



Christo Tamarin said:


> Here is an inscription in Bulgarian from 1230 where we can see all the three vowels A,Ъ,Ѫ.



the source of the royal name Io(an) which was used as a nobiliar name by Wallachian and Moldovan kings (voievods) in their OCS documents.
I read a not-convincing explanation that a supposed previous Romanian (Wallchian or Moldovan) voievod Ioan (of which there are no written sources) was referred in the nomenclature of the next voievods with the formulae like "Ioan Radul voevod" or "Io Mihail voevod" (in the 14th century Ioan was prefered, later Io has remain in all documents) etc.
They say a similar tradition was in Serbia where the name Stefan (of Stefan Dushan) was used as a prefix by the following kings (I was not able to verify this info).

Now I see the Bulgarian kings used the Ioan prefix, too.
What do you know about it? It was noted that the Ioan/Io prefix was written invariably with Greek letters (Iota and Omega), thus a Byzantine tradition could be its source.




Christo Tamarin said:


> *Some note about the word Romania*. In its modern meaning, it is a neologism. In the inscription of 1230, this word Рѡманиѫ is met (in Accusative) with a pure stressed -A- sound as in Greek. The meaning was "the country of Constantinople, the Roman Empire". The modern meaning of the Romania dates from the 19th century. If the Christian Eastern Roman Empire (a.k.a. Bysantium) had survived, its recognized name would be Romania. In the 19th century, that name was free to be usurped by the unified Wallachia and Moldova.


Well, you have an intuition in the good direction, but not up to the end.
The word _*România *_(with a [ɨ] sound in it) is, indeed, a savant word (invented by cultivated persons in order to emphasis the Latin origin or us) from the word _*rumân *_(which is not invented, because it can be justified as coming from lat. romanus with the phonetic rule lat. *AN *> rom. *âN *applied).
First written attestation is from a Romanian document (https://tiparituriromanesti.wordpre...-mare-emis-la-suceava-pe-13-martie-1489-6997/) written in OCS in the 15th century where a certain noble (boyar) Bodea Rumârul ((Бодѣ РȢмърȢʌа) was mentioned (the rhotacism of N was a regional feature of Romanian).
Take in consideration also the ethnic name of Aromanians in their language (*armân*).
But the idea of the Byzantine word Romania (which is the source of the Turkish word Rumelia) and meant the entire latinophone area in Balkan Peninsula
was not usurped by the modern name *România.*


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## danielstan

Christo Tamarin said:


> *Considering old languages, we can never be sure of the exact sounds. *
> There was a stage, probably at -ЪN-, where the Bulgarian Ѫ and the predecessor of the Romanian [ɨ] coincided. At that stage, in both Bulgarian and Romanian, there were the three vowels A,Ъ,Ѫ.
> *This thesis is supported by another fact. In 18th century Romanian textx written in Curillic script, these letters A,Ъ,Ѫ were used appropriately: .. ПѪЙNѢ ..*


Well, to find out how a sound was pronounced in old times having some written sources is a difficult task, knowing that the orthography used in a certain century could be justified in some cases by tradition, not by actual phonetic reasons. In 15th and 16th centuries Romanian written in Cyrilic used the same letter *Ъ *for both _ă _and _â._

The history of the sound *â* in Romanian is reconstructed by reconstructing the chronology of some phonetic rules (while the orthography used over centuries is not a certain criterion).
The sound â was a later evolution of the sound _ă_.
In Aromanian there is a sound *â (cf. armân)* , so it is probable it appeared in proto-Romanian (before the split of Romanian and Aromanian).

The phonetic rule
lat. _AN_ > rom._ âN _
has acted upon all cases where applicable (probably with very few exceptions).
This phonetic rule has not affected the Slavic words in Romanian
(e.g. slav _rana _> rom. _rană_)
but with very few exceptions already mentioned (slav _stopan _> rom._ stăp_ân).
With these linguistic facts we may reason that the sound â appeared in Romanian before the Slavic words entered in this language and lasted briefly after the beginning of the Slavic influence (supossedly in 8th century) on Romanian vocabulary.

The hypotesis that the â sound appeared in the 18th century based on a certain orthography (which made distinction between _ă and _â) could not be supported by the Slavic words not subject to the rule
lat. _AN_ > rom._ âN._
It is more reasonable to assume that the orthography has adapted after some centuries for distinguishing 2 different sounds,
knowing that in the tradition of the OCS was old enough to be forgotten.
As historical facts, in the 14th and 15th centuries the grammarians used by the Wallachian and Moldovan voievods for editing the official documents were many times Slavic people coming from south of the Danube (fleeing from the Otoman persecutions) - some of those cases are documented. Also there were Romanians editors for those documents and their writing was full of Romanian _linguistic calques _in OCS texts, easily recognizable.
By 18th century the presence of Slavic editors could have been only accidental, thus is reasonable to conceive that some Romanian editors took the initiative to use different letters for different sounds (_ă _and â).


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## ahvalj

Christo Tamarin said:


> Yes and no.
> 
> The pre-Slavic population of Moesia at time when Slavic came (the 7th century) was either Romanophone or Hellenophone. The Christianity in the Roman Empire did not allow other languages to survive on that territory.



I am not aware of any positive evidence about the complete disappearance of the aboriginal languages in the Northern Balkans to the time of the Slavic invasion (and Albanian somehow managed to survive in the western part of this area). Anyway, some substrate traits may persist even during the second language shift: for example, if modern French countryside speakers start switching to English, and then, after several generations, to Arabic, their Arabic language will bear signs of both the French and English accents.

However, for the purpose of this thread, it is important that the substrate in parts of the later Romanian and Bulgarian language areas was the same or at least related, and the pronunciation habits of Daco-Moesians (see below) or Latin-speaking former Daco-Moesians at both sides of the Danube must have been at least partially comparable. That's why I'm trying not to reduce the thread question only to the late contacts between Romanian and Bulgarian speakers.



Christo Tamarin said:


> However, two notes arise.
> Note_1: The Upper Moesia, now in Serbia, was a territory of native Slavophonia, most probably.
> Note_2: These were Romans who first gave the name Moesia to that territory. Before Romans, there were no Moesia or Moesians in Europe at all. Before Romans, a country with that name existed in Anatolia (Asia Minor).
> 
> This was about Moesia. Now about Dacians. There are claims in the history that Dacians were really exterminated as they opposed to the Romans. Nothing is known in fact. Anyway, a reasonable view at that topic could be the following: Dacian do not exist in the reality of the linguistics. Dacian is entirely in the zone of the imaginary things. E.g., same as Moesian - there was no Moesian in Europe for sure.



Could you comment the pages 130–150 in _Katičić R · 1976 · Ancient languages of the Balkans. Part one _(https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJYjZlQk1YbkVUYmc), namely the mentioning of the Danubian Moesians/Mysians? In particular, the passage cited from Strabo:



> …and the Getae lived on either side the Ister, as did also the Mysi, these also being Thracians and identical with the people who are now called Moesi; from these Mysi sprang also the Mysi who now live between the Lydians and the Phrygians and Trojans.
> …
> And they live there in Thrace now and are called "Moesi" — whether it be that their people of earlier times were so called and that in Asia the name was changed to "Mysi", or (what is more apposite to history and the declaration of the poet) that in earlier times their people in Thrace were called "Mysi."


http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/7C*.html


Concerning the extinction matters. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA...s#Frequencies_in_some_ethnic_groups_in_Europe) provides the following percentages of male haplogroups among several relevant nations:

Bulgarians: *R1b:* 11,0; *R1a:* 17,3; *I:* 27,5; *E1b1b:* 19,7; *J:* 18,1
Romanians: *R1b:* 10,1; *R1a: *20,1; *I: *5,6+17,3+5,0=27,9; *E1b1b: *19,6; *J: *2,2+7,3+8,9=18,4 (almost identical to the Bulgarian data)
Albanians (Macedonia): *R1b: *18,8; *R1a: *1,6; *I: *4,5+12,5=17; *E1b1b: *39,1; *J: *6,3+15,6=21,9
Poles *R1b:* 16,4; *R1a:* 56,4; *I:* 17,8; *E1b1b:* 4,0; *J:* 1,0
Ukrainians: *R1b: *2,0; *R1a:* 54,0; *I:* 18; *E1b1b:* 4; *J:* 6.

Note the high frequency of the haplogroups E1b1b and J among Bulgarians, Romanians and Macedonian Albanians vs. their much smaller percentage in Poles and Ukrainians. That suggests that a considerable number of Bulgarian males descend patrilineally from the non-Slavic population, which spoke either Vulgar Latin or the remnants of Thracian and other related languages at the time of the Slavic invasion.


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## danielstan

Deducing linguistic facts or influences from genetics studies seems to me a modern pseudo-science.

What would a genetics study reveal about the modern populations of South America?
Probably they will reveal a mixture of descendents of native Amerindians, European colonists and African slaves.
Linguistically their vast majority are monolinguals speaking a variant of Spanish or Portuguese (and a small percentage of bilinguals speaking also some pre-columbian languages).


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## irinet

I would like to add that there is a *unique sound *that is represented by two letters: the old 'î' and the newest 'â' (around 1779) for the simple need of differentiating some words.

I am not into this theory of having two sounds for [î]. '*Â*' is a *letter* that was created for who knows the reasons, and which still gives us much trouble nowadays.

Also, I don't like the article about 'Rumelia'. This word (coming from Turkish?) could not give the name of my country.

And wow, I have never heard of this supposition before: that *Dacia is an imaginary land of mute population (Burebista, *a great king who ruled over Moesia and Dacia long before the Romans / *Deceneu, Scorilo)!  
Sorry, but It means that I am from Mars!
*
_What books are some people reading?!

Unfortunately, languages die indeed when they got so old... AD, or when we lose or want to lose any track._


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## ahvalj

danielstan said:


> Deducing linguistic facts or influences from genetics studies seems to me a modern pseudo-science.
> 
> What would a genetics study reveal about the modern populations of South America?
> Probably they will reveal a mixture of descendents of native Amerindians, European colonists and African slaves.
> Linguistically their vast majority are monolinguals speaking a variant of Spanish or Portuguese (and a small percentage of bilinguals speaking also some pre-columbian languages).


The above percentages reveal that Romanians and Bulgarians partially represent descendants of the same population, which adds to the discussion of the phonetic similarities of both languages a different dimension. South America spoke hundreds of various languages, from several (many?) language families, before the Spanish and Portuguese conquest, whereas Daco-Moesians were the same or almost the same at both sides of the Danube. Imagine Transylvanians had switched in the late Middle Ages to Hungarian and Wallachians/Moldavians to Turkish: speakers of both would probably have had some similar traits in their pronunciation, which then could have been discussed in the context of that alternative Balkanic Sprachbund.


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