Which Romance language sounds more Slavic?

Dude, we weren't even talking about that. It seems you're obsessed with the same concept and keep bringing it up over and over like a broken record. That's like the only agenda you have on this entire forum lol. Give it a rest already. Just because you're different from the rest of us doesn't mean you have to drag us all down with you. Of course the Slavs are an important part, but they're obviously not the only one. Like ravinescu said, people were brought from all over the empire, and there is a small Italian genetic presence, whether they were brought straight from there or, more likely, were from other places in the empire but partially had origins from there. It became quite diluted over time though and the natives of the region, mostly of Balkan origin, of course make up the most of the people. And you can't ignore the other migratory groups too. Maybe the far north and east is more Slavic because that was part of their old domain, but if you think about it the Romanian people really developed in the south, in Oltenia and Muntenia, the regions which later made up Wallachia, and then spread out to what is now the rest of the country, including Moldova, which I hear was founded by someone from Maramures. And obviously there was a long period where the so called "Latin" culture was lost and largely forgotten, but this makes sense as it was isolated from the rest of that world.
Anyway this isn't about this, so let's not get too far off track.

@ to me
"When I see those incredible high numbers of castles, churches, palaces etc in England, Germany, France, Russia, Austria, Spain, Italy etc my pulls always jumps up. I simple cannot just pass by; admire the work of the artists who made those works and not thinking about the lost lives of so many poor people; about how many people have been pushed to the limit of the existence for and by the whims of their masters."

You lying Romanian. You criticize the west when you hypocrites have castles of your own, like that of Bran or Hunedoara. Ha.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles_in_Romania

That and you impaled tens of thousands of Turks on stakes just as an intimidation tactic! Very civilized.

I wasn't sure if I should take you comments in serious. May I ask you how old you are?

Anyway, if you had been putting a bit of more effort you would have to occasion to learn that those castles you mentioned as being build by Romanians, are in act not.

Before everything else, I have to tell you that the castles from Romania were built as fortresses, for protection; they don't have anything luxurious in them, excepting the Peles castle built in 19 century by the King Carol I of Hohenzollern.

Secondly:

The castles form Romania, you can count on the fingers of one hand are not built by Romanians. Let's speak about them, a bit:

1. The castle of Hunedoara is a relic of the Hunyadi dynasty. In the 14th century, the castle was given to John Hunyadi Sherb by Sigismund king of Hungary as severance. It has been built by Hungarians and has more the characteristics of a fortress than a luxurious place to live;

2. Banfy Castle - built by the Hungarian Count Banffy. It was owned by the Bánffy family, (a noble Hungarian family).

3. Bran Castle - is more a fortress situated on the border between Transylvania and Walachia. The first documented mentioning of Bran Castle is the act issued by Louis I of Hungary on November 19, 1377, giving the Saxons of Kronstadt (Braşov) the privilege to build the stone citadel ON THEIR OWN EXPENSE AND LABOUR FORCE!!!!

4. Peleş Castle. King Carol I of the Romanians (1839–1914), one of the great Romanian kings and conqueror of the National Independence, first visited the region and future site of the castle in 1866, when he fell in love with the rugged but magnificent mountain scenery. So, in 1872, a total of one thousand "pogoane", approx. 1,300 acres (5.3 km2), was PURCHASED by the King and Piatra Arsa region becomes The Royal Domain of Sinaia, destined to be a royal hunting preserve and summer retreat for the monarch. (It has been built with his own money what he brought from his family in Germany. He was a Hohenzollern!

Between three and four hundred men worked consistently on it. Queen Elisabeth of the Romanians, during the construction phase, wrote in her journal:

"Italians were masons, Romanians were building terraces, and the Gypsies were coolies. Albanians and Greeks worked in stone, Germans and Hungarians were carpenters. Turks were burning brick. Engineers were Polish and the stone carvers were Czech. The Frenchmen were drawing, the Englishmen were measuring, and so was then when you could see hundreds of national costumes and fourteen languages in which they spoke, sang, cursed and quarreled on all dialects and tones, a joyful mix of men, horses, cart oxen and domestic buffaloes."


Romanians alone have built only fortresses & churches. Not opulent churches as the Catholics did, just modest cult locations as reconnaissance to Lord's help and goodness.

Stefan the Great (give a search on goggle for " Stefan III of Moldavia" and read), has built 44 churches and monasteries, one for each battle that he won (44 out of a total of 48); Unlike his contemporary western princes which celebrated victories with huge fast, according to the Polish chronicler Jan Duglosz, Stephen did not celebrate, he fasted for forty days on bread and water and forbade anyone to attribute the victory to him, insisting that credit be given only to "The Lord."

He was a TRUE man of religion and displayed his piety when he paid the debt of Mount Athos to the Porte, ensuring the continuity of Athos as an autonomous monastically community.

About the Vlad the Impeller (who by the way, was the first cousin of Stefan the Great). First of all, it was one single Romanian who use Impaling as punishment solution, not all Romanian as you Mike, insinuate in your comment. It was not nice to accuse the whole nation of this practice.
Secondly, Vlad was the man of his époque. Take a look into that period and see how was the punishments conducted in the western side of Europe. Would you proffered (if you could chose), to burn alive, to be broken in pieces by wheel, the be forced to seat on fire hot chair , crowned with a burning crown while small pieces of your body were pulled off with pliers by the punishers?

Impaling was something new for the Europeans and that was giving it this amplitude of horror but to die like George Doja, was it better? Impaling was a well know method of punishment for ottomans. Vlad learned it from them! Allegedly it has been saying that because Mehmed II was gay, and abused children and even lived with Radu the Handsome, Vlad's brother, made Vlad think about this type of punishment first for the Turks. Then this was extended to the others, too.

Anyway, nothing of what Bram Stocker has written is matching the reality in any way. Maybe only that he was born in Transylvania. Here is what you have to know about Vlad the Impeller:

He was born in Sighişoara, Transylvania in the winter of 1431 to Vlad II Dracul, future voivode of Walachia, and his wife, Princess Cneajna of Moldavia, daughter of Alexandru cel Bun. He had two older half-brothers, Mircea II and Vlad Călugărul, and a younger brother, Radu cel Frumos.

In the year of his birth Vlad's father, known under the nickname the Dragon (Romanian: Dracul) had traveled to Nurnberg, today located in Germany, where he had been vested into the Order of the Dragon. At the age of five, young Vlad was also initiated into the Order.

Like his father, who was the son of the Walachia vivid Mircea the Elder, in the early years of childhood, the future ruling prince Vlad the Impeller got a distinguished education, and mastered German and Latin. During the first reign of Vlad II, Vlad the Impeller accompanied his father to Targoviste - capital of Walachia at that time.

The Byzantine chancellor Mikhail Doukas showed that, at Targoviste, the sons of boyars and ruling princes got a distinguished education from either Romanian or Greek scholars, coming from Constantinople. The young prince learned for sure; combat skills, geography, mathematics, science, language; Romanian, Latin, Bulgarian (church Slavonic) and the classical arts and philosophy.

In 1453, the Ottomans, under Sultan Mehmed II took Constantinople after a prolonged siege, putting an end to the final major Christian presence in the eastern Mediterranean, after which Ottoman influence began to spread from this base through the Carpathians, threatening mainland Europe.

In 1456, three years after the Ottomans had conquered Constantinople; they threatened Hungary by besieging Belgrade. Hunyadi began a concerted counter-attack in Serbia: while he himself moved into Serbia and relieved the siege (before dying of the plague), Vlad led his own contingent into Walachia, reconquered his native land and killed Vladislav II in hand to hand combat.

Vlad found Walachia in a wretched state: constant war had resulted in rampant crime, falling agricultural production, and the virtual disappearance of trade. Regarding a stable economy essential to resisting external enemies, he used severe methods to restore order and prosperity.

Vlad had three aims for Walachia: to strengthen the country's economy, its defense and his own political power. He took measures to help the peasants' wellbeing by building new villages and raising agricultural output. He understood the importance of trade for the development of Walachia. He helped the Walachia merchants by limiting foreign merchant trade to three market towns: Targusor, Campulung and Targoviste.

Vlad considered the boyars the chief cause of the constant strife as well as of the death of his father and brother. To secure his rule, he had many leading nobles killed and gave positions in his council, traditionally belonging to the greatest boyars, to persons of obscure origins, who would be loyal to him alone, and some to foreigners. For lower offices, Vlad preferred knights and free peasants to boyars. In his aim of cleaning up Walachia Vlad gave new laws punishing thieves and robbers. Vlad treated the boyars with the same harshness, because they were guilty of weakening Wallachia through their internal struggles for power.

The army was also strengthened. He had a small personal guard, mostly made of mercenaries, who were rewarded by loot. Another reward for soldiers was promotion. Adding to his guard he formed ‘the lesser army’ made up of peasants called to fight when ever war came.

Since the Walachian nobility was linked to the Transylvanian Saxons, Vlad also acted against them by eliminating their trade privileges and raiding their cities. In 1459, he had several Saxon settlers of Braşov (Kronstadt) impaled.

Vlad was also on guard against the rival Dăneşti clan, and some of his raids into Transylvania may have been aimed at capturing potential challengers. Several members of the clan died at Vlad's hands, including a Dăneşti prince suspected to have taken part in his brother Mircea's murder. Vlad condemned him to death and forced him to read his own eulogy while kneeling before his open grave.

Vlad allied himself with Matthias Corvinus, Hunyadi's son who had risen to be King of Hungary. Walachia controlled her side of the Danube and Sultan Mehmed II wanted to have control over the river, as naval attacks could be launched against his empire all the way from the Holy Roman Empire. On September 26, 1459, Pope Pius II called for a new crusade against the Ottomans and on January 14, 1460, at the Congress of Mantua, the Pope proclaimed the official crusade that was to last for three years. His plan, however, failed and the only European leader that showed enthusiasm for the crusade was Vlad Ţepeş, whom the Pope held in high regard.

Later that year, in 1459, Mehmed sent envoys to Ţepeş to urge him to pay the delayed tribute. Vlad refused to pay the tribute, of 10,000 ducats and 500 young boys, to the Ottomans. To provoke Mehmed, Vlad had the envoys killed, by nailing their turbans to their heads. Subsequently, the Ottomans attempted to remove him, and the Turks crossed the Danube and started to do their own recruiting, to which Ţepeş reacted by capturing the Turks and impaling them.

Meanwhile, the Sultan received intelligence reports that revealed Ţepeş's alliance with Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus. The Sultan knew he could not stop the alliance, so he tried to kidnap Vlad for whatever reason.

He sent the Bey of Nicopolis and Hamza Pasha, to stage a diplomatic meeting with Vlad at Giurgiu, but with orders to ambush him there; and thereafter, take him to Constantinople: "no matter how: by tricks, under oath, or any other kind of trap".

Vlad Ţepeş was forewarned about the ambush and planned to set an ambush of his own. Hamza Pasha brought with him 1,000 cavalry and when passing through a narrow pass north of Giurgiu, Ţepeş launched a surprise-attack. The Walachians had the Turks surrounded and fired with their hand gunners until the entire expedition-force was killed. The Turk's plans were thwarted and some of them caught and impaled, but the Bey of Nicopolis Hamza Pasha escaped and never returned to fight in Walachia

In the winter of 1461/1462 Vlad crossed the Danube and devastated the area between Serbia and the Black Sea. Disguising himself as a Turk, he infiltrated the fortress and destroyed it. In a letter to Corvinus dated February 2, he wrote: "I have killed men and women, old and young... 23,884 Turks and Bulgarians without counting those whom we burned alive in their homes or whose heads were not chopped off by our soldiers...” The Christians were spared and many of them were settled in Walachia.

In response to this, Sultan Mehmed II raised an army of around 60,000 troops and 30,000 irregulars [15] and in the spring of 1462 headed towards Walachia. Mehmed was greeted by a forest of stakes on which Vlad had impaled 20,000 of Mehmed's previous Ottoman army.

Commanding between 20,000 and 40,000 men, Vlad was unable to stop the Ottomans from entering Walachia and occupying the capital Târgovişte on 4 June 1462. Subsequently, he resorted to guerrilla warfare, constantly organizing small attacks and ambushes on the Turks. The Night Attack - one of the most famous Romanian military maneuvers occurred on June 16/17, when during the night Vlad and some of his bravest men (wearing Ottoman disguises) entered the main Turkish camp and attempted to assassinate Mehmed. As many as 15,000 Turks were killed, though the sultan escaped alive.

Another attack took place on the night of the 23rd June. Vlad needed to go to Chilia, but he left 6,000 of his men to pursue the retreating Ottoman enemy. He decided to attack the Turks once again and surprised the rear-guard of Iosuf Bey, which soon was forced to flee. Turkhanbeyoglu Omer Bey helped the Ottoman army and forced the overwhelmed and outnumbered Walachians to retreat into the woods.

There was another battle near Buzau soon after, when 15,000 Walachians defeated the Turkish light cavalry of Evrenos Bey. On the 29th June Mehmed II reached Braila, which he burned to the ground and then crossed the Danube.

Vlad the Impeller’s attack was celebrated among the Saxon cities of Transylvania, the Italian states and the Pope. A Venetian envoy, upon hearing about the news at the court of Corvinus on March 4, expressed great joy and said that the whole of Christianity should celebrate Vlad Ţepeş successful campaign. The Genoese from Caffa also thanked Vlad, for his campaign had saved them from an attack of some 300 ships that the sultan planned to send against them. That is how we know Vlad the Impeller for. His method of punishment fails on the second place since we know that he tried the best to bring the civic moral to its place and respect. Vlad the Impeller was nothing but the man of his time! (Sources used form wikipedia)


I apologies for being so long! I thought that Dracula mite should be somehow explained!

To me, Polish sometimes has a softer, more elegant sound among Slavic languages, almost similar to French in a way. Portuguese doesn't really sound like anything else in my humble opinion. I think Romanian pronunciation can sound sort of like some Italian languages, but the intonation is different and more sober, like that of Spanish, as opposed to the exaggerated sing-songiness of Italian.
Oh, and another thing I've been wondering about. What's with the u's in Romanian all the time? It's like a lot of the o's were replaced by them. I notice a similar thing in Sicilian (sicilianu) too.

@Harry Balzac:

You might just as well ask what's with so many u's in Latin, all thouse -um, -us endings must be annoying in Latin :)

Regarding the sound of Romanian, someone said above that Romanian sounds a little bit like Lithuanian. Here is a Lithuanian song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqh2mFu_dAw

For me as a native speaker of Romanian it is hard to tell if they sound similar or not. What do you think?

I don't see simmilarities and by the way I am Greek!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yONWF1BxTmw

=================================
Quote from: Anonymous romanian plagiator
I apologies for being so long! I thought that Dracula mite should be somehow explained!
=================================

You should apologize for stealing content from Wikipedia and pass it as your own. Your message is more than 90% composed from texts stolen from various Wikipedia articles, linked below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunyad_Castle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bran_Castle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pele%C5%9F_Castle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_the_Great

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_III_the_Impaler

It's a shame how some romanians understand to use Wikipedia, as if it's their right to steal (using copy/paste) full paragraphs from Wikipedia articles without mentioning the original source. It's an uncivilized behavior that goes against the "Terms of Use" of the Wikipedia site and gives romanians a bad reputation. Anyone that uses content from Wikipedia should link back to the original article(s), that's the proper thing to do, that's what any civilized and truthful person should do. Do the anonymous romanian plagiators who posted on this thread want the romanian people to be seen as composed of thieves? If they don't want that to happen, then they should stop stealing and should give credit to the original authors whose work is re-used on the Antimoon forum.

#############################
Re-use of text
Attribution

To re-distribute text on Wikipedia in any form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using, b) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy which is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on this website, or c) a list of all authors. (Any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions.) This applies to text developed by the Wikipedia community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Copyright
#############################

P.S. Oh, and about the "Dracula mite", that probably made many people laugh hard. The translation of "mite" in romanian is "căpuşă", a word that the anonymous plagiator would probably recognize.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mite

The correct english word is "myth", who is the translation of the romanian word "mit".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth

You actually can see which parts were not stolen by the plagiator from Wikipedia because they are full of spelling errors ("Impeller" instead of "Impaler") and calques from romanian to english ("take you comments in serious" derived from the romanian "ia comentariile tale în serios").

tu ai vazut ca tipul a scris la sfarsit ca sursa e wikipedia?

Doamne, inca n-am vazut un cretin mai mare ca tine!

taci din gura, cretinule. ravinescu e cel mai bun si cel mai destept om in forumul asta. esti un roman imputit si un tigan. se traiasca ungaria mare! daca te vad, o sa te omor, inteleg?

There are some conventions used when taking text from other authors. At least these are the conventions used in the civilized world, I don't know the conventions used in the world of the romanian propagandists. You cannot take full paragraphs from Wikipedia without indicating precisely from which articles they were taken. You cannot have a long message posted on a forum and specify at the end that in writing it you have used sources from Wikipedia, without indicating the articles.

The Terms of Use from the Wikipedia site prohibit this behavior, they specify clearly that you must provide URLs for all the articles from which text was taken. You cannot write an article which is 90% copied word for word from Wikipedia and say only at the end that Wikipedia was used a source, letting the readers think that yuo wrote the majority of the article. You can use Wikipedia as a source and mention it briefly at the end if your article is your creation, written by you, with your own words, but is based on knowledge gained from Wikipedia articles.

Copying and pasting full paragraphs is not writing something original, it is plagiarizing, if you do not specify precisely the sources that you have used. And the anonymous romanian plagiarist didn't do that because anyone could see that his personal contribution to the message was minimal, but, hey, he could not let the "Dracula mite" unexplained.

Vlad the Impaler was extremely harsh in punishing thieves. It is extremely ironic that today some romanians praise the personality of Vlad the Impaler, while at the same time being themselves content thieves. A praise in the honor of the biggest thief punisher done by using theft. Only in the romanian propagandistic land...

So, let's see what what is the contribution of the anonymous romanian plagiarist and what is the contribution of the Wikipedia contributors, whose work was ripped off.

==========================
Source: Anonymous romanian plagiarist
I wasn't sure if I should take you comments in serious. May I ask you how old you are?

Anyway, if you had been putting a bit of more effort you would have to occasion to learn that those castles you mentioned as being build by Romanians, are in act not.

Before everything else, I have to tell you that the castles from Romania were built as fortresses, for protection; they don't have anything luxurious in them, excepting the Peles castle built in 19 century by the King Carol I of Hohenzollern.

Secondly:
The castles form Romania, you can count on the fingers of one hand are not built by Romanians. Let's speak about them, a bit:
==========================


=========================
Source: Wikipedia
1. The castle of Hunedoara is a relic of the Hunyadi dynasty. In the 14th century, the castle was given to John Hunyadi Sherb by Sigismund king of Hungary as severance. It has been built by Hungarians and has more the characteristics of a fortress than a luxurious place to live;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunyad_Castle
=========================


==========================
Source: Anonymous romanian plagiarist
2. Banfy Castle - built by the Hungarian Count Banffy. It was owned by the Bánffy family, (a noble Hungarian family).
==========================


==========================
Source: Wikipedia
3. Bran Castle - is more a fortress situated on the border between Transylvania and Walachia. The first documented mentioning of Bran Castle is the act issued by Louis I of Hungary on November 19, 1377, giving the Saxons of Kronstadt (Braşov) the privilege to build the stone citadel ON THEIR OWN EXPENSE AND LABOUR FORCE!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bran_Castle
==========================


==========================
Source: Wikipedia
4. Peleş Castle. King Carol I of the Romanians (1839–1914), one of the great Romanian kings and conqueror of the National Independence, first visited the region and future site of the castle in 1866, when he fell in love with the rugged but magnificent mountain scenery. So, in 1872, a total of one thousand "pogoane", approx. 1,300 acres (5.3 km2), was PURCHASED by the King and Piatra Arsa region becomes The Royal Domain of Sinaia, destined to be a royal hunting preserve and summer retreat for the monarch. (It has been built with his own money what he brought from his family in Germany. He was a Hohenzollern!

Between three and four hundred men worked consistently on it. Queen Elisabeth of the Romanians, during the construction phase, wrote in her journal:

"Italians were masons, Romanians were building terraces, and the Gypsies were coolies. Albanians and Greeks worked in stone, Germans and Hungarians were carpenters. Turks were burning brick. Engineers were Polish and the stone carvers were Czech. The Frenchmen were drawing, the Englishmen were measuring, and so was then when you could see hundreds of national costumes and fourteen languages in which they spoke, sang, cursed and quarreled on all dialects and tones, a joyful mix of men, horses, cart oxen and domestic buffaloes."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pele%C5%9F_Castle
===============================


==========================
Source: Anonymous romanian plagiarist
Romanians alone have built only fortresses & churches. Not opulent churches as the Catholics did, just modest cult locations as reconnaissance to Lord's help and goodness.
============================

=========================
Source: Wikipedia
Stefan the Great (give a search on goggle for " Stefan III of Moldavia" and read), has built 44 churches and monasteries, one for each battle that he won (44 out of a total of 48); Unlike his contemporary western princes which celebrated victories with huge fast, according to the Polish chronicler Jan Duglosz, Stephen did not celebrate, he fasted for forty days on bread and water and forbade anyone to attribute the victory to him, insisting that credit be given only to "The Lord."

He was a TRUE man of religion and displayed his piety when he paid the debt of Mount Athos to the Porte, ensuring the continuity of Athos as an autonomous monastically community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_III_of_Moldavia
=========================


==========================
Source: Anonymous romanian plagiarist
About the Vlad the Impeller (who by the way, was the first cousin of Stefan the Great). First of all, it was one single Romanian who use Impaling as punishment solution, not all Romanian as you Mike, insinuate in your comment. It was not nice to accuse the whole nation of this practice.
Secondly, Vlad was the man of his époque. Take a look into that period and see how was the punishments conducted in the western side of Europe. Would you proffered (if you could chose), to burn alive, to be broken in pieces by wheel, the be forced to seat on fire hot chair , crowned with a burning crown while small pieces of your body were pulled off with pliers by the punishers?

Impaling was something new for the Europeans and that was giving it this amplitude of horror but to die like George Doja, was it better? Impaling was a well know method of punishment for ottomans. Vlad learned it from them! Allegedly it has been saying that because Mehmed II was gay, and abused children and even lived with Radu the Handsome, Vlad's brother, made Vlad think about this type of punishment first for the Turks. Then this was extended to the others, too.

Anyway, nothing of what Bram Stocker has written is matching the reality in any way. Maybe only that he was born in Transylvania. Here is what you have to know about Vlad the Impeller:
==========================


============================
Source: Wikipedia
He was born in Sighişoara, Transylvania in the winter of 1431 to Vlad II Dracul, future voivode of Walachia, and his wife, Princess Cneajna of Moldavia, daughter of Alexandru cel Bun. He had two older half-brothers, Mircea II and Vlad Călugărul, and a younger brother, Radu cel Frumos.

In the year of his birth Vlad's father, known under the nickname the Dragon (Romanian: Dracul) had traveled to Nurnberg, today located in Germany, where he had been vested into the Order of the Dragon. At the age of five, young Vlad was also initiated into the Order.

Like his father, who was the son of the Walachia vivid Mircea the Elder, in the early years of childhood, the future ruling prince Vlad the Impeller got a distinguished education, and mastered German and Latin. During the first reign of Vlad II, Vlad the Impeller accompanied his father to Targoviste - capital of Walachia at that time.

The Byzantine chancellor Mikhail Doukas showed that, at Targoviste, the sons of boyars and ruling princes got a distinguished education from either Romanian or Greek scholars, coming from Constantinople. The young prince learned for sure; combat skills, geography, mathematics, science, language; Romanian, Latin, Bulgarian (church Slavonic) and the classical arts and philosophy.

In 1453, the Ottomans, under Sultan Mehmed II took Constantinople after a prolonged siege, putting an end to the final major Christian presence in the eastern Mediterranean, after which Ottoman influence began to spread from this base through the Carpathians, threatening mainland Europe.

In 1456, three years after the Ottomans had conquered Constantinople; they threatened Hungary by besieging Belgrade. Hunyadi began a concerted counter-attack in Serbia: while he himself moved into Serbia and relieved the siege (before dying of the plague), Vlad led his own contingent into Walachia, reconquered his native land and killed Vladislav II in hand to hand combat.

Vlad found Walachia in a wretched state: constant war had resulted in rampant crime, falling agricultural production, and the virtual disappearance of trade. Regarding a stable economy essential to resisting external enemies, he used severe methods to restore order and prosperity.

Vlad had three aims for Walachia: to strengthen the country's economy, its defense and his own political power. He took measures to help the peasants' wellbeing by building new villages and raising agricultural output. He understood the importance of trade for the development of Walachia. He helped the Walachia merchants by limiting foreign merchant trade to three market towns: Targusor, Campulung and Targoviste.

Vlad considered the boyars the chief cause of the constant strife as well as of the death of his father and brother. To secure his rule, he had many leading nobles killed and gave positions in his council, traditionally belonging to the greatest boyars, to persons of obscure origins, who would be loyal to him alone, and some to foreigners. For lower offices, Vlad preferred knights and free peasants to boyars. In his aim of cleaning up Walachia Vlad gave new laws punishing thieves and robbers. Vlad treated the boyars with the same harshness, because they were guilty of weakening Wallachia through their internal struggles for power.

The army was also strengthened. He had a small personal guard, mostly made of mercenaries, who were rewarded by loot. Another reward for soldiers was promotion. Adding to his guard he formed ‘the lesser army’ made up of peasants called to fight when ever war came.

Since the Walachian nobility was linked to the Transylvanian Saxons, Vlad also acted against them by eliminating their trade privileges and raiding their cities. In 1459, he had several Saxon settlers of Braşov (Kronstadt) impaled.

Vlad was also on guard against the rival Dăneşti clan, and some of his raids into Transylvania may have been aimed at capturing potential challengers. Several members of the clan died at Vlad's hands, including a Dăneşti prince suspected to have taken part in his brother Mircea's murder. Vlad condemned him to death and forced him to read his own eulogy while kneeling before his open grave.

Vlad allied himself with Matthias Corvinus, Hunyadi's son who had risen to be King of Hungary. Walachia controlled her side of the Danube and Sultan Mehmed II wanted to have control over the river, as naval attacks could be launched against his empire all the way from the Holy Roman Empire. On September 26, 1459, Pope Pius II called for a new crusade against the Ottomans and on January 14, 1460, at the Congress of Mantua, the Pope proclaimed the official crusade that was to last for three years. His plan, however, failed and the only European leader that showed enthusiasm for the crusade was Vlad Ţepeş, whom the Pope held in high regard.

Later that year, in 1459, Mehmed sent envoys to Ţepeş to urge him to pay the delayed tribute. Vlad refused to pay the tribute, of 10,000 ducats and 500 young boys, to the Ottomans. To provoke Mehmed, Vlad had the envoys killed, by nailing their turbans to their heads. Subsequently, the Ottomans attempted to remove him, and the Turks crossed the Danube and started to do their own recruiting, to which Ţepeş reacted by capturing the Turks and impaling them.

Meanwhile, the Sultan received intelligence reports that revealed Ţepeş's alliance with Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus. The Sultan knew he could not stop the alliance, so he tried to kidnap Vlad for whatever reason.

He sent the Bey of Nicopolis and Hamza Pasha, to stage a diplomatic meeting with Vlad at Giurgiu, but with orders to ambush him there; and thereafter, take him to Constantinople: "no matter how: by tricks, under oath, or any other kind of trap".

Vlad Ţepeş was forewarned about the ambush and planned to set an ambush of his own. Hamza Pasha brought with him 1,000 cavalry and when passing through a narrow pass north of Giurgiu, Ţepeş launched a surprise-attack. The Walachians had the Turks surrounded and fired with their hand gunners until the entire expedition-force was killed. The Turk's plans were thwarted and some of them caught and impaled, but the Bey of Nicopolis Hamza Pasha escaped and never returned to fight in Walachia

In the winter of 1461/1462 Vlad crossed the Danube and devastated the area between Serbia and the Black Sea. Disguising himself as a Turk, he infiltrated the fortress and destroyed it. In a letter to Corvinus dated February 2, he wrote: "I have killed men and women, old and young... 23,884 Turks and Bulgarians without counting those whom we burned alive in their homes or whose heads were not chopped off by our soldiers...” The Christians were spared and many of them were settled in Walachia.

In response to this, Sultan Mehmed II raised an army of around 60,000 troops and 30,000 irregulars [15] and in the spring of 1462 headed towards Walachia. Mehmed was greeted by a forest of stakes on which Vlad had impaled 20,000 of Mehmed's previous Ottoman army.

Commanding between 20,000 and 40,000 men, Vlad was unable to stop the Ottomans from entering Walachia and occupying the capital Târgovişte on 4 June 1462. Subsequently, he resorted to guerrilla warfare, constantly organizing small attacks and ambushes on the Turks. The Night Attack - one of the most famous Romanian military maneuvers occurred on June 16/17, when during the night Vlad and some of his bravest men (wearing Ottoman disguises) entered the main Turkish camp and attempted to assassinate Mehmed. As many as 15,000 Turks were killed, though the sultan escaped alive.

Another attack took place on the night of the 23rd June. Vlad needed to go to Chilia, but he left 6,000 of his men to pursue the retreating Ottoman enemy. He decided to attack the Turks once again and surprised the rear-guard of Iosuf Bey, which soon was forced to flee. Turkhanbeyoglu Omer Bey helped the Ottoman army and forced the overwhelmed and outnumbered Walachians to retreat into the woods.

There was another battle near Buzau soon after, when 15,000 Walachians defeated the Turkish light cavalry of Evrenos Bey. On the 29th June Mehmed II reached Braila, which he burned to the ground and then crossed the Danube.

Vlad the Impeller’s attack was celebrated among the Saxon cities of Transylvania, the Italian states and the Pope. A Venetian envoy, upon hearing about the news at the court of Corvinus on March 4, expressed great joy and said that the whole of Christianity should celebrate Vlad Ţepeş successful campaign. The Genoese from Caffa also thanked Vlad, for his campaign had saved them from an attack of some 300 ships that the sultan planned to send against them. That is how we know Vlad the Impeller for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_III_the_Impaler
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Source: Anonymous romanian plagiarist
His method of punishment fails on the second place since we know that he tried the best to bring the civic moral to its place and respect. Vlad the Impeller was nothing but the man of his time!
(Sources used form wikipedia)
I apologies for being so long! I thought that Dracula mite should be somehow explained!
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I hope the anonymous romanian propagandists cease the stealing of content and specify precisely which are the sources used in their messages. That means providing URL's to the original articles and signaling that some fragment is taken form somewhere else. Anyone can find if a message contains plagiarized text by using Google, so the romanian plagiarists, by their uncivilized behavior, are doing a disservice to all the romanians.

Am I wrong or the "To Mikey" did mention the source?

"Vlad the Impeller was nothing but the man of his time! (Sources used form wikipedia)"

I'm interested in learning some more of the Romanian language and culture. I know some of the basics, but I hear that some people like to learn by immersing themselves in the language through books, songs and movies. One of the things I'm trying to get used to is the almost silent -i ending for plurals. Does anyone recommend anything good?

>>One of the things I'm trying to get used to is the almost silent -i ending for plurals.

That "silent" i-sound can also be found in Swedish in words like "berg" (mountain) which is pronounced exactly as Romanian "beri" (beers). So you may learn it from someone who knows Swedish.

But keep in mind that "-i" isn't the only ending for plurals. Example:

corn (horn - musical instrument/European Cornel - Cornus mas) - corni (korn') - masc.
corn (horn of an animal) - coarne (kwar-ne) - neuter
corn (croissant) - cornuri (kor-nur') - neuter

@George

The silent 'i' is in fact the same as the Russian soft palatalization Ь sign. It is not a standalone letter, instead it makes ONE sound with the previous consonant. How do you differentiate between proper 'i' and ь? Well .. in standard written Romanian you can't. You really have to know how the natives pronounce it in real life with no clear rule of thumb.

This is why I have been insisting before that proper phonetic Romanian writing is done using a Cyrillic alphabet not the Latin one that is currently in use. Or at least admit that it is not phonetic writing but Latin-wannabe-like writing. Or at least adopt/adapt from the Czech or Polish alphabets.

This is why words such as "copi", "copii", "copiii" have such different pronunciation. All those I's are in fact different letters but they have been "merged" together under one latin symbol.

On a similar note it is often the case that an Е, Ю or Я would palatalize the previous consonant. In the case when the previous consonant is not palatalized a hard sign Ъ should have been used. But there are no soft and hard signs in the current Romanian alphabet.

But as I said, for political reasons the alphabet has been changed to Latin and a great deal of pronunciation characteristics have been lost from writing and are present only in the oral speech. Or even worse, many TV presenters - mainly female news hosts - try really hard to pronounce the words as written making them sound Italianesque and goofy :)

For example the real pronunciation of Romania is Ромыния, see the ending ИЯ?

Addition: currently there is no separate letter for Я either, it is rendered in writing as IA but that is incorrect and confusing because that could be pronounced in reality as either ИА, ЙА, ИЯ, or ЙЯ.