# Romanian Words of Slavic Origin



## LilianaB

I am interested which commonly used Romanian words are of Slavic origin. I am not sure if I posted it in the right forum but I hope so. If not, please kindly transfer it to the right place.


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## robbie_SWE

I think this subject has been discussed earlier but I don't remember where. 

Have you tried searching through old threads? 

Best Regards, 

 robbie


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## LilianaB

Yes. I did, but I did not find anything. Thank you.


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## robbie_SWE

LilianaB said:


> Yes. I did, but I did not find anything. Thank you.



Ok, since I'm unsure if lists are promoted (I seem to recall several threads being closed because of this), would you like me to send you a PM instead? 

Just send me a message and let me know 

Best Regards, 

Robbie


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## LilianaB

Thank you. Robbie. I don't see a reason why this thread should be closed. Maybe they were in the wrong forum. I am just interested in some basic words, commonly used, not necessarily the whole vocabulary.

Apparently there are not too many words of Slavic origin in Romanian. This is why I thought I could post such a thread.


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## robbie_SWE

LilianaB said:


> Thank you. Robbie. I don't see a reason why this thread should be closed. Maybe they were in the wrong forum. I am just interested in some basic words, commonly used, not necessarily the whole vocabulary.



  Ok, here's a very basic list from the top of my head: 

a iubi (sl. ljubiti) = to love
a opri (sl. opreti) = to stop
a (se) trezi (sl. trĕzviti) = to wake up
a primi (sl. prijęti, priimą) = to receive
a lovi (sl. loviti) = to hit
obicei (sl. obyčaj)= habit
boală (sl. bolĭ) = illness, sickness
grijă (sl. gryža) = worry, care
sticlă (sl. stῑklo) = glass
război (sl. razboj) = war 
daltă (sl. dlato) = chisel (N.B. one of the earliest attested Slavic loans; before the 11th century)
vină (sl. vina) = fault, guilt
milă (sl. milŭ) = pity 

Words that entered Romanian have undergone a form of "Latinisation" when it comes to syntax, grammar and spelling.

Also worth noticing is that the meanings have changed as well. For instance *grijă *(< Bulgarian) had the original meaning of "dysentery" and *a lovi* (< Slavic) meant "to capture, to hunt". 

Hope this helped! 

Best Regards,


Robbie


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## LilianaB

Thank you Robbi. This is very interesting. Do you feel like there are a lot of words of Slavic origin in Romanian or just some sporadic loans?


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## robbie_SWE

LilianaB said:


> Thank you Robbi. This is very interesting. Do you feel like there are a lot of words of Slavic origin in Romanian or just some sporadic loans?



  I think (actually, I know) that Romanian had more Slavic words before, but that is not the case anymore. Studies have shown that appr. 10 % of contemporary vocabulary is of Slavic origin, in other word 1 in ten words. These words are often used so this group might not change that much even though linguists have seen a tendency in contemporary Romanian to favour words of Romance origin. 

I personally don't mind them, but they don't always feel "natural", if you know what I mean. They sometimes have an archaic tone and neologisms are preferred. 

When it comes to the sporadic nature of these loans, I don't believe them to be sporadic at all.

  For instance many taxonomic names for fish, especially the ones found in the Danube, have names borrowed from Bulgarian since Bulgarian fishermen used to sell fish in Romanian markets (e.g. *știucă *"pike"). The same thing happened to some vegetables like *castravete *("cucumber") which also is from Bulgarian, since they were grown in Bulgaria and sold in Romanian markets. I believe that this has happened in every language, even in the other Romance languages (mostly loans from Arabic). 

When it comes to basic words like *a iubi* "to love", the logic explanation is that the Latin verb *amō* was far too close to the Romanian verb *a avea* "to have" (< lat. hăbēre), which is declined as *(eu) am*. Linguists presume that many Latin words were present in early Romanian, but disappeared early on because of their propensity of being confusing. The solution was to adopt words that weren't prone to confusion, and since Romania was and still is bordered by mostly Slavic speaking people the source of these words is natural.


Robbie


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## LilianaB

Thank you. This is very interesting. Romanian is definitely similar to Latin, since I understand a lot of written Romanian as I know basic Latin and Spanish. I just made this discovery today. I had some strange idea that Romanian was a Romance language, yet totally incomprehensible to someone who knows Latin or Spanish, except for some individual words.

* sorry about the double written. It cannot be edited


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## Hulalessar

Accordingly to this "roughly a fifth of spoken Romanian vocabulary is based on common Slavic roots".


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## robbie_SWE

Hulalessar said:


> Accordingly to this "roughly a fifth of spoken Romanian vocabulary is based on common Slavic roots".



Hulalessar, this article has been criticised for being strongly influenced by the political atmosphere of the 1950's which was excessively Soviet friendly. 

For instance:* tata* is derived from latin _tata_ and only coincides with the Slavic counterpart. 

Many of the words mentioned are also really old and have fallen out of use, thus hinting that the 20 % Slavic vocabulary is not nearly as high today as it was 200 years ago. 

Robbie


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## tFighterPilot

I wonder, is a distinction made between words that are originally part of the language and loanwords? For example, are "Mersi" (from French Merci) and Adorabil (from French "Adorable") counted as Romanian words of Latin origin?


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## robbie_SWE

tFighterPilot said:


> I wonder, is a distinction made between words that are originally part of the language and loanwords? For example, are "Mersi" (from French Merci) and Adorabil (from French "Adorable") counted as Romanian words of Latin origin?



Usually these are generally considered to be of Latin origin even if they aren't directly inherited. In dictionaries both sources are usually cited. 

Robbie


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## Hulalessar

robbie_SWE said:


> Hulalessar, this article has been criticised for being strongly influenced by the political atmosphere of the 1950's which was excessively Soviet friendly.



I have nothing like the expertise to comment on that. However, I have referred to _Blackwell's Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe_ and the same figure of 20% is given with the observation that some estimates put the percentage appreciably higher. Apart from that I restrict myself to the general observation that the number of words of                    _X _origin in language _Y_ depends on who is doing the counting.


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## terredepomme

My guess is that in colloquial speech, the Slavic ratio is high, whereas in formal or scientific register, Latin words are predominant, since most professional terms are coined with Latin roots.


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## francisgranada

robbie_SWE said:


> ... When it comes to basic words like *a iubi* "to love", the logic explanation is that the Latin verb *amō* was far too close to the Romanian verb *a avea* "to have" (< lat. hăbēre), which is declined as *(eu) am*. Linguists presume that many Latin words were present in early Romanian, but disappeared early on because of their propensity of being confusing. The solution was to adopt words that weren't prone to confusion, and since Romania was and still is bordered by mostly Slavic speaking people the source of these words is natural


I don't believe that in happend this way.   

Some Slavic words may have been also entered the Romanian as "religious terms", e.g. (from the Lord's prayer):

_Şi ne iartă nouă greşelile noastre, precum şi noi iertăm greşiţilor noştri; Şi nu ne duce pe noi în ispită, ci ne izbăveşte de cel rău. 
_(I don't know the origin of _Şi_, _iartă, ci _and _rău)_


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## francisgranada

robbie_SWE said:


> ... For instance:* tata* is derived from latin _tata_ and only coincides with the Slavic counterpart.


It's possible, but it's interesting that in most of the romance languages we have the continuation of the Latin_ pater _and not _tata._ On the other hand, tata, ata, atta etc. exist independently in other languages, too. 

An other curiosity: The Lord's prayer begins with following words:
Tatăl nostru, Care eşti în ceruri, ...

The oldest version (I think) from the 16th century, instead, begins with the following words:
Parintele nostru ce iesti in ceriu, ...


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## Ben Jamin

robbie_SWE said:


> For instance:* tata* is derived from latin _tata_ and only coincides with the Slavic counterpart.



Could you present the transformation chain? 
By the way, the Welsh hypothese (from Welsh ‘tad’) is another possibility.


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## francisgranada

According to Wikipedia (the English version), about 14% of Romanian words are of Slavic origin and about 38% of French and Italian origin:  

_"Since the 19th century, many modern words were borrowed from the other Romance languages, especially from French and Italian (for example: birou "desk, office", avion "airplane", exploata "exploit"). It was estimated that about 38% of the number of words in Romanian are of French and/or Italian origin (in many cases both languages)..." 
_
(There is also a minor number of German, Hungarian, Turkish anf Greek loan words)


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## robbie_SWE

Ben Jamin said:


> Could you present the transformation chain?
> By the way, the Welsh hypothese (from Welsh ‘tad’) is another possibility.



Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a suitable transformation chain. However the DEX entry provides us with the Latin origin because of older forms (archaic *tatâne*), its presence in related languages (_tato_ in several Italian dialects) and the declension of the word which does not coincide with the way Slavic words are declined. 



francisgranada said:


> According to Wikipedia (the English version), about 14% of Romanian words are of Slavic origin and about 38% of French and Italian origin:
> 
> _"Since the 19th century, many modern words were borrowed from the other Romance languages, especially from French and Italian (for example: birou "desk, office", avion "airplane", exploata "exploit"). It was estimated that about 38% of the number of words in Romanian are of French and/or Italian origin (in many cases both languages)..."
> _
> (There is also a minor number of German, Hungarian, Turkish anf Greek loan words)



The same article also estimates that between 75-85 % of modern day Romanian is directly or indirectly of Latin origin. 

Robbie


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## Claudiopolis

francisgranada said:


> I don't believe that in happend this way.
> 
> Some Slavic words may have been also entered the Romanian as "religious terms", e.g. (from the Lord's prayer):
> 
> _Şi ne iartă nouă greşelile noastre, precum şi noi iertăm greşiţilor noştri; Şi nu ne duce pe noi în ispită, ci ne izbăveşte de cel rău.
> _(I don't know the origin of _Şi_, _iartă, ci _and _rău)_



_"Şi" - from Latin "sic"_
"_iartă_, iertare" - from Latin "libertare"
"ci" - from Latin "quid"
"_rău_" - from Latin "reus"


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## DarkChild

robbie_SWE said:


> Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a suitable transformation chain. However the DEX entry provides us with the Latin origin because of older forms (archaic *tatâne*), its presence in related languages (_tato_ in several Italian dialects) and the declension of the word which does not coincide with the way Slavic words are declined.
> 
> 
> 
> The same article also estimates that between 75-85 % of modern day Romanian is directly or indirectly of Latin origin.
> 
> Robbie


In Bulgarian, one of the words for father is *tatko. *

By the way, until not long ago liturgy in Romanian churches was done in Old Bulgarian (Church Slavonic) and Bulgarian was the language of administration a couple of centuries ago, thus most of the Slavic vocabulary is a Bulgarian heritage.


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## Anicetus

robbie_SWE said:


> When it comes to basic words like ** "to love", the logic explanation is that the Latin verb ** was far too close to the Romanian verb ** "to have" (< lat. hăbēre), which is declined as *(eu) am*. Linguists presume that many Latin words were present in early Romanian, but disappeared early on because of their propensity of being confusing. The solution was to adopt words that weren't prone to confusion, and since Romania was and still is bordered by mostly Slavic speaking people the source of these words is natural.




I know very little about Romanian, so I apologise if I'm completely wrong, but even that 1st person singular present form (verbs are conjugated, by the way, not declined ) of _a avea_ looks like it could be Slavic influence. In classical Latin the 1st person singular present indicative tense of _habere_ is _habeo_, while _habeam_ is its equivalent in the conjunctive. In fact, the only verb I can think of with -m in the ending for 1st person singular present indicative is _esse_ ~ _sum_ ("to be") with its derivatives, such as _posse_ ~ _possum_ ("to be able to"), but even this has been replaced by the regular ending in Romanian and other Romance languages. The ending -m could have been analogically taken from some other indicative and all conjunctive tenses, but as far as I know, this didn't happen in any other Romance languages or for verbs other than _a avea_ in Romanian. In Proto-Slavic, on the other hand, the equivalent of "to have" -- _iměti_ -- was one of the several verbs with the athematic ending -mь for the 1st person singular present: _imamь_.

Anyway, my conclusion is that Romance- and Slavic-speaking communities on the territory of present-day Romania must have been very close to each other and communicated frequently. I don't find it likely that the idea was "these two words are too similar, let's see what words people in neighbouring countries have".


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## robbie_SWE

Anicetus said:


> I know very little about Romanian, so I apologise if I'm completely wrong, but even that 1st person singular present form (verbs are conjugated, by the way, not declined ) of _a avea_ looks like it could be Slavic influence. In classical Latin the 1st person singular present indicative tense of _habere_ is _habeo_, while _habeam_ is its equivalent in the conjunctive. In fact, the only verb I can think of with -m in the ending for 1st person singular present indicative is _esse_ ~ _sum_ ("to be") with its derivatives, such as _posse_ ~ _possum_ ("to be able to"), but even this has been replaced by the regular ending in Romanian and other Romance languages. The ending -m could have been analogically taken from some other indicative and all conjunctive tenses, but as far as I know, this didn't happen in any other Romance languages or for verbs other than _a avea_ in Romanian. In Proto-Slavic, on the other hand, the equivalent of "to have" -- _iměti_ -- was one of the several verbs with the athematic ending -mь for the 1st person singular present: _imamь_.
> 
> Anyway, my conclusion is that Romance- and Slavic-speaking communities on the territory of present-day Romania must have been very close to each other and communicated frequently. I don't find it likely that the idea was "these two words are too similar, let's see what words people in neighbouring countries have".



  Scriban (1939) mentions that the Romanian *(eu) am *is a contraction of *avem*.

Concerning your final comment; I don't mean that people just decided to "see what words people in neighbouring countries have" and then adopted them. I believe that both words were used simultaneously by people. However I believe that one went out of use because of it being too similar to another word in circulation. Is this situation implausible? 


Robbie


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## francisgranada

I think it has no real sense to to try to guess why this or that word is not used or why another word is used instead,  until we have no written document that we could rely on.


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## robbie_SWE

francisgranada said:


> I think it has no real sense to to try to guess why this or that word is not used or why another word is used instead,  until we have no written document that we could rely on.



I agree, I just wanted to provide one of the theories out there.


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## francisgranada

robbie_SWE said:


> I agree, I just wanted to provide one of the theories out there.


No problem . Don't you know some Romanian etymological dictionary on the net?


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## robbie_SWE

francisgranada said:


> No problem . Don't you know some Romanian etymological dictionary on the net?



Indeed I do  The most popular one is dexonline.ro (only in Romanian I'm afraid).


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## francisgranada

Tak. Mulțumesc. Thanks.  Putting together all my linguistic knowledges and a bit of phantasy,  I'm able to understand Romanian texts of this kind (to a certain limit, of course). So thank you once more.


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## francisgranada

Two observations concerning the verb _amare _(to love):

1. In Romanian we have *a iubi*, while in Spanish and Italian, the Latin "amare" continues to exist, but on the other hand we have "innovative" solutions, too: Italian *ti voglio bene* (I love you, lit. "I want good to you", from Lat. "velle" and "bene") and Spanish *te quiero* (I love you, lit. "I want you", from Lat. "quaerere").

Thus we could hypothesize, that the verb "amare" was suppressed (to a certaine degree) in the colloquial speach (maybe considered too "strong"), and other expressions were used instead in the "everyday situations". 

(This not an "oficial" theory, of course, maybe the absence of te verb "amare" in Romanian has nothing to do with the mentioned Spanish and Italian expressions ...) 

2. It's interesting though that for the noun "love" (It. _amore_, Sp. _amor_, Lat. _amor_), in Romanian we have *dragoste *and *libov *(today an archaism), both of Slavic origin.


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## Hulalessar

What we need to know when the percentage of words borrowed from one language by another is being calculated is:

1. If derived forms as well as root words are included.

2. Exactly what collection of words is being looked at. A small dictionary? A large dictionary? A dictionary that includes obsolete and rare words? Someone's idea of everyday words?

3. Whether the counting is being done by someone with a vested interest in producing as low a percentage as possible, someone with a vested interest in producing as high a percentage as possible or someone with no vested interest.

However you look at it the number of Slavic words in Romanian is clearly significant and it seems silly to play a numbers game.


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## danielstan

Romanian language has, indeed, a great amount of Slavic words (imported mainly from Bulgarian, but also from other Slavic neighboring languages).

The lexicon (vocabulary) of a language is very susceptible to changes over the centuries.

For example, English has a lot of word of Latin origin (some imported from French, some others imported from medieval Latin used in church), but is not a Romance language.
Albanian has also a lot of words of Latin origin (imported from Balkanic Vulgar Latin), but is not a Romance language (some linguists consider Albanian as a half-Romanised language).

There was a dispute between Romanian scholars during the 18th century regarding the "percentages" of loans from Slavic and Latin.
Alexandru Cihac has written an etimologic dictionary of Romanian and concluded that a large percentage (40%, but I am not sure) of the words in it are of Slavic origin, 20% Latin and so on.
His statistical approach was criticised by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu who developed a "theory of words circulation" remarking that some words are used very often in a language (constituting its core / basic vocabulary) while others are used very seldom.
Hasdeu has analysed the core vocabulary of Romanian (words designating family members, usual activities and others) and concluded the percentage of Latinisms is much higher.
He observed that in Romanian it is possible to compose a text based exclusively on Latinisms, but is not possible to compose such a text exclusively with Slavisms (with great effort one could compose a text exclusively on Slavic words, but its meaning would be ridiculous).

--------
After 1848 (the year of the nationalistic revolutions in Europe) the vast majority of Romanian scholars has adopted a Latinist view on the language and the process of re-Latinisation (which was already started a century ago by Transylvanian scholars of Romanian origin) has reached its highest level:
there was a century (1848 - 1945 when the communist regime has been installed) of constant imports of words from French (mainly), Italian and Latin.
There was a serious gap between the vocabulary used in newspapers (only the upper class was literate at that time) and the vocabulary used by the peasantry (80% of the population). 
The Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale made fun of this gap in its writings (_'O scrisoare pierduta'_) where a simple employee reads loudly the newspaper and gives a hilarious "popular etymology" to some words of French origin.
It is difficult to explain for foreigners, but I will do it if asked.
Even today the language used in Romanian mass media is more elaborate and with many recent loan words (neologisms) than the language spoken by common people (but I guess it happens all over Europe).

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I do believe that during centuries some Romanian words of Latin origin have dissapeared because by phonetic evolution of the language they created confusions (some of them have been replaced by Slavic loans).

There is one good example:
- almost all numerals in Romanian are of Latin origin with the notable exception of "hundred" (Romanian: _suta _< slavic_ suto_; some linguists do not agree).
The most probable Romanian version of the Latin _centum_ would have been _ciânt_ or _țânt_ (analogy with: lat. _ventum _> rom. _vânt _= "wind"). Its plural form would have been _cinte_ / _ciânturi _or _țânte _/ _țânturi_.
The numeral "five" (Romanian: _cinci_) is very close as pronounciation to the above hypothetical words, so it is very probable the Romanians have imported the Slavic _suto _for "hundred" to avoid confusions.


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## Angelo di fuoco

robbie_SWE said:


> Also worth noticing is that the meanings have changed as well. For instance *grijă *(< Bulgarian) had the original meaning of "dysentery" and *a lovi* (< Slavic) meant "to capture, to hunt".



Interesting. In Russian "грыжа" means "hernia".



francisgranada said:


> Two observations concerning the verb _amare _(to love):
> 
> 1. In Romanian we have *a iubi*, while in Spanish and Italian, the Latin "amare" continues to exist, but on the other hand we have "innovative" solutions, too: Italian *ti voglio bene* (I love you, lit. "I want good to you", from Lat. "velle" and "bene") and Spanish *te quiero* (I love you, lit. "I want you", from Lat. "quaerere").



There's also "t'estimo" in Catalan, while the reflexive "estimar-se" also means "to make love" in the physical sense.

"Ti voglio bene" is not quite the same as "ti amo". It has a more "cosy" connotation (native Italians correct me if I'm wrong, please!).

"Je veux de toi" means "I desire you" or, less sexualyl, "I find you attractive" in French, while "Je t'en veux" means "I wish you ill".


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## ahvalj

danielstan said:


> Romanian: _suta _< slavic_ suto_; some linguists do not agree).
> The most probable Romanian version of the Latin _centum_ would have been _ciânt_ or _țânt_ (analogy with: lat. _ventum _> rom. _vânt _= "wind"). Its plural form would have been _cinte_ / _ciânturi _or _țânte _/ _țânturi_.
> The numeral "five" (Romanian: _cinci_) is very close as pronounciation to the above hypothetical words, so it is very probable the Romanians have imported the Slavic _suto _for "hundred" to avoid confusions.


Actually, _"suto"_ doesn't exist: the Old Church Slavonic (10th century) has _sъto, _whereas reconstructed Late Common Slavic (around the 7th century) had _*suta,_ so the Romanian word looks ideally reflecting the pre-Church Slavonic stage.


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## danielstan

Thanks for explanations. The Romanian dictionaries I used do not mention the reconstructed form *_suta_, but a simple _suto_ (without asterisc). Some other dictionaries give unknown etymology.

In Romania there is a lack of interest in learning old languages. Today Latin is still taught in some schools at a very basic level. Greek has almost disappeared from schools and probably is taught in some specialized universities.
We still have Slavists among Romanian scholars, but less and less from generation to generation.
The Romanian Orthodox Church used to teach Greek and OCS in its religious schools some 70 years ago, today only few basic courses of Greek are still taught and no Slavic courses at all (although OCS was the church language in Middle Ages).
During WWII in the territories occupied by Romanian army in East (Ukraine and Russia) often happened that Romanian military priests performed religious services in OCS to the local population (in a propagandistic effort to make them accept the occupation). 
Probably there is an anti-Russian reaction of the Romanian intellectuals after the fall of communism or simply the schools are orienting themselves to Western foreign languages as they are more demanded by the population.
Immediately after the fall of communism the students made written protests to the heads of their universities against the courses of Russian language.
Today I don't think Russian is taught in any Romanian school (in my city, no) - probably there are some exceptions.


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## ahvalj

In Slavistics, the Romanian _sută_ is usually regarded as a reliable loanword. Interestingly — and most probably due to the interrupted contact with Slavs for many centuries — Romanian has very few words preserving _i_ and _u_ in the place of the later Slavic _ь_ and _ъ_ and further _e_ and _o_ (the literature mentions e. g. also _sticlă_), so the vowels in these loanwords got renewed to reflect the contemporary Slavic pronunciation. I can speculate that the later Slavic _сто/sto_ was too different from _sută _to be perceived as related.

P. S. Romania was actually one of the most independent members of the Socialist camp, and I am not sure if she is more independent now than, say, in 1975, so this attitude seems to have deeper roots. As far as I imagine, the re-latinization and the enrichment of Romanian with western Romance loanwords had the purpose to decrease the developmental gap in the situation when the original cultural center, Byzantium, no longer existed. If/when Romania reaches a satisfactory developmental level, she may become more self-sufficient to allow herself to pay more attention to her other ancient connections.


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## danielstan

Historically Romanian does not have words ending in_ -o_ (I don't remember any from the old vocabulary, while the Romanian words ending in _-o_ that I remember are definitely neologisms).
So I guess the later Slavic _sto _was regarded as different than Romanian _sută_ at that time.
The Slavic words ending in _-o_ have been imported generally with a -_ă_ ending (mark of feminine gender), e.g. old slavic _blato _> rom. _baltă, _old sl. _dlato _> rom. _daltă_.

P.S.
The re-latinization of Romanian was a process promoted by our intellectuals since few centuries. I think it started from 18th century by Romanian intellectuals from Transylvania (part of the Austro-Hungary at that time), as a mean in their political struggle for national awakening and for self-determination (autonomy and later separatism from Austro-Hungary).
Later the intellectuals from Wallachia and Moldova (unified as Romania since 1861) have continued the idea of re-latinization having in mind the unification of Romania with Transylvania and with Bessarabia (part of Russian Empire). France was the Western country which supported the most these territorial claims.
During communist regime there was a first phase of obedience to Moscow (1945 - 1964) where Russian was imposed in schools as almost mandatory foreign language, while after 1965 (Ceausescu's regime) Russian language was less taught and the loanwords came mostly from French and American English.
After 1989 the re-latinization has slowed down (most loanwords are coming from American English).
Last noticeable effort was made in 1993 when there was an orthographic reform:
- letter_ î_ become _â _inside the words (usually the Romanian words containing _â_ have an_ a_ in their Latin version, e.g. rom. _păg*â*n _< lat. _pag*a*nus_)
- the conjugation of the verb _a fi_ ("to be") was changed in writing and in pronounciation as:
_eu sînt > eu sunt_ (Latin: _ego sum_); _noi sîntem > noi suntem; voi sînteți > voi sunteți; ei/ele sînt > ei / ele sunt_
The historical version (according to the phonetic rules and attested in Medieval writings) is:_ eu sunt._
Today in private speech I hear and I use "_eu sînt_", while on TV the official speeches use "_eu sunt_".

I see similar linguistic processes in ex-Yugoslav countries which (after independence) reject the idea of Serbo-Croatian language with some dialects
and promote "new" languages like Bosnian or Montenegrin with archaic regional words revived and promoted as replacement for the "Serbian" words.
Macedonians too are since centuries in a process of defining a national and linguistic identity different than Bulgarian.


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## ahvalj

danielstan said:


> Historically Romanian does not have words ending in_ -o_ (I don't remember any from the old vocabulary, while the Romanian words ending in _-o_ that I remember are definitely neologisms).
> So I guess the later Slavic _sto _was regarded as different than Romanian _sută_ at that time.
> The Slavic words ending in _-o_ have been imported generally with a -_ă_ ending (mark of feminine gender), e.g. old slavic _blato _> rom. _baltă, _old sl. _dlato _> rom. _daltă_.


These again are pre-Church Slavonic borrowings, from Late Common Slavic *_balta _and *_dalta_ (cp. the Finnish _taltta _from the same source and the cognate of borrowed Prussian _dalbtan_). In short, the Late Common Slavic _*a, *i, *u _> Old Church Slavonic _o, ь, ъ; _Late Common Slavic _*ā, *ī, *ū _> Old Church Slavonic _a, i, y._ Ancient Slavic loanwords (6–8th centuries) to Greek, Romanian, Albanian and Finnic still preserve these _a, i _and _u_. The very word _sclavī/Slavs_ vs. the attested Slavic _slověne _reflects this earlier _a…_ I somehow can't find in the literature I have checked the Romanian words borrowed from the later Slavic _o-_neutra, only those from _e-_neutra: _vreme, vrabie, _though I agree, they had to be borrowed either as feminines with the _ă_-ending, or masculines with the zero-ending.



danielstan said:


> P.S.
> The re-latinization of Romanian was a process promoted by our intellectuals since few centuries. I think it started from 18th century by Romanian intellectuals from Transylvania (part of the Austro-Hungary at that time), as a mean in their political struggle for national awakening and for self-determination (autonomy and later separatism from Austro-Hungary).
> Later the intellectuals from Wallachia and Moldova (unified as Romania since 1861) have continued the idea of re-latinization having in mind the unification of Romania with Transylvania and with Bessarabia (part of Russian Empire). France was the Western country which supported the most these territorial claims.
> During communist regime there was a first phase of obedience to Moscow (1945 - 1964) where Russian was imposed in schools as almost mandatory foreign language, while after 1965 (Ceausescu's regime) Russian language was less taught and the loanwords came mostly from French and American English.
> After 1989 the re-latinization has slowed down (most loanwords are coming from American English).
> Last noticeable effort was made in 1993 when there was an orthographic reform:
> - letter_ î_ become _â _inside the words (usually the Romanian words containing _â_ have an_ a_ in their Latin version, e.g. rom. _păg*â*n _< lat. _pag*a*nus_)
> - the conjugation of the verb _a fi_ ("to be") was changed in writing and in pronounciation as:
> _eu sînt > eu sunt_ (Latin: _ego sum_); _noi sîntem > noi suntem; voi sînteți > voi sunteți; ei/ele sînt > ei / ele sunt_
> The historical version (according to the phonetic rules and attested in Medieval writings) is:_ eu sunt._
> Today in private speech I hear and I use "_eu sînt_", while on TV the official speeches use "_eu sunt_".
> 
> I see similar linguistic processes in ex-Yugoslav countries which (after independence) reject the idea of Serbo-Croatian language with some dialects
> and promote "new" languages like Bosnian or Montenegrin with archaic regional words revived and promoted as replacement for the "Serbian" words.
> Macedonians too are since centuries in a process of defining a national and linguistic identity different than Bulgarian.


That can be also compared with the enrichment of literary Bulgarian with Church Slavonic and Russian words in the 19th century accompanied with the cleansing of the standard language from the Turkish loanwords. Lithuanian had huge amounts of Slavic borrowings until the 19th century: 99% of these were thoroughly exempted from the standard language by the revivalists — what distinguishes the Lithuanian situation is that they quite successfully have managed to replace the loanwords with properly Lithuanian neologisms.


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## danielstan

I would like to discuss an issue:
- how to estimate the century when the Slavic loanwords has first entered Romanian

Unfortunately the oldest Romanian surviving text is from 1521, so everything regarding a time estimation should be deduced from comparisson with neighbor languages and internal phonetic rules (with their relative chronology).

From the literature I read I retain:

a) South Slavic languages (I don't discuss the other Slavic languages here) have known the metathesis of the groups "or" and "ol" in Common Slavic (Late, I guess).
E.g. bg. крaва, sr.-cr. krava < c. sl. *кoрва; bg. злато, sr.-cr. zlato< c. sl. *зoлто
One Slavic word following this metathesis could be dated a little more accurately:
Karl (name of the German emperor Karl der Grosse = Charlemagne) has evolved to Serbo-Croatian _kralj _with an intermediary reconstructed Common Slavic *_korljь_,
also in Romanian _crai _(there is a phonetic change in Romanian that justifies the transformation_ lj > i_).

Knowing the South Slavs have come in big numbers in Balkans from the 7th century (byzantine sources) and Charlemagne has died in 814, it may be inferred that the applicability of the Slavic metathesis was between the 7th century and the end of 8th century.
Oldest surviving texts in OCS are from 9th century with the metathesis consistently applied.

b) some neighboring languages have imported Common Slavic words before the metathesis started, thus at an early stage in time than the rest of the loanwords.
E.g. rom. _baltă _vs. OCS _blato_
Other examples could be find in Albanian, modern Greek, Baltic languages etc.

The questions I have are:
- when was estimated the Slavic metathesis of liquids (r, l) have started?
- was this a pan-Slavic phenomenon and did it occurred at the same historical time in all Slavic languages?

I would like opinions and references to books or web pages treating the subject.


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## ahvalj

The most detailed publication on the history of the Slavic phonology I know is this: _Shevelov GY · 1964 · A prehistory of Slavic: the historical phonology of Common Slavic_ (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJYUZ1ck5vdWE2Q1U). In particular, the metathesis is discussed on pp. 391–420, and specifically the chronology on pp. 414–417.

Since this metathesis
a) is absent in ancient loanwords to such absolutely unrelated languages as Finnic (Finnish and its relatives) in the north and Greek/Romanian/Albanian in the south,
b) occurred differently in different Slavic branches (the uniform _ra/la/rě/lě_ in South Slavic and Czech/Slovak is an exception: Polish and its related minor neighbors and East Slavic are more diverse in their reflexes), and
c) beginning with the middle 9th century, Western and Byzantine chronicles start mentioning metathesized forms,
it appears that this shift took place around the 8th century, probably not quite simultaneously in various Slavic idioms.

The groups _V+r/l+C_ have preserved, to various degrees, in the speech of Baltic Slavs (Shevelov: 406–407).

The Baltic evidence is not reliable since Baltic and Slavic are still perceivably (for a scholar) related now, and were obviously (for a layman) related 1500 years ago (to the extent that many words in Baltic and Slavic were pronounced identically or almost identically, e. g. "head": *_galu̯ā́_, "hand": *_rankā́_, "hoof/foot": *_nagā́, _"son": _sū́nus_/*_sū́nu_, "mother": *_mā́tē_/*_mā́tī_, "daughter": *_duktḗ_/*_duktī́_), so
a) it is impossible to distinguish ancient loanwords from commonly inherited lexemes, and
b) Baltic was much more active in adapting Slavic loanwords to its phonetic system. For example, "tin" is _o*lov*o_ in attested Slavic, _a*lv*as_ in Old Lithuanian but _a*lav*as_ in modern Lithuanian, with the second _a_ introduced in the last centuries after the Slavic counterpart.

*P. S.* As I always warn the readers dealing with this book, Shevelov belonged to those numerous scholars who believe to understand much more than the data alone may suggest, so, while his factual evidence is worthy and interesting, his explanations most often represent just a fraction of the possible variants (and too often not those I personally find plausible). Also, the accentology is completely outdated there.


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## irinet

Hi,

Since the thread here is about the origins of some Romanian words, I have a question here, too. There has been given a list with several Slavic words in Romanian. I wonder what origin is _Romania,_ considering the old attested forms of 'rumŭněskŭ' and '_Rumunense'?
_
Also, is it possible for the word Romanian 'român" - 'romanus' (Latin) - 'vallach' - 'rumân'  be of a Slavic origin, or is it Latin?


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## ahvalj

irinet said:


> Hi,
> 
> Since the thread here is about the origins of some Romanian words, I have a question here, too. There has been given a list with several Slavic words in Romanian. I wonder what origin is _Romania,_ considering the old attested forms of 'rumŭněskŭ' and '_Rumunense'?
> _
> Also, is it possible for the word Romanian 'român" - 'romanus' (Latin) - 'vallach' - 'rumân'  be of a Slavic origin, or is it Latin?



Yes, the word _Romania_ itself comes from the self-appellation of the ancient Romans, it is not a loanword.

The change _om_>_um_ is Romanian (and not found in Slavic): _nōmen>nume,_ though very rare, cp. regularly _homō>om, pōmum>pom. _I can speculate that _u_ in _Rumânia_ was favored to avoid interference with _Ῥωμανία_ "Byzantium" (cp. e. g. the index on p. 307 here: http://homepage.univie.ac.at/ilja.steffelbauer/DAI.pdf — all the instances of this word in the text point to Rome or Byzantium).

The change _an_>_ân_ is purely Romanian: _lāna>lână, manum>mână, grānum>grâu, veterānum>bătrân, _and is not found in Slavic, where _ɨ _word-internally comes from _*ū _in inherited words (_*dʰūmos>dymъ _"smoke") or from _ū _and _ō _in early loanwords (Common Germanic _*tūnan > tynъ _"fence", Gothic _motareis > mytaŗь _"publican").

The suffix -_esc-_ may be either Slavic (Old Church Slavonic _-ьskъ_ > later _-esk_) or (sorry, Balkanic purists) Dacian: we had discussed this a couple of years ago in a separate thread, and then I pointed out that even in the short table B here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reconstructed_Dacian_words#Reconstructed_Dacian_words) we find three words containing what may be interpreted as this suffix: _Thibiscum,_ _Tramarisca_ and _Ciniscus_. The suffix itself is of PIE origin, so it is perfectly possible that Dacian, like Germanic (_ænglisc_), Baltic (_lietuviškas_) and Slavic (_slověnьskъ_), made a wide use of it in the relational meaning. In any case, Slavic examples should have reinforced its popularity in Romanian.


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## danielstan

I agree with most of the above, but with some observations:
- the word _rumân_ satisfies the phonetic rules applicable on its Latin source: _romanus_
The change_ om > um_ is also encountered in:
rom. _c*um*nat_ < lat. _cognatus_  (the Latin group _*gn*_ was transformed in Romanian _*mn*_, e.g. rom. _semn_ < lat. _signum_, rom. _lemn_ < lat. _lignum_)
rom. _D*um*nezeu_ < lat. _D*om*ine Deus_ (_Domine_ is vocative mood)
rom. _a c*um*păra_ < lat. _c*om*parare_
and many other examples.
Romanian language has known a phenomenon of closing the vocals. In some phonetical contexts the Latin vocals evolved to:
lat._ a > ă _(unstressed syllable) _> â  _(later) (e.g. lat._ camisia _> rom._ cămașă_, lat._ paganus _> rom. _păgân_, lat._ romanus_ > rom._ rumân)_
lat._ e _> rom._ i (_e.g. lat._ bene _> rom._ bine)_
lat._ o_ > rom. _u_ (e.g. lat. accusative_ montem _> rom._ munte)

România _as a country name did not exist in the Middle Ages, thus no confusion with _Ῥωμανία_ "Byzantium".
There was the country name _Țeara Rumânească _(for Wallachia) atested in the oldest surviving document in Romanian: Neacsu's letter (Scrisoarea lui Neacșu din Campulung) 1521 and in many other documents written in Romanian.
The word _român_ (with _*o*_) was first attested in some religious texts printed in the 16th century (Palia de la Orastie) - some linguists believe that it was a latinization of _rumân_ made by the editor.
Anyway in the Middle Ages _român_ is a rarity, while _rumân_ is the norm.

_r*o*mân and R*o*mânia _have appeared and gradually replaced the _-u-_ forms in the beginning of the 19th century and become the norm after the revolutions of 1848. It is obvious the shift to -o- form is a re-Latinization of the language politically motivated.

The suffix _-esc_ could be explain by both Latin _-esco_ and Thracian _-isko_. Some linguists believe it was a coincidence for the Dacian population who learnt Latin to find a suffix very similar in their native language and in Latin, so this is the reason this suffix is very productive in Romanian (and less productive in other Romance languages).
I don't think the Slavic suffix _-ьskъ_ has influenced a trend which was already in Romanian when the Slavs arrived in Balkans.
_

_


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## ahvalj

danielstan said:


> I agree with most of the above, but with some observations:
> - the word _rumân_ satisfies the phonetic rules applicable on its Latin source: _romanus_
> The change_ om > um_ is also encountered in:
> rom. _c*um*nat_ < lat. _cognatus_  (the Latin group _*gn*_ was transformed in Romanian _*mn*_, e.g. rom. _semn_ < lat. _signum_, rom. _lemn_ < lat. _lignum_)
> rom. _D*um*nezeu_ < lat. _D*om*ine Deus_ (_Domine_ is vocative mood)
> rom. _a c*um*păra_ < lat. _c*om*parare_
> and many other examples.



I have noticed that these examples concern the originally closed syllables. Is there a rule when we find _nōmen>nume,_ and when _homō>om_?



danielstan said:


> The suffix _-esc_ could be explain by both Latin _-esco_ and Thracian _-isko_. Some linguists believe it was a coincidence for the Dacian population who learnt Latin to find a suffix very similar in their native language and in Latin, so this is the reason this suffix is very productive in Romanian (and less productive in other Romance languages).
> I don't think the Slavic suffix _-ьskъ_ has influenced a trend which was already in Romanian when the Slavs arrived in Balkans.



As far as I understand, Latin itself had no suffix -_isc_-: e. g., in this resource http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/resolveform?type=end&lookup=iscus&lang=la all the few instances of the suffixal -_isc_- are of Greek origin. What we find in post-Classical Latin (_theodiscus, franciscus_), are latinized Germanic adjectives (_þiudisk-, frankisk-_) — this pattern got some popularity in west Romance but I don't imagine how it could influence Balkanic Latin, which, as far as I know, has no Germanic loanwords. So, we only can expect the Dacian and Slavic origin of -_esc._


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## danielstan

Well, I am not so good at Latin and I still need to learn some linguistic concepts, in this case the concept of "closed syllable".

I know to operate with the concepts of stressed and unstressed syllables.

For the examples you give I don't know the phonetic rules applicable. I revisited quickly the book I use for such cases and I have not found the evolution _om > um_ treated.
I could improvise now an argumentation by enumerating some relevant examples that I know, but take what I say with reserve:

The rule   _lat. om > rom. om   _in the examples:
lat. _pomus _> rom. _pom_
lat. _homo _> rom. _om_
lat. _dominus _> rom. _domn  _(the Vulgar Latin form *_domnus _is attested in some ancient inscriptions; cf. Appendix Probi: calidus non caldus)

Seems that the rule_ lat. om > rom. om_ was applicable for monosyllabic Romanian words.
Also I observe the rule above (om > om) is applicable on polysyllabic words derived from monosyllabic ones. E.g.:
pom - pomișor (diminutive)
om - omenesc, omuleț (dim.)
domn - domnesc, domnișor (dim.)
It seems that the speakers felt the need to preserve the original form of the radical in derived words.


We know that final _-s_ and _-m _from Classical Latin have disappeared in Vulgar Latin.
Also the final _-u-_ (from _-us _or _-um_ Latin endings) have disappeared from the first stages of proto-Romanian (or common Romanian),
thus I guess that before the transformation _om > um_ appeared in Romanian words already without their _-us_ or _-um_ endings.

The rule  _lat. om > rom. um_    in the examples:
lat. _romanus _> rom. _ru-'mân_
lat. _Domine Deus_ > rom. _Dum-ne-'zeu_
lat. _nomen _> rom. _'nu-me_
lat. _quo + modo_ > rom. _cum _(the old Romanian form _cumu _(_'cu-mu_) is attested in some Medieval writings)

I noted above with (') the beginning of the stressed syllable and I separated the syllables by (-). I don't know the international notation for these things.
I observe that in polysyllabic Romanian words the transformation _om > um_ is confirmed. I don't find an example where the rule _om > om_ is applicable on polysyllabic words inherited from Latin.

If you want to verify yourself examples of Romanian words containing the _-um_ or _-om_ group use this dictionary: http://www.dexonline.ro
where the stressed syllable is noted with an accent on its vocal.
------------
On the issue of _-esc_ suffix in Romanian I agree with your ideas and I was not aware of the origin of_ -iscus _in Latin and the Germanic influence on Western Romance languages.
Now that you mentioned I remember some Romanian linguists giving the Thracian _-isko_ the merit for Romanian _-esc_ suffix, but I don't remember the argumentation. The argumentation was solid, I exclude a fake one from nationalistic reasons. I will come later, if I find something.


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## ahvalj

Wikipedia writes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Romanian#Vowel_reduction) that "unstressed _o_ was reduced to _u_" (also _formōsum>frumos_), which should explain _r*u*mân. _On the other hand, I still don't quite understand the rule for the stressed syllables: we find _flōrem>floare_ but _nōmen>nume: _was it the influence of the labial _m _(and how to explain then _coma>coamă, vomit>voame_)?


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## danielstan

Well, I observed such cases in my previous search but I did not discuss them in order to not make a long post.

The case  lat. _florem _> rom. _floare_
is a case of diphthongation of _*o *_and _*e *_vowels, which is largely treated in the books about Romanian evolution.

The diphthongation ís produced in stressed syllable and depends by the kind of vowel in the next syllable (if there is a next syllable).
If the next syllable contains an open vowel the diphthongation is activated.
Examples:
lat. _domina _> rom._ 'doam-nă (ă _is half-open_) _-> the diphthong apears.
lat._ rota _> rom._ 'roa-tă _
lat. accusative _forficem_ > rom. _'foar-fe-că_
lat. _autumna _> rom. _'toam-nă  _-> a case of diphthongation of a Latin_ u, _which is very rare (probably there was an intermediary form_ tomna _before _toamna)
_
Observation: the diphthong _oa _is pronounced /wa/ (like in fr. _trois_)

Diphthongation of _e_:
lat. _sera _> rom. _'sea-ră_
lat. _cera _> rom._ 'cea-ră

(_out of topic: Romanian has suffered a phenomenon of monophtongation after the diphthongation of_ e._
lat. _legem _> old Romanian_ 'lea-ge _> modern Romanian _'le-ge)_

This phenomenon on diphthongation in stressed syllable under the influence of a vowel in the next syllable is present in Bulgarian, too:
bg. мляко  cf. serb. млеко
but bg. млечен has not diphthong.

I could provide references to books (in Romanian) treating this topic, if asked.


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## ahvalj

Yet, _floare_ and _voame_ have e, like _nume_?


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## danielstan

Yes, indeed. I don't know if _nume _is an exception to the rule or could be explain otherwise.

P.S.
I guess you meant _foame _("hunger"), because I don't know the word _voame_.


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## ahvalj

A side note about Bulgarian: this _я_ is not a diphthong, but _a_ after a palatalized consonant. Two Slavic languages (Bulgarian and Polish, though not all dialects in case of Bulgarian) have a very open outcome of the Common Slavic *_ē_ before hard consonants but a closed sound before historically palatalized ones, e. g. Polish _wiara_ "faith" but _wierzyć_ "to believe".


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## ahvalj

danielstan said:


> I guess you meant _foame _("hunger"), because I don't know the word _voame_.


I meant Praes. Sg. 3. _vomit>voame_ (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/voame#Romanian). _Foame_ comes from _fāmēs,_ with a cryptic _a>o>oa _(also in Portuguese _fome _and Rhaeto-Romance _fom — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fames#Descendants_).


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## danielstan

I confess I never heard the word _voame _(now I understand perfectly its meaning). I usually use and hear the word _vomă _for the meaning of _voame_.
I agree with the dictionary that this is a regional rare form.
I live at 100 km of Bucharest and the Romanian spoken in my region is very close to the standard Romanian, while the regionalisms I know are chiefly learnt from books (written by Romanian writers from other regions).

Out of the scope of this topic I would like to ask you:
- I saw recently the Russian movie Leviathan and I remarked the boy in that movie said many times:
Чo делаеш?  instead of the standard  Что делаеш?

Because the action in the movie happened in the North of Russia I guess the character used a northern Russian dialect.
Apart from this deviation of standard I have not remarked others. I learnt Russian in school, but at a poor level (neither the professors nor the students were interested in Russian, sorry).
If you saw the movie could you tell me if my assumptions are true and what dialect they used?

Other question:
- I learnt from Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Russian_dialects) there is a northern Russian dialect which has the enclitic definite article_ -to/-ta/-te_ as suffixes to the nouns in a manner very similar to Bulgarian and Macedonian.
Is this dialect still spoken today or is it on the verge of extinction?


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## ahvalj

danielstan said:


> I confess I never heard the word _voame _(now I understand perfectly its meaning). I usually use and hear the word _vomă _for the meaning of _voame_.
> I agree with the dictionary that this is a regional rare form.
> I live at 100 km of Bucharest and the Romanian spoken in my region is very close to the standard Romanian, while the regionalisms I know are chiefly learnt from books (written by Romanian writers from other regions).
> 
> Out of the scope of this topic I would like to ask you:
> - I saw recently the Russian movie Leviathan and I remarked the boy in that movie said many times:
> Чo делаеш?  instead of the standard  Что делаеш?
> Because the action in the movie happened in the North of Russia I guess the character used a northern Russian dialect.



_Чё_ is the standard colloquial variant of _что/чего,_ used by every Russian speaker, even if only in allegro speech. It may be a contracted form of _чего_ or a descendant of the original Slavic *_čь_ (continued in the Chakavian Serbo-Croatian _ča_ and found in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic _*чь*то_), which in its turn goes back to PIE *_kʷid_ "what?" (cp. Latin _quid_) and thus is cognate with the Romanian _ce _(which, to moderator's pleasure, brings us back to the topic question).



danielstan said:


> Apart from this deviation of standard I have not remarked others. I learnt Russian in school, but at a poor level (neither the professors nor the students were interested in Russian, sorry).
> If you saw the movie could you tell me if my assumptions are true and what dialect they used?
> 
> Other question:
> - I learnt from Wiki there is a northern Russian dialect which has the enclitic definite article_ -to/-ta_ as suffixes to the nouns in a manner very similar to Bulgarian and Macedonian.
> Is this dialect still spoken today or is it on the verge of extinction?



I haven't seen this movie, but I am sure they speak the standard language. For my forty years I have never heard anybody speaking a Russian dialect, either in person or in the media. Some other users in the Russian forum at the Wordreference, where I first mentioned this a couple of years ago, were luckier in this respect.

The Bulgarian-type article is/was indeed attested in northern Russian (_человекот/жената/селото/людите_). It is unknown how old is this construction in the article meaning: judging from the vocalization of _ъ>o, _older than the 12–13th centuries. In the surrounding languages, such a postpositive article is attested in some Finnic ones (e. g. Erzyan _кудо/kudo_ "house" — _кудось/kudosʲ _"the house", _кудонь/kudonʲ_ "of house" — _кудонть/kudontʲ _"of the house" etc. — https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Эрзян....B8.D1.82.D0.B5.D0.BB.D1.8C.D0.BD.D0.BE.D0.B5).

*Update. *This dialectal postpositive article has actually penetrated the standard language in the form of an affirmative invariant particle _-то,_ which can be added to any noun, adjective, pronoun, numeral, verb or adverb in the sentence. E. g.:

_Она любит сиамских кошек_ — She likes Siamese cats.
_Она-то любит сиамских кошек_ — As to her, she likes Siamese cats.
_Она любит-то сиамских кошек_ — These are Siamese cats that she likes.
_Она любит сиамских-то кошек_ — [the same translation]
_Она любит сиамских кошек-то_ — [the same translation].

I guess this article was constantly heard by speakers of other dialects, who misunderstood its role and perceived it as a particle, which then gained popularity nationwide.

Also, this postpositive article seems to be absent in the Novgorod birch bark manuscripts of the 11–15th centuries, so it must have been originally a north-eastern peculiarity. It is impossible to tell if it is somehow related to the Bulgarian, and further to Romanian and Albanian, phenomena. It may be so that such constructions existed as a non-grammaticalized syntactic option in Common Slavic, and became part of the grammar under the influence of the substrate/adstrate in the Balkans and in some of the former Finnic-speaking lands.

By the way, this is not the first such a merger in Slavic nominals: let's recall the compound adjectives (_новъ/нова/ново ~ новъи/новаꙗ/новоѥ_), formed in parallel in Slavic and Baltic from the proper adjective + the postpositive pronoun "which" (Old Church Slavonic_ новъ,_ Lithuanian _naujas_ "new" ~ _новъи,_ _naujasis_ "new-which" [which is new, Elizabeth *the *Second]). This latter pattern is PIE as it is attested in Old Iranic, and not only with adjectives.


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## ahvalj

An evidence of the old Slavic speech in the south-western corner of Central Europe from the book _Lencek RL · 1982 · The structure and history of the Slovene language_ (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJdGxvLWh3Wmp6a3M): Old German sources contain such toponyms as _Rubinicha_ (980 A.D. — p. 93) resembling the reconstructed Common Slavic _*Rūbinīkā_ vs. the much evolved modern _Ribnica_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribnica,_Ribnica). We see here the same preservation of *_ū_ (>_y_) and *_i_ (>_ь_), as in the Slavic loanwords in Balkanic languages and Finnish.


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## ahvalj

Concerning the suffix _-esc-:_ curiously, it is attested in Latin in connection with Dacian and Thracian, e. g. the search for _dacisc_ at Epigraphik Datenbank returns 12 results, including e. g.:


> mil(iti) coh(ortis) VI pr(aetoriae) nati/one Dacisca regione / Serdic(a) n(ato) vixit an(nos) XXX


Serdica is modern-day Sophia (Serdica - Wikipedia).

_Rosetti A · 1986 · Istoria limbii române. I. De la origini pînă la începutul secolului al XVII-lea:_ 209–210 mentions several Latin words (mostly names) attested with this suffix from Rome, Moesia, Thracia, Dacia and Dalmatia, as well as the above inscription and two other with _dacisca_ and _dacisco_. Rosetti also mentions the word _thraciscus_ attested in Julius Capitolinus (Historia Augusta: text - IntraText CT):



> Quid vis Thracisce?


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## Dymn

During my Romanian learning last month I collected 1000 words and this list is the words which have Slavic origin, presumably all of them of daily use:

_boală _“illness”, _bogat _“rich”, _ceas _“clock, watch”, _ceașcă _“cup”, _citi _“to read”, _da _“yes”, _dragoste _“love”, _dovedi _“to prove”, _glumă _“joke”, _gol _“empty”, _graniță _“border”, _grijă _“worry”, _învârti _“to turn”, _iubi _“to love”, _lipi _“to paste”, _minge _“ball”, _munci _“to work”, _neamț _“German”, _nevoie _“need”, _nisip _“sand”, _obicei _“habit”, _omorî _“to kill”, _opri _“to stop”, _plăti _“to pay”, _pod _“bridge”, _porni _“to turn on”, _prieten _“friend”, _primi _“to receive”, _prost _“dumb”, _rai _“heaven”, _răni _“to hurt”, _război _“war”, _sărac _“poor”, _scump _“expensive”, _scund _“short (of people)”, _sfert _“quarter”, _se grăbi _“to hurry”, _sljubă _“job”, _tocmai _“just”, _trăi _“to live”, _treabă _“work”, _trebui _“to be necessary”, _vârf _“summit, peak”, _vârstă _“age”, _vină _“blame”, _vopsi _“to paint”, _zgomot _“noise”

Natives or people familiar with the language will correct


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## danielstan

I agree these words have Slavic origins and are of daily use, if the topic of the discussion relates to them.
One mistake: _slujbă _(not _sljubă_)
In Romanian the verbs are mentioned usually in infinitive with a "a" particule before them:
_a citi, a dovedi, a învârti, a iubi, a lipi, a munci, a omorî, a opri, a plăti, a porni, a primi, a răni, a se grăbi (reflexive), a trăi, a trebui, a vopsi_.

The Latin ending _-re_ in infinitive has disappeared in Romanian (_cânta*re* > a cânta_) and the verbs in infinitive with a final _-re _have got the function of nouns.
For example _iubire _means "love".
A hypothesis I read about this disparition of _-re:_
under South Slavic influence which has a short form of infinitive without _-ti_ ending.


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## Nino83

Dymn said:


> _învârti _“to turn”,


I'd have said that this verb was similar to "invertire" (to change direction). 
I've found that the Latin verb "vertō" comes from the same IE root "*wert-".


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## ilocas2

In a Czech textbook of geography published in 1926, there is written that 40 % of words in Romanian have Slavic origin.

I think it's very exaggerated and it was mentioned from nationalistic reasons.


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## Awwal12

ilocas2 said:


> is
> I think it's very exaggerated and it was mentioned from nationalistic reasons.


Not necessary. It's all about the methods of calculation, however, which may be chosen arbitrarily. Since the number of words in any language is potentially unlimited, the calculation must be based on some cetain list of words. Analyzing a 100-word Swadesh list, 1000 most frequent words of the language, 5000 most frequent words and a dictionary may provide remarkably different results in each case.


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## danielstan

That percentage of 40% was first mentioned by a Romanian linguist: Alexandru Cihac:
Alexandru Cihac - Wikipedia
His most important work was: Dictionnaire d'etymologie daco-romane : Alexandru Cihac : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

His method for this assertion was to count all words of Slavic etymology from Romanian dictionary and compute the percentage.
The reply to this method came in an interesting intellectual debate from Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu: Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu - Wikipedia
Hasdeu developed a theory of "circulation of words" in a language, with the observation that some words are used on daily basis, some other are rarely used: Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu - Wikipedia dexonline
Then he recomputed the ratio of Slavisms/Latinisms from the "core vocabulary" of Romanian and came to other results than Cihac's overall computation.

Some of his conclusions:


> „Dicţionarele, aşa cum s-au făcut până astăzi, nu ne dau circulaţiunea limbii; şi tocmai acesta este punctul cel esenţial. Această eroare a comis-o Cihac în privinţa limbii române asigurându-ne că: „Elementul latin în limba română nu reprezintă astăzi decât o cincime din vocabularul său, în timp ce elementul slav reprezintă 2/5 şi chiar mai mult”


("Dictionaries, as they are made until today, do not give us the circulation of the language, and especially this is the essential point. This error was made by Cihac with regard to Romanian language, he assuring us that: "Latin element in Romanian does not represent today but a fifth of its vocabulary, while the Slavic element represents 2/5 and even more")

Anyway, the Slavic influence over Romanian was the most important influence of foreign languages and it left traces in core vocabulary, grammar, phonology etc.
It did not change the Romance character of the language, but definitely made of Romanian something diferent in the family of Romance languages.

I would compare this influence with the influence of Latin over ancient Albanian, which did not made of Albanian a Romance language, but provided a big amount of Latin loanwords in it and probably grammatical features.

-------------
On another idea about deducing linguistic facts from statistics:
Other Romanian linguists made computations of ratio Slavisms/Latinisms taking as basis some poems of the most important Romanian poet: Mihail Eminescu.
They came to ratios in favor of Latinisms, of course.
It's worth mentioning this poet had a patriotic view in his literary work and also, as journalist, he expressed strong political opinions against foreigners and especially against Russian Empire (which ruled over Bessarabia in his life time).
I suppose he carefully chose the words in his poems, preferring the Latin inherited ones.
There are many manuscripts left by Eminescu where a poem has tens of variants before he decided the final version.


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## Dymn

I find "40% or even more" really exaggerated.

Out of my 1000-word list of day-to-day words, _only _81 have known Slavic origin, and some more are uncertain. I also included function words, which are usually traced back to Latin. I don't know if we should include them in such calculations.

I'm going to add some more words that I forgot in my previous list:

_ciudat _"weird", _a găsi _"to find", _greșeală _"mistake", _lene _"laziness", _a lovi _"to hit", _mândru _"proud", _noroc _"luck", _păianjen _"spider", _a_ _privi _"to look", _a se trezi _"to wake up", _a se odihni _"to rest", _a se opri _"to stop", _poveste _"story", _vreme _"weather", _zăpadă _"snow"

There is also a sizeable amount of words from Greek (18), Hungarian (13) and Turkish (11).

Translating the same list into English, around 300 are of Romance or Latin origin.


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## ahvalj

Interestingly, _a munci_ "to work" comes from _mǫčiti_ "to torment" (_mǫka_ "torment") and likewise the Latvian _strādāt_ "to work" is borrowed from _stradati, _which means "to suffer; to work very hard" (_strada_ "hard work"): I wonder why Slavic neighbors borrowed for their "to work" the verbs with such meanings.


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## danielstan

Oh, we have a lot of words with such figurative change of meaning in Romanian - like they were poets those guys...

rom. _cinstit _("honest") < slav. _čistiti_/ *чиcтити *(someting related to "clean")   => so "clean" is to not be corrupt in Romanian...
rom. _mândru _(1. "proud" 2. "handsome") < slav. _mǫndrŭ_ ("clever; wise")

As an opinion, without confirmation from linguistic studies, I believe these changes in meaning came from the Romanian-Slavic bilinguism - a phenomenon accepted by most linguists - which produced, probably, some misunderstandings in loandwords learnt by uneducated people.

The main facts supporting this assertion of bilinguism (short list, without details...):
- lots of Romanian toponyms of Slavic origin
- Slavic loanwords in the terminology of family and social relationships (_nevastă _"wife"_, prieten _"friend"_, rudă _"kin"_, dragoste _"love"_, a iubi _"to love"_, logodnă_ "act of being engaged" etc.)
- similar phonetic changes in Romanian and Bulgarian (_a > ă _ in unstressed syllable, initial_ 'e'_ pronounced with _iod _in Romanian words etc.)
- common grammatical features in Romanian and Bulgarian, but also part of Balkan Sprachbund (definite article imported by Bulgarian from Romanian, a main distinctive feature, but also others less important: reduction of case declensions replaced by prepositions...)


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## danielstan

Dymn said:


> I find "40% or even more" really exaggerated.


That assertion was made 150 years ago and was probably right at the time.
Since then a long and continuous process of replacement of Slavisms by neologisms imported from French, Italian and (more recently) American English has drastically changed Romanian vocabulary.
Today many Slavisms that you mentioned are in daily use, but in competition with neologisms:

_ciudat / straniu, greșeală / eroare, mândru / orgolios, noroc / șansă, a se odihni / a se relaxa, neamț  / german, obicei / tradiție, slujbă / servici,  ..._


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## ahvalj

_Cinstit_ may perhaps be related to _čьstь_ "honor", _čьstiti_ "to honor", _čьstivъ_ "honorable, respectable", _čьstьnъ_ "honest", with _i_ reflecting this Slavic root before the change _*i>ь _(like in _sticlă_), crossed with *_čęstitъ_ "happy" (Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian _честит, _Slovene _čestit_).

*P. S.* The Serbo-Croatian _честит _also means "honest" (честит - Wiktionary), though it must be secondary, like in Romanian, as *_čьstitъ _would have produced _**частит_ (_ь>a_ in Shtokavian).

If the Slavic _čęstь_ "part" indeed is related with _čęstъ_ "frequent, close, dense", which is the same word as the Lithuanian _kimštas_ "packed, stuffed" (kimšti - Wiktionary), the Romanian _cinst- _would actually be among the earliest preserved Slavic loans, with _in_ retained from times before the rise of the Slavic nasal vowels.


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## danielstan

Well, the Romanian verb _a cinsti_ matches the meanings you mentioned above: "to honor", "to show respect", "to pay drink for somebody, as a sign of friendship or respect".
While the noun _cinstit_, with the main meaning "honest", also means: "being honored, respected by somebody else".

I was mislead by the etymology from  dexonline  which relates _cinstit_ to bg. _чист_ ("clean")
I think _cinstit_ is more related to bg. _честен_  "honest" (I don't know the Old Slavic version of it)

What do you think on Romanian _n*i*covală_ < slav. _n*a*kovalo_ ? Is the transformation a > i somehow exceptional?


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## Angelo di fuoco

I don't know about Romanian, but in Italian the reverse seems to be quite common: e. g. old Italian "dimani" -> modern Italian "domani", "dimandare" -> "domandare", "debile" - > "debole", "flebile" -> "fievole" (change in meaning, from Latin "flere", meaning "to weep", to "weak" as in English "feeble").
In Ucranian, o regularly becomes i in closed syllables, most notably in the genitive plural in -iв.


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## danielstan

Nino83 said:


> I'd have said that this verb was similar to "invertire" (to change direction).
> I've found that the Latin verb "vertō" comes from the same IE root "*wert-".



Tempting etymology - you made me think of some Latin or Slavic words with similar phonetic correspondance in Romanian.
Latin examples:
lat. _lib*ert*are_ > rom. _a i*ert*a _(Aromanian _l'i*ert*u_) dexonline
lat. _c*ert*o_ > rom. _a c*ert*a (_Aromanian_ ants*ert*u < _lat._ in + c_*ert*_o) _dexonline
lat. _anno t*ertio*_ > rom. _anț*ărț* _dexonline

Slavic examples:
_în + _slav_. v*rъt*ĕti > _rom_. înv_*ârt*_i _dexonline
bg_. в*ърт*еж > _rom_. v_*ârt*_ej _dexonline
slav_. p*rъt*ъ, _sr-cr_. p*rt*ina > _rom_. p*ârt*ie _dexonline

So, Slavic seems more plausible etymology and is what Romanian dictionary says.


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## ahvalj

danielstan said:


> Well, the Romanian verb _a cinsti_ matches the meanings you mentioned above: "to honor", "to show respect", "to pay drink for somebody, as a sign of friendship or respect".
> While the noun _cinstit_, with the main meaning "honest", also means: "being honored, respected by somebody else".
> 
> I was mislead by the etymology from  dexonline  which relates _cinstit_ to bg. _чист_ ("clean")
> I think _cinstit_ is more related to bg. _честен_  "honest" (I don't know the Old Slavic version of it)


_Честен_ comes from _чьстьнъ/čьstьnъ_.

Phonetically, _a cinsti_ corresponds to _čęstiti_ "to do something faster; to do something more often; to frequent" (< Earlier Common Slavic _*činstītī_), though the meaning is taken from _čьstiti_ "to honor" (_<*čistītī_). It seems that these two early loans (6–7th centuries) contaminated at some point, with the shape taken from one root and the meaning from another. Anyway, I don't know how to explain this _in _other than by assuming a loan at the period before it developed into the attested _ę._ Plus, _*čist-_ and _*činst-_ then differed only in the presence of the nasal (the later _ь_ and _ę_ are much more distinct), which may have facilitated the contamination.



danielstan said:


> What do you think on Romanian _n*i*covală_ < slav. _n*a*kovalo_ ? Is the transformation a > i somehow exceptional?


Don't know, in Slavic it is a deverbal noun derived from the prefixed verb _nakovati,_ which has a transparent structure, _na-kov-a-ti,_ so this _i_ must be or Romanian origin, perhaps as a result of contamination with some other word. As a variant: the verb _niknǫti/nikati_ means, in particular, "to bend" (intransitive), so something like this, alluding to the movement the smith makes over the anvil, may have influenced.


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## ahvalj

danielstan said:


> Slavic examples:
> _în + _slav_. v*rъt*ĕti > _rom_. înv_*ârt*_i _dexonline
> bg_. в*ърт*еж > _rom_. v_*ârt*_ej _dexonline
> slav_. p*rъt*ъ, _sr-cr_. p*rt*ina > _rom_. p*ârt*ie _dexonline
> 
> So, Slavic seems more plausible etymology and is what Romanian dictionary says.


_Âr_ here reflects the South Slavic syllabic _r̥ _(<_ьr, ъr, rь, rъ_) with a secondary schwa (_Велико Търново → Veliko Târnovo_ — Ce poți face într-un weekend la Veliko Târnovo), the Latin _er_ would have indeed produced **_er_ or **_ăr_.


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