Which Romance language sounds more Slavic?

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Quote from: ravinescu

Latin had a minor influence (if at all) on the magyar (hungarian) or polish language, and the words derived from the latin "amare" ("to love") did not replace the magyar and slavic words. This is also the case of romanian, where the word "iubire" ("love") and others like it entered the language because of the lenghty cohabitation of the slavs with the autochtonous population on the present-day romanian territory, which resulted in the assimilation of the slavs. As an anecdote, the romanians took also from slavic the popular (gross, vulgar) word that designates the female external genital organs ( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pizda ), and surely no one can think that word entered also via the vocabulary used in the orthodox church.

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Since the marriage vows were read in OCS for almost 1000 years one would expect than even the village idiot would understand some centuries down the road that he had to say 'Da' when he heard 'lyubvi' and 'nevesta'. So why it did not happen for Hungarians? because, to put it in their own words, they truly suck at foreign languages.

In regards to the church use of 'pizda', you really have a naive view on how foreign words get into the language. Back in medieval times the church had to give family planning advice to women and the monasteries often offered homebirth services, and so 'pizda' was a perfectly safe word in a foreign language required for conversation while performing such services, much like 'vagin' is used today in Romanian. Later on, when the medicine adopted 'vagin', 'pizda' entered slang.

It is important to notice here that 'pizda' and 'nevasta' were adopted in Romanian from OCS (a prestige language in Medieval Romania), while 'pula' and 'sot' were preserved from Latin words, for the same reason why female sexuality is a medical speciality while male sexuality concerns nobody.

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Quote from: Dan
The same goes for the Slavic names - first they were used by monks which were baptized with Slavic names, then gradually these names were adopted by the population.
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Quote from: ravinescu

You don't know nothing not only about the history and language of the romanians, but also about the orthodox church. The monks do not receive slavic names, but greek ones (Teofil, Teodor, Atanasie, Serafim, etc.). It has always been like that. You don't encounter romanian orthodox monks with slavic names like Razvan, Mircea, Dragos, Vlad, they receive greek names when they enter monasticism. And the orthodox church saints do not have slavic names, but greek names. This is why many romanians have names like Ion, Nicolae, Mihai, Vasile, etc., they were baptized with the names of the saints of the orthodox church.

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I will reformulate what I wrote above.

Romanians had mostly Biblic names in Medieval times the most popular ones being Ion, Gheorghe and Maria (John, George and Mary). So most of the names were not Slavic. The Orthodox monks had Latin, Greek and Slavic names. Slavic names like Tihomir, Tihon or Slavicized names like Gavril, Daniil, Arsenie etc were common among monks, and of course OCS had to do with their spread.

The names you mention (Razvan, Mircea, Dragos, Vlad, Bogdan, Radu etc), were nobiliary names for people of mixt or non-Romanian ethnicity. These names became popular in late 19th century when the Romanian peasantry became aware of the names of their historical leaders. Once again, these were not popular names for Romanians in Medieval times, they don't prove cohabitation with Slavs.

To what extent did the Cumans contribute to the ethnogenesis of Romanians? I've heard that that Romanians with surnames such as "Comanescu" or "Comaneci" (like gymnast Nadia Comaneci) may be considered to be partial descendants of the Cumans. But did they intermarry in large numbers with the Romanians or just with the nobility and upper classes?

Also, Cumans are said to have come from Central Asia and allegedy spoke a Turkic language. Therefore, could the minimal Turkic influence in Romanian be of this origin rather than from the Ottoman Turks?

@Al

Genetically, I think you can find some Cuman traces in Southern Romania. I have some Turkic facial characteristics: hawk nose (its funny that in English it's called a Roman nose), steppe eyes and I have been called a Turk by Middle Eastern people. At the same time Western people think I am Polish or even Scandinavian, because I am tall and red haired/blonde.

Now, of course I cannot generalize my own characteristics to Southern Romanians. However, I should point out that in Dobrogea, in Constanta county in particular, 10% of the population (more than 60,000) is of Turkish and Tartar origin, so it is safe to assume that some Turkic genes were spread in this region. Our current president, T. Basescu, ethnic Romanian, has some clear Tartar facial characteristics.

Regarding the language imports, I think most of the Turkic words are from Ottoman Turks, brought in Romania by Turkish merchants/storekeepers/pedlars. Again the spread of these Turkish words is limited to Southern Romania.

Those turkish words spread from the nobility that was in contact with the turks to the peasants who in most cases would have not seen a real turk in their entire life. They have also spread more recently to other areas of Romania under the influence of the Bucharest standard speech. This is also a little bit different from the rest of the balkans where the turks and the turkish language would have been a common occurrence in the daily life. It is also plausible that the origin of some turkic words in romanian is in the turkic migratory people of central-asian origin who have ruled over the territory of present day Romania for extended periods of time.

Thanks guys. Funny I just saw a pic of the Romanian president and I agree that he does in fact look somewhat Central Asian or Turkic. The eyes and cheekbones suggest this. I agree that Romanians vary in looks. Some have the stereotypical Eastern European look akin to many Slavs and Hungarians (largely Slavic by bloodline), some show some Turkic influence likely via the Cumans, Huns, or Tatars, some look like Greeks or Italians (likely via the original Dacians and the Roman soldiers/colonists who were drawn from the Mediterranean lands/southern Balkans), some even look Germanic (maybe from the Goths), and naturally many look like a mix of two or more of the above.

A quote from "History and myths in romanian consciousness" by Lucian Boia:

"The Etymological Dictionary (1870-1879) of Alexandru Cihac, came to the conclusion that romanian language was more slav than latin: two fifths slav, one fifth turk and one fifth latin".

Since the XIX century every effort possible was made by the romanian authorities to latinize the romanian language. even historical names have been changed.
A few examples:
steag(slavic word meaning flag) replaced by drapel (french drapeau)

Mihai Viteazul(slav) voievod(slav word) al românilor has become Mihai Bravul(brave from french) domn(dominus) al Ţării Româneşti.

Rumîn has became Român ta make it sound closer to Roman(from Rome). Ţeara Rumînească has become first Rumania then Romania to make it seem closer to Rome. The word Ţară-Country comes from russian word Ţarina not from latin Terra. Old name was Ţeară for country and Ţărean for peasant(the old form is found in all romanian texts prior to XIX century). Ţeară was maimed into Ţară and Ţărean into Ţăran to make possible the latin etimolgy Terra(land, earth) instead of real slav Ţarină. Ţarină means arable land and Gardul Ţarinii means Village Border. In many slav languages Ţarina means border.

Now the change of rumîn into român made possible the new masonic blasphemy, naming the gypsies "roma people" or "romani" instead of their centuries old name "ţigani"(read tzigani), to further humiliate romanians.

Sfatul(slav) Popular(City Council) has become Consiliul(italian) Popular and many many more.

The latinization of romanian language was made by masons and catholics that feared the pan-slavic tendency of Russia. This latinization was encouraged by the western countries that liked the idea of a romance language surrounded by a "Sea of Slavs", in fact they liked the idea of a breach in the east european slavic block that could become a menace if united. The latinization made romanian language some kind of monstrous hybrid and led to a climate of isolation and inmity especially against Russia. That latin origin of the romanian language is not sustained by historical or linguistic facts.


Another interesting fact, many many rumanian family names and surnames are slavic: Pîrvu - family name meaning first in russian, Dobre,Cazimir, Popovici, Vladescu, Dragan, Dragoi,Dragomir, Stoian, Stoican, Vodă and surnames like Bogdan, Dragoş, Vlad, Vladimir, Vadim, Radu, Pavel, Vasile, Stan and many others.

Cumans were the rulling class in Romania for sometime. Cumans were land owners in Wallachia(Muntenia, Ţara Romanească) and that explains why in this area only, rumîn meant also serf - bound to the land. Names like Tocsaba, Tîncabă, Bărcan, Coman, Co_mănescu,and most likely Mănescu and Manea, Comaneci are cuman. There is a romanian epic folk poem called Toma Alimoş(Toma alu Moşu, meaning Toma son of the Old Man in the sense of Ancestor). In this poem Toma fights Manea (Manea slutul şi urâtul - Ugly, Maimed, Manea). Toma is a "haiduk" - balkanic Robin Hood style outlaw - and Manea is a "Boier" - land owner, noble(most likely cuman judging by his name). Toma is strong and brave("voinic" and "viteaz") and Manea is described as fat, ugly and coward.

The last thing I would like to add is that the contact of romanian and slavic people could be much older than VI-VII century a.d.. The great romanian historian Nicolae Iorga thought that Sarmatians(Sauromatoi) were Slavs. Sarmatians are featured on the the Trajan's Colum like Geto-Dacian allies against the romans in the roman war for Dacia. Also the ancient capital of Dacia was called Sarmisegetusa (Sarmis_e_Getusa) signifying perhaps geto(gotho)-sarmatic(slavic) fusion took place very early in the history of Romania.

On this forum, it seems like there is a separation between pro-Slav versus pro-Latin/Romance camps. Does this same vehement opposition occur in country.

@JGreco
"On this forum, it seems like there is a separation between pro-Slav versus pro-Latin/Romance camps. Does this same vehement opposition occur in country."

In Romania this is not a subject of discussion/disagreement, nobody cares about it. In Rep. of Moldova however, it is a politically charged topic.

In Rep of Moldova almost half of the population is made of Russian native speakers (even most of the Ukrainians living in Moldova are Russian native speakers). These Slavic populations fear any tighter political relation between Romania and Moldova. They truly believe the Tsarist/Soviet fabrications about the history of Romania and Moldova, used to lay claim over these lands.

Ruman and ravinescu are excellent representatives of this line of thought. They believe that Romanian lands were once called Russovlahia, that one third of the population was Slavic in Medieval times, that present day Romanian is an artificial language made by Freemasons and Imperial Austrians to hinder legitimate Russian claims over Romania.

Of course all these are utter nonsense. The funny thing is that even the claim that Slavs mixed with Vlahs in high percentages is contradicted by the first census (1817) made by the Tsarist administrators after they grabbed Bessarabia (present day Rep of Moldova): only 10% of Bessarabians were found to be of Slavic origin. And this happened in a Romanian territory that always had the highest percentage of Slavic people.

BTW, Ruman is obiously Moldovan. He thinks that 'ceas' means 'hour' in Romanian. This is an obsolete use for 'ceas', in present day Romanian 'ceas' means clock/watch.

Continental Portuguese has that harsh Slavic sound full of consonants and shwa's and other reduced vowels, it is also just as fast and muffled.

I am not Moldovean(moldavian), not that it would be something good or bad. Instead I am Rumanian born and raised.

I am fully aware that in rumanian language "ora" partly replaced "ceas" but the russian word "ceas" is not limited at the meaning of "wrist watch", we have also the usual expression "ceas rau" meaning "malheur(e)" in french or "evil hour" in english or "să fie într-un ceas bun" - let this be a favourable moment(literally hour), were ceas obviously does not mean "wrist watch" but "hour". Also tuesday and friday there are "trei ceasuri rele" - "three evil hours", another used expression is "se dă de ceasul morţii" - a big effort made by someone like "in the hour of his death". How obsolete is that :D? The meaning "hour" for the word "ceas" is not totally lost in romanian. There are still (a lot of) people that say "stau un ceas doua" meaning I'll stay an hour or two.

It is clear that the word "oră" for "hour" is a recent neologism that didn't have time to form composed expressions like the ones I've showed you. In fact if we were to replace "ceas" with "ora" in the expression "ceas rau" we would obtain something like "oră rea" expression that in romanian would become something like "orărea" a phonetically stupid word, a rather funny expression than a scary one. We could also follow the masonic path and try to exchange the word "rău" with something else like mal form french for instance and say "oră mală" sau "mala ora", become language creators, and make "orămală" or "malora" kin to french malheur, yeah malora sounds good definitely, better than "ceas rău" a slavic peasant disgusting expression, the master will be happy! :D. Here we are, "malora" a new "old" latin expression in romanian ROFL.

Another example of stupidity is the attempt of romanian mass media to replace our slavic lovers day called "Dragobete" by strongly promoting the latin varian "Valentine's Day". If this is not ethnical and linguistical extermination I don't know what is.

The creators of modern rumanian language were masons and catholics, this is a hard fact. I have nothing against catholics but the immense majority of rumanians are slav orthodox christians.
A quote from an interview given by N.Djuvara rumanian historian:

Question: Why was it necessary to prove our latinity especially in the XIX-th century? (partial answer):

"The first scientists that sustained the latin origin of romanians of Transilvania like, Maior, Şincai and others, all were greco-catholics, let's be honest about it! These people, because they were educated in Viena or Rome could find arguments that people in Romania did not have (so they learned they were latins in Italy and Austria lol, my note). For us the latin origin was a politcal weapon..... So it was a nationalist reaction and then we exagerated. We wanted to be true romans" The full interview in romanian can be found at http://www.contrafort.md/2007/156/1323.html

In another interview, Marcel Shapira Great Commandor of the Supreme Council of the Romanian Masonic Order said:

"Acording to historical sources, freemasonry was imported in the romanian countries at the beggining of the XVIII century, from ITALY, ...
and was adopted at courts of the rulers(mostly greek scum - does not mean all greeks are scum - recruited form the slums of Istanbul - Fanar hence their romanian surname "fanarioţi", they bought from the turks the right to rule the rumanian countries and to bleed dry the rumanians, my note) of Moldavia and Wallachia.

A few names of rumanian freemason rulers: Constantin Mavrocordat, Scarlat Ghica , Alexandru Moruzi, Mihai Sutzu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza(he was not greek and became an anti-mason later and as consequence he was exiled) , princes Cantacuzino, Sturza etc.

Illustrious masonic personalities : Dimitrie Cantemir and Ion Brătianu, Costache Rosetti, M. Kogălniceanu, Vasile Alecsandri, Costache Negri, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Cezar Bolliac, Nicolae Bălcescu, Dimitrie Bolintineanu sau Titu Maiorescu.

Romanian masons introduced in Romania the Civil Code (zis Codul Napoleon), created: the Red Cross, The school of Arts and Trades,freed gypsies from slavery, Free Public Schools and other things."
Full interview in romanian at http://www.oglindaliterara.ro/arhiva/index.php?ar=1289

Basically before the communists rise to power, the masonic cancer was ruling Romania, they controlled everything: newspapers, schools, The Romanian Academy that built rumanian latin language from scrap. Some of the people listed played a crucial and active part in the creation of the Latin Rumanian Language.

Now masons are baq in power and their gift to us was creating a new name for the gypsies - "romani". They will burn in hell for that "În vecii vecilor amin" - forever and ever amen :D. Rumanian people should refuse to use the masonic form "romanian" or "Romania", gypsies have no common ethnic past with Rumanians. We tolerate them but there will always be "Us" and "them". We enslaved them and that was a bad thing for them, freeing them was an even worse thing for Us, now perhaps we pay for the sins of the fathers.

Another interesting thing about rumanian official science is the constant denial of all Persian or Gothic input in rumanian language and there are TONS of words.

The problem with rumanian is that it is an indo-european language
and there is a common root for many words in all indo-european languages so you could eventually transform slavic, and also greek, gothic and persian input into a latin one, by building a french clone grammar, writing phony etymological dictionaries and replacing slavic words with latin in all mass-media (writen and visual) and in school books too. I know a lot of rumanian language teachers that still refuse to write â instead of î(many of them are rumanian language teachers at the University of Bucharest).

It is not true that rumanians do not care about who they are or where they came from. I do care and there is plenty of others, and by the will of God we will soon be Legion. We will fight for our language, history and orthodox faith. Many are blind, because they are blinded by the media propaganda and the lies they learn in school, but with the help of God they will learn the truth before it's too late. If the system works against us then we will beat the rotten system lol. Nice propaganda speech, right? Still I'm only half joking.

This will be my last post and I'll give you a last piece of etymology. You can check all words at http://dictionare.edu.ro

Rus = rus (rúsă), adj. – Roşu. – Mr. arus, megl. rus. Sl. rusŭ - we have a first word "rus" meaning Red(Roşu) in romanian and slavonic (Sl.rusu)

then we have:

oameni = meaning people

rus + oa_meni = ru(s)meni. Literally red people

we lose the s and get:

rumen = rúmen (rúmenă), adj. – Trandafiriu, roşcat. – Mr. arumîn. Sl. rumĕnŭ „roşu”(red).

Meaning is rose or rosy(colour). "Rumen în obraji" means having rosy(red) cheeks. Also in megleno-romanian the word is arumîn and means also rosy, red. So semantically the etimology is correct.

In "arumîn"(old form) if you change "o" in "u" an "î" in "â" you get "aromân" which is the new official name of the makedonian vlachs from Greece Makedonia. These changes were imposed also by the Romanian Academy for obvious reason - to forge history.


Two quotes from a rumanian folk song called "Pe valea Ampoiului":

"Iţa, Iţa, Ţarina cu mocana rumena" - were rumena can mean both girl with rosy cheeks or rumanian (shepherd)girl.Read ţ like tz.

"Rumeneala şi albeala astea-s la mocani la fala" - meaning, "white and rosy cheeks are the shepherds pride".

So Ruman literally means white people with rosy cheeks. Rus root from Russian has the same meaning. Rus Ros Rose so close and yet so far.

The song can be seen on YouTube just serch its title. The song was not posted by me

So IMO Ţeara Rumînească meant at origin Russian Land not Land of Roman(s). And by the way the italian word for romanian is rumeno.

If you change "u" with "o" and "e" or "î" with "â"(as romanian freemasons did) you get român(î and â are identical in pronounciation only the graphical sign is different). Also you need to shift the accent from "u" to "â" and voila, from ru(s)men to români is just a small step. Kind of funny actually

I am not saying that today Rumanians are Russians , i am only saying they share a common origin, same people separated by avars and cumans that later knew a different ethnological and linguistical evolution.

This is a thing that happened thousands of times in history. Just like french speaking Normans(germanic people) fought with anglo-saxons(also germanic) for England. The Normans(Norse Men, s and e went out just like s from rus) were speaking french but their name is testament of their origin.

The claims of latin origin of the romanian language in the XIX century are very similar to the recent stupid attempt of some people in Republic of Moldavia to create a so called "Moldavian language", only because they fear Romania would like to unite with Moldavia (which it does :D, at least many people would like that).

The only problem is timing(you cant trick people that easily today especially when they have internet) otherwise they might have succeeded just like our politicians and masons did.

When I was a child the people living in the Republic of Moldavia were always called "basarabeni" and the country "Basarabia" in official communist media, not "moldavians" as today and I always thought they were somekind of russians. Just to show you how powerfull media manipulation can be

I know I was largely off topic and that i bored you to death :D, but I am sharing my thoughts with you because I found some posts here that sustain the same old propaganda about romanian language that makes me sick and because writing this was a lot of fun :D.


I found about all these things in an attempt to find out who we (rumanians) really are, who I really am, just like Supertramp's Logical Song says - "Please tell me who I am" :D . Kinda useless waste of time in a material sense. However to find the truth is never an useless thing, even if it's not what you would have liked. Also I must say I don't particulary like(or dislike) russians.

A last on topic comment: Portuguese IMO does not sound like russian, at least not in my ears :D, the heavy use of rounded "z" makes me think to chinese or something exotic anyway. Instead the language spoke in romanian region of Moldavia as well as in the Republic of Moldavia does sound slavic. A lot.

P.S.: Ravinescu I salute you and thanks for the usefull links. I am happy that I am not alone :D.


Bye and sorry for my long posts.

FREEDOM FOR PRIDNESTROVYE!

I agree that there appears to be an intense and spirited divide between Romanians who wish to identify more with Latin Europeans and those who see themselves as closer to Slavs and other Eastern Europeans.

Why not just embrace the fact that Romanians have significant influences from both groups?? After all, that's what makes it such an interesting and unique country. Not fully belonging to the West or the East. They certainly share some things in common with their neighbors but at the same time they differ in other ways, most notably of course in their language and sense of identity.

Despite the movements to purge the Romanian language of Slavic words awhile back, Romanian is not an artificial language. It is a genuine Romance language that just happened to develop in isolation from its sister languages in Western Europe, hence its peculiarity. Furthermore, Slavic acted on Romanian in the same manner that Germanic words entered into French or Italian in the Middle Ages (or Arabic words in Spanish and Portuguese). I'm not going to get into the degree to which each of these outside influences acted as superimposing influences on each Romance language, but you get the general idea.

BTW, I think it rather miraculous that a Romance language was able to survive in that remote corner of Eastern Europe, particularly in light of all of the tumultuous invasions and conquests that took place in the Dark Ages and into the Middle Ages. Also one might've thought that the pervasive Slavic and Byzantine Greek cultural influences would have eventually snuffed out any remaining traces of Roman civilization in the region.

I'd say European Spanish

lol