# Romanian "nevoie"



## newpornography

Does anyone know the etymology of this word "need?"  At first I thought it looked like it came from Latin "invidere" - "to look upon (with desire)", which is where English gets things like envy, but I have one source that says it comes from Old Slavonic "nevolja", meaning "not-will" or "unfreedom"... does anyone here know more?  Thanks!


----------



## sokol

It will be difficult to derive "nevoie" from "invidere": I have no sources but it looks unlikely - while Slavic "nevolja" very easily could transform into "nevoie" (as far as phonetic development is concerned).

What is your source claiming "nevolja", by the way?


----------



## brian

I too find it doubtful that it comes from _invidere_, but I do think it comes from Latin (ultimately), though perhaps through Old Slavic.

_Volja_ (Slavic) / _voie_ (Romanian) / _voglia_ (Italian) / etc., all meaning "will" or "wish" or "desire," probably come from Latin _volia_, from the verb _volo _(inf. _velle_), "to want, wish, desire."

_Ne-_ is certainly a Slavic prefix, but I would bet _volja_ came from Latin. (I have no sources to back that up because I don't know any Slavic etymology dictionaries. )

Now, since Romanian already uses lots of Slavic prefixes (like _ne-_), it's hard to tell whether Romanian took the entire Slavic word _nevolja_ --> _nevoie_ *or* whether it took the word _voie_ (which already existed in Romanian from Latin) and simply attached the Slavic prefix to it.


----------



## sokol

According to Vasmer, volja is originally a Slavic root ("nevolja" is just the same plus prefix "ne-") but related to similar words in IE languages (e. g. German "Wahl, wollen", but Latin isn't mentioned. Kluge (Etymolgoisches Wörterbuch) however mentions the IE root *wel- also represented in Latin "velle" (and pretty much any IE language), as well as the Slavic verb "voliti" with the same meaning.

So indeed Romanian "nevoie" is related to Latin "velle" - but only on a general IE level as "nevoie" (most likely, or almost certainly I'd even say) is taken from Slavic "nevolja".


----------



## 89ten

It goes back to IE root “nau,” which primary meant death, and then it changed its meaning to poverty and need and also to slavery and, probably, more relative cognates. 

  I can’t see any connection with “will” here.

  I wonder if “murder,” could ultimately come from this root.


----------



## kernowseb

According to DEX (Dicţionar explicativ al limbii române) online 
http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=nevoie 
*nevoie *is from the Slavic *nevolja*


----------



## sokol

89ten said:


> It goes back to IE root “nau,” which primary meant death, and then it changed its meaning to poverty and need and also to slavery and, probably, more relative cognates.


Could you please provide a source?
Because kernowseb now has provided a Romanian source tracing it back to Slavic "nevolja" - see above; thus we would need more on your suggestion of "nau" so that we could check wether this could be a valid alternative theory.


----------



## brian

But _voie_ itself is a Romanian word, too:



> *voie* sf  will; wish; permission; cu voia cuiva with somebody's consent; a da cuiva voie să to allow somebody to..., to let somebody...; după voie at will; a-i face cuiva pe voie to do as somebody wishes; fără voia cuiva without somebody's consent; fără voie unwillingly; voie bună mirth; de bună voie of one's own accord; în voia soartei at the mercy of fate



Source

Did that word come from Slavic as well? I would have thought it had the same Latin root as Italian _voglia_.


----------



## sokol

brian8733 said:


> But _voie_ itself is a Romanian word, too:
> 
> Source
> 
> Did that word come from Slavic as well? I would have thought it had the same Latin root as Italian _voglia_.


I would think so - as it has the same phonetic shape and only lacks the prefix, and also DEX online claims it goes back to the Slavic root.


----------



## robbie_SWE

sokol said:


> I would think so - as it has the same phonetic shape and only lacks the prefix, and also DEX online claims it goes back to the Slavic root.


 
But the etymology of _voie_ is still discussed by many linguists. The difficulty lies in determining which came first. Both the Latin and the Slavic form are very similar, if not identical. 
 
Remember that the Romanian verb *a voi* (which is said to be derived from Latin _volere_) is directly linked to _voie_ and could have been the common denominator. Besides _a voi_, _nevoie_ and _voie_ we have a myriad of words: *voinţă*, *voire*, *voit*, *voitor*, *nevoi*, *nevoire*, *nevoit*, *volitiv* and *voliţional*. 
 
I believe that the fundamental word must have been _a voi_ (< lat. _volere_) and that prefixes and suffixes have been added to create more words. Some of the words' resemblances to Slavic counterparts are probably coincidences. 
 
The interesting thing is that people believe that there aren't any internally created words in Romanian. The discussion whether a word is Latin, Slavic, French, Italian, Turkish, Greek or whatever has completely dominated the linguistic discourse. 
 
I've never once seen the same discussion concerning languages like Italian and French. People seem to think that the Romanian language hasn't been innovative and that's a shame. 

 robbie


----------



## brian

Thanks for your input, Robbie. What you said was very much what I was thinking but could not express properly, mostly because I don't know Romanian and couldn't give such extensive examples.


----------



## sokol

robbie_SWE said:


> But the etymology of _voie_ is still discussed by many linguists. The difficulty lies in determining which came first. Both the Latin and the Slavic form are very similar, if not identical.
> 
> Remember that the Romanian verb *a voi* (which is said to be derived from Latin _volere_) is directly linked to _voie_ and could have been the common denominator. Besides _a voi_, _nevoie_ and _voie_ we have a myriad of words: *voinţă*, *voire*, *voit*, *voitor*, *nevoi*, *nevoire*, *nevoit*, *volitiv* and *voliţional*.


Thanks for the input, Robbie - very interesting!

The main point here is that plenty of other roots developped "e" to "o" - which is crucial here: so yes, "nevoie" could be derived both from Slavic as well as from Latin.
In cases like that, when both explanations would yield the same result, it is almost impossible to ascertain either etymology  - the only way would be through analysis of old documents which indicate (through earlier stages of the word) that one or the other theory would be more likely.

As for the prefix - it is possible that a Slavic prefix had been added to a Romance root; here it would be interesting if there exist roots which clearly are Latin and not Slavic which nevertheless took a Slavic prefix: because if this has happened with another word it is likely that it could have happened also with "voie".


----------



## robbie_SWE

sokol said:


> Thanks for the input, Robbie - very interesting!
> 
> The main point here is that plenty of other roots developped "e" to "o" - which is crucial here: so yes, "nevoie" could be derived both from Slavic as well as from Latin.
> In cases like that, when both explanations would yield the same result, it is almost impossible to ascertain either etymology  - the only way would be through analysis of old documents which indicate (through earlier stages of the word) that one or the other theory would be more likely.
> 
> As for the prefix - it is possible that a Slavic prefix had been added to a Romance root; here it would be interesting if there exist roots which clearly are Latin and not Slavic which nevertheless took a Slavic prefix: because if this has happened with another word it is likely that it could have happened also with "voie".


 
The prefix _ne-_ is used together with many words, mostly adjectives to depict the "lack of" (e.g. *nevindecat*, *neatent*, *necontrolat*), cf. the Latin _in-_. 

I'm sure there are nouns with this prefix, I'll think about it and come back to you when I have some examples. 

 robbie


----------



## sokol

robbie_SWE said:


> The prefix _ne-_ is used together with many words, mostly adjectives to depict the "lack of" (e.g. *nevindecat*, *neatent*, *necontrolat*), cf. the Latin _in-_.


Thank you - this alone will suffice really, in my opinion: this already seems to clarify that "ne-" is a productive Romanian prefix.


----------



## Athaulf

robbie_SWE said:


> But the etymology of _voie_ is still discussed by many linguists. The difficulty lies in determining which came first. Both the Latin and the Slavic form are very similar, if not identical.



Then the regular sound changes should be considered. It's a job that requires an expert, but it should be possible to identify the potential forms of the word that would be consistent with a Latin root, and yet others that would be consistent with a Slavic borrowing. Considering that the above referenced dictionary of the Romanian Academy decisively states that the root is Slavic, I would guess that someone has already done this.

Or do you actually have some references to authors who propose a Latin root or consider the question indecisive?




> The interesting thing is that people believe that there aren't any internally created words in Romanian. The discussion whether a word is Latin, Slavic, French, Italian, Turkish, Greek or whatever has completely dominated the linguistic discourse.





> I've never once seen the same discussion concerning languages like Italian and French. People seem to think that the Romanian language hasn't been innovative and that's a shame.


What exactly do you mean by "internally created words"? Could you give some example of such a word  from any language?


----------

