WRITEN ROMANIAN

2992   Fri Feb 09, 2007 12:48 am GMT
catre tu/"eu"

<I have a recommendation to make...don't give advises in Romanian or Romanian related because you don't know this language well enough (not even for yourself). >

frăţioare dragă... zău nu ştiu câtă limba romană ştii tu, dar eu când mă gândesc... că sunt roman cu â nu prea cred că ar trebui să te ţină să-mi dai lecţii de formulare de fraze în limba română. Poate că tastez greşit unele cuvinte din cauza vitezei, dar ... chiar nu ştiu ce-ţi veni să pomeneşti de ură şi sentimente adverse faţă de limba română.
Oricum, mersi de sfaturi... şi dacă chiar te doare capu' rău de tot (scuzaţi cacofonia) cred că sunt destul de capabil să scriu ceva inteligibil şi să înţeleg cât de cât ceva în limba română, poate ceva mai mult decât tine.... ;) ..... no offense....

to "NINA"
"Ca necazul ii scai dupa el" = "someone/someody is following him like a bad luck for him" or " because the bad luck is following him". It depends if the sentence is:
-"Ca necazul îi scai după el" = "îi scai dupa el ca/precum necazul "
or
-"Că necazul îi scai după el"

Actually "Ca necazul îi scai după el"/"îi scai după el ca/precum necazul " it's a saying in romanian language.

Sers şi mulţam fain!
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"I hate spam" - yeah, sure....
eu   Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:34 pm GMT
2992

I'm not ready to start polemics with but you appear to be very aggressive in supporting your points. The fact and the matter is that the mistakes you made in Romanian writing were not because of the speed, but of language control...that made me believe that you are not Romanian. Than, the lack of knowledge of Romanian genesis and of linguistics in general, the courage of making speculative statements , were among other reasons for judging you as I did...

If you cannot calm down and stop "yelling", consider this answer as the last one, to you. We have a brain, we have a mouth, we are literate , we detain all the instruments necessary for a civilized opinion exchange.

Regards!
eu   Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:36 pm GMT
Guest:

"I bet, if a native speaker of Romania (from 150 years ago or more) would talk to a present-day Romanian, they wouldn't understand each other due to their difference in pronunciation and implanted words in present day Romanian"


1. Your opinion is not overcoming its speculative level and your points are , I'm sorry, so naive. I can only tell you that a Romanian today, can understand a very strongly preserved dialect as AROMANIAN is...I'm wondering how somebody who is preoccupied by linguistics could have doubts that we wouldn't be able to communicate today with our ancestors!! Obviously, you don't understand much about Romanian, nor about its formation as a language. (We understand each other perfectly with our brothers from Moldova Republic which have been permanently under a forced Slavisation (reform) . How would you explain that,a very Latinised Romanian allowing a perfect communication with a very Slavic dominant Romanian? Have a guess? You cannot? Because the Slavic words are loaned or artificially imposed and for all of them, Romanian language has its natural substitutes...
I have no doubts that a present peasant could communicate in any terms today with Dracula, for example...if that could be possible!

2. Many European languages went trough at least one reform in the last centuries, therefore, your statement doesn't bring anything new, or special; Think about French, Italian (in fact, Italian has still huge barriers making a southern citizen to easy communicate with a northern one. Here, the difference between the northern and southern dialects is more accentuated than it is between a 16 century Romanian and the one from 2007!)

Then, take English, allow me this time to bet that David Beckman will have hard time understanding not other, but Shakespeare's tongue...
Look at German, who abandoned its Gothic alphabet for the Latin one, who borrowed a huge number of words from Latin, Greek,French and even English. And Germany is even today under all kind of reform debates...

Think about the Slavic languages; how "16 centuries intact" are they still today? Greek language as well...

Nobody contests that Romanian went trough reforms, but to say that a today Romanian could not communicate with his forefather it is...call it yourself!

Regards!
eu   Fri Feb 09, 2007 4:17 pm GMT
For the people who understand Romanian, I am posting below a very old text (from around 1600). With this occasion, you could see how true Guest's appreciations are; you will have the occasion to say, yes or no, I could understand what Stefan the Great, for example was saying if I were having a discussion with him:



"Vor unii Moldovei să-i zică că au chiemat-o Sţitia sau Schithia pre limba slovenească. Ce Sţitia coprinde loc mult, nu numai al nostru, ce închide şi Ardealul şi Ţara Muntenească şi câmpii preste Nistru, de coprinde o parte mare şi de Ţara Leşască. Chiematu-o-au unii şi Flachia, ce scriu létopiseţile latineşti, pre numele hatmanului râmlenescu ce l-au chemat Flacus, carile au bătut războiu cu sţitii pre acéste locuri şi schimbându-să şi schimosindu-să numele, din Flachia i-au zis Vlahiia. Ce noi acésta nume nu-l priimim, nici-l putem da ţărâi noastre Moldovei, ci Ţării Munteneşti, că ei nu vor să disparţă, să facă doao ţări, ci scriu că au fostu tot un loc şi o ţară şi noi aflăm că Moldova s-au discălicat mai pe urmă, iar munténii mai dintăi, măcară că s-au tras de la un izvod, munténii întăi, moldovénii mai pre urmă, de păstorii nemerit, că umblându păstorii de la Ardeal, ce să chiiamă Maramoroş, în munţi cu dobitoacile, au dat de o hiară ce să chiamă buor şi după multă goană ce o au gonit-o prin munţi cu dulăi, o au scos la şesul apei Moldovei. Acolea fiindu şi hiara obosită, au ucis-o la locul unde să chiamă acum Buorénii, daca s-au discălicat sat. Şi hierul ţării sau pecetea cap de buor să însemnează. Şi căţeaoa cu care au gonit fiara acéia au crăpat, pre carea o au chiemat-o Molda, iară apei de pre numele căţélii Moldii, i-au zis Molda, sau cumu-i zic unii, Moldova. Ajijdirea şi ţării, dipre numele apei i-au pus numele Moldova."

After you have read this , you will understand, I hope, why some polishing was so necessary, for the Romanian language...and it is just gut that it has happened!
Guest   Fri Feb 09, 2007 6:54 pm GMT
Romania is an exception. The Romanians deliberately desired to change their language. Due to the fact of a group of italians whom went to their country and claiming Romanian having some latin derived words. And this sparked the reformation circa 1850's (to all whom don't know) and Romanian scholars would literally pluck out Slavic words out of Romanian and insert Latinized words into their language, they literally, sat down and were taking out as many Slavic words they could. According to history, the Romans, were only in Dacia for about 200 years. Originally, Romanian's latin derived words (prior to 1850) consisted of mostly commerce/ academic/ business words. The function words and inflectional patterns are of Latin origin. The Romanian language preserved less than 22% of the Pan-Romance word stock (some 107 of a total of 488 words); it is remarkable that the Latin words concerning 'urban life' were entirely absent in Romanian. Slavic languages (mainly Old Church Slavonic and the dialects of Northern Bulgaria) provided for about 46% of the Romanian vocabulary, but since the 19th century there was launched a systematic campaign of introducing Latin and French words, while the Slavic words were purged or become obsolete. Nevertheless, 17% of modern Romanian vocabulary consists of Slavic words and they give the spoken languge a specific emotional flavor.


Albanian has latin words too, but, you don't see them modifying their language.
eu   Fri Feb 09, 2007 8:07 pm GMT
Guest:

Obviousley, you, as a non Romanian know better what my father and grandfather did!

No other comments are necessary!
2992   Sat Feb 10, 2007 12:58 am GMT
dear eu,

I have no idea on what is based your statement about me as being or not being romanian, but if you cannot prove, please don't have these statements, ok? :) Are we good now?

However, maybe I'm a little aggresive here (I'll try to not), but it's kind of ennoying seeing so many people which are making so many (wrong sometimes) assumptions about a language they cannot understand it.
I was saying... even if romanian language maybe sounds a little bit as being a slavic one (for non-romanian peoples), it's just because we were in the middle of slavic language speakers... so it's obvious it cannot be "pure" latin. The very important point is, now a days, romanian sounds like being a latin based language, and the prove is: we can understand french, italian, spanish easily without even study those languages... so.... I can easily say: they are "very" related.
Why they cannot understand us.. well... probably because of our accent mainly.

I was talink with a lot of french italian and spanish people, and I was trying to see if they are able to understand romanian... well... not quite. Mainly many of them are able to read& understand a faction of romanian, but when it comes to spoken language... they pretty much cannot understand. That's the prove romanian language NOW is a latin based langue. NOW doesn't count anymore if it's a "latin made" language, "original one" or "the priginal copy" version.
And talkin about romanian history, like any other history, many facts are stories based on real facts.

so, ... my friends here,... shall we go forward with the "written" topic?

to EU: that's a good text to show it as example. Now, you better explain it for everybody here to understand the meaning. Thanks and have a nice weekend!
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"I hate spam" - yeah, sure....
El   Sat Feb 10, 2007 12:28 pm GMT
What modifying are you talking,from dacian to romanian?
bogdan   Sun Feb 11, 2007 6:37 am GMT
Guest it's clear ..u want to prove that romanian language was invented for some political reasons in 1850...if what u say it's true how can i understand the language speak by Vlach population from Timoc Valley(Serbia) who lived there for hundreds of years and never learned in schools the "Modern Romanian language"?

PS:Sorry for my bad english :P
eu   Mon Feb 12, 2007 3:18 pm GMT
2992:
It is nothing to explain here for the people who makes statements about languages. I assume that who ever has an opinion, this will always be based on a strong knowledge about that language.

The statements made by some individuals here are so firm, showing so much confidence that they appear to know very well the language. Knowing the language so well, comparing the modern Romanian texts with the old one, leads by itself, to the right conclusion . If that not happens, then we deal with simple dilettantes and about this category I really don't care.


2992, I will explain you only why I consider that you are not a Romanian native.

Below is one of your postings from before which showed me that you have some difficulties controlling Romanian. There are some words utilisation and sentence building ways which are not typical used, not even for an ordinary Romanian.

Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:23 am GMT
"...ideea e ca pana la urma romaneste suna bine doar pentru noi ca e limba noastra materna. Acum multi zic multe si si mai multi pricep ceva. Eu cred ca pana la urma amestecatura de latina cu slavica o avut un rezultat frumos. Acum nu e chiar ca trebuie sa ti se rupa de ce zic altii, ca doar asta e scopul forumului de aici: sa se descute pe o anumita tema. .. si nu uita draga mea anca "," ca traim inconjurati de oameni si trebuie sa ni se rupa asa putzintel si de altii, altfel am trai fiecare pe o insula si nimine langa noi sa ni se rupa de el. "

My observations:

See how a Romanian whith a basic knowledge of his mother language would have written this text:

"In definitiv, (and never :ideea e ca pana la urma), romaneste ne suna bine noua, ca e limba noastra materna...or Pana la urma,(gresita aceasta asociere, "ideea e ca pana la urma"..care idee si de ce pana la urma?)... romaneste suna bine doar pentru noi ca e..."

then: you wrote: "Acum multi zic multe si si mai multi pricep ceva" The sentence contain two conjunctions "Si, si" one near the other. Then " multi zic multe si si mai multi pricep ceva is not pointing out anything. I assume that you intention of expression was: "Multe se spun, dar putin pricep ceva", or "Multi (spun multe - again incorrect), insa putin pricep ceva"

This way of building sentences and expressing ideas is totally unusual for a Romanian.

To see a Romanian coming on a forum like this, d expressing opinions about his own language in this form, is totally uncommon. I'm teaching Romanian language and I am very familiar with the type of mistakes made by the students in Romanian (and I'm referring here to the weakest students).

Now, let's continue! You wrote: " Eu cred ca pana la urma amestecatura de latina cu slavica o avut un rezultat frumos"

Again, a strange sentence building and words utilisation. To express what you intended, correctly, you should say: "Eu cred ca pana la urma, amestecatura de latina cu SLAVA (and not SLAVICA), a dus la ceva frumos, a avut ca rezultat ceva frumos, a generat ceva frumos..a avut un rezultat frumos is atypical in this sentence!

You also said: "Acum nu e chiar ca trebuie sa ti se rupa de ce zic altii, ca doar asta e scopul forumului de aici:sa se DESCUTE pe o anumita tema"...

"A cum nu e chiar"...what is this? What Romanian did you ever hear starting a sentence like that? I'm telling you, that's a form I've very often heard in Transylvania, built by Germans mainly. It might be used by other minorities as well but I'm not aware of that.

" sa se DESCUTE"...after so many mistakes, I rather believe that you use DESCUTE instead of DISCUTE because of knowledge lack and not as an accident...

"ca traim inconjurati de oameni si trebuie sa ni se rupa asa putzintel si de altii, altfel am trai fiecare pe o insula si nimine langa noi sa ni se rupa de el. "

again, a strange sentence building and words misspelling: "altfel am trai fiecare pe o insula", in a ordinary Romanian would be: altfel am trai fiecare izolat, altfel ne-am izola... - the utilization of INSULA in a sentence which is trying to suggest isolation shows a detoured way of expressing the idea of isolation...and that's explained again by a lack of control of the language, unusual for an ordinary Romanian.

"si nimine langa noi sa ni se rupa de el. " And this last one put the final verdict on the whole judgement. Only a non Romanian would ever say something so uninteligible and wrong as you did: first of all, NIMINE, should be NIMENI (nobody) but" langa noi sa ni se rupa de el"...is totaly wrong...what do you wanted to say? That if we get isolated we will have nobody around us to care of, or what?

" Si nu va ramane nimeni langa noi de care sa ne pese (or using this suburban expression,) sa ni se rupa de el? That was what you meant?

See 2992, these are the ocnditions which made me believe that you are not Romanian! You might insist to say that you speak Romanian as a native Romanian but you are not convincing me, at all... In your last postings you tried to be more careful in orthografy but the nature of text "perspired" a kind of unusual (for a native Romanian), way expressing ideas...is showing a kind of effort what is specific for people who learn a language later on in his life. That's my explanation for you.

I hope again, you don't get angrier and you better recognise that you have some problems controlling this language. But as a Foreigner, I would say that you are speaking Romanian very good!

Regards!
2992   Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:29 am GMT
dear eu,

Într-adevăr, am scris în limba vorbită din transilvalia. Dacă ţie ţi-a făcut o placere deosebită să îmi studiezi expresiile (greşelile) şi să le compari cu gramatica limbii romane, consider că a fost plăcerea ta. Mulţumesc frumos. Am cam uitat cum e să încerc sa vorbesc gramatical şi nu doar să folosesc limba vorbită. Poate nu am fost chiar aşa 'eminent' la limba şi literatura română in generală (scoala generală, clasele 1-8). Dacă e chiar necesar, cred că aş putea folosi o româna mai corectă.
Aş avea si eu ceva de adăugat la comentariile tale:
in definitiv-nu e folosit in limba vorbită decât foarte rar;
"ideea e ca pana la urma" - ideea la care vreau să ajung este ca după toate probele vor fi dezvăluite şi probabil dezbătute;
"Acum multi zic multe si si mai multi pricep ceva" - a fost greşala mea. Trebuia să spun "Mulţi văd, puţini pricep"-which is a saying in Romanian;
DESCUTE/NIMINE - greşeli de tipar :)

PS: what's the meaning of "ocnditions". I've searched .... but nothing came up. You wanna say "cOnditions"... ahhh, I see.... just a mis-spell (misprint) :)

One more thing: if a person is born & living all its life in one country, how you're calling that person? For example, someone which is born and is living all its life in... let's say... Italy. Is it an Italian?

Thanks again, I'm not gettin angry. Many of your points are right (not right as direction, but correctly. Is this "right" used in the spoken language or in the written one?).

One more thing: if someone (foreigner) is learning/studying Romanian (as example) and is able to follow a better gramar than a native person, is this fact making the foreigner to be "more" romanian than that one who's a native one, and to judge him? Maybe that's why some languages are not anylonger soo identical with their one based language... Am I wrong?

Another PS: Stefan the Great was speaking the old eastern romanian language, but you probably know that, so, when you're using it as example, don't forget to mention it. ;)

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"I hate spam" - yeah, sure...
eu   Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:17 pm GMT
2992,

I'm sorry if I had upset you in any ways. It was not in my intention to do so. I thought, we could discuss open our opinions and I was really considering that you are not a Romanian by origin.

Now, I'm trying to give you more explanation on some of your points:

1. What I'm calling a Romanian, is a Romanian who was born in Romania and has a Romanian origin, (citizenship is not enough and I learned that from some Hungarians who were born in Romania - I'll explain!).

I was born in Arges, and I finished the university in Bucharest. Every single person born in Romania, was for me a Romanian up until one day, at a CENACLU about Romanian culture and cultural tendency, I found out that our Hungarian colleagues, altough born in Romania, were very upset being called Romanians. They considered this way of referring to them as an insult and as a form of disrespect. I was shocked hearing such things. I was shocked because I always felt, as you tried to suggest, that everybody born in Romania is a Romanian. I also thought that by calling everybody a Romanian, it is showing no discrimination across minorities. I was so wrong!

Since that moment, I started to use the term ROMANIAN, very precautions and to distinguish between a Romanian with Romanian ascendant and Hungarians and/or Germans born in Romania.

2. To answer your question even if it was only a rhetoric one, I would say that internally, I feel that for example a German born in Italy, is Italian but if I'll be put in the position to identify him with a nation, I would be very careful and probably say that he is an Italian citizen of German origin...but this will never give me a total comfort because he might come back and accuse me of discrimination...everything is possible and for me is very difficult to deal with individualities of such type.
I personally never know what to expect in terms of people's reaction .

3. "In definitive" is a very common/used expression in the standard Romanian; maybe in Transylvania not but Transylvanians are using a lot of regionalisms in their talks, and that is not standard, or literary Romanian. By comparison, in Arges is exactly Romanian standard spoken even by peasants.

4. You said:
"Într-adevăr, am scris în limba vorbită din transilvalia. Dacă ţie ţi-a făcut o placere deosebită să îmi studiezi expresiile (greşelile) şi să le compari cu gramatica limbii romane, consider că a fost plăcerea ta. Mulţumesc frumos. Am cam uitat cum e să încerc sa vorbesc gramatical şi nu doar să folosesc limba vorbită. Poate nu am fost chiar aşa 'eminent' la limba şi literatura română in generală (scoala generală, clasele 1-8). Dacă e chiar necesar, cred că aş putea folosi o româna mai corectă. "

Nu mi-a facut nici o placere sa-ti studiez greselile; am incercat doar sa-ti explic de ce cred ca nu esti un roman sadea, atata tot. Pe de alta parte, uite, cand spui: "Am cam uitat cum e să încerc sa vorbesc gramatical şi nu doar să folosesc limba vorbită", iti repet ca asta nu e nici macar gresala, este o anumita maniera de a forma propozitia si anume una neintanlita la romanii getbeget. Niciodata un roman, si te rog sa nu te superi pe mine caci iti spun asta cat se poate de prieteneste, nu formuleaza: "am cam uitat sa incerc sa vorbesc..." sa incerc" aici este folosit complet gresit; nu transmite nimic, nu face nici un sens si crede-ma, ca un roman obisnuit nu foloseste o astfel de exprimare oricat de simplu ar fi el. Forma normala este: "am cam uitat sa vorbesc (corect) gramatical
Intelege ca eu nu vreau sa-ti fac vreun repros aici, ci doar sa iti explic de ce limba romana vorbita de tine, chiar si cand te straduiesti, suna atipic...Singurii romani care pot sa vorbeasca asa, sint cei care au plecat de mici din tara si au invatat romaneste cum s-au priceput, adica mai mult traducand din limba tarii respective in romana, aplicand sintaxa limbii respective.

5. I never said that a foreigner who handle Romanian grammatically correct, is in my view a real Romanian; I understand; your point here was to prove that speaking grammatically correct, is not the right tool for judging somebody's closness to a nation. When I made this statement about you, I was not influenced by the grammar mistakes, but by the unusual type o mistakes; by the words utilisation and sentence building. The way you write is not typical Romanian, no matter if we reffer to regions of Moldova, Wallachia or Transylvania.


6. I intentionally didn't specifiy what language Stefan the Great has spoken. If you remember, for comparing a 16th century old Romanian with the modern Romanian, I inserted an old text. The text was extracted from the LETOPISETUL TARII MOLDOVEI written by Grigore Ureche (who was using a lot of regionalisms specific for that time). Grigore Ureche was a Stefan the Great contemporaneous. Whoever felt knowledgeable enough to express opinions about Romanian language and its evolution, could certainly make the connection between Stefan the Great and that text.

7. "Right" and "correct" are both used many times with the same meaning in the literary language, no matter if is written or spoken!

Best regards
2992   Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:53 am GMT
I've got your point. :) I'm not upset at all.
Maybe my romanian sounds a little bit different then you're used to hear in Arges and agree with you, in Arges you really are speaking the right (or most closed to the real/correct) language, compared with mine. Probably because I was born in Apuseni (few KM from Avram Iancu's grave, so, believe: I AM A 100% ROMANIAN!) and I was living there and at Cluj (university) and Baia Mare, Bucuresti, Arad, Timisoara, Sibiu, Brasov si Alba for a while after that, now being abroad since a while (speaking -more like trying to speak- few languages, even if I've never studied them, not even english, invatandu-le dupa ureche, ca nu am si nu am avut destul timp sa le studiez, eu folosindu-le doar ca mijloc _necesar_ de comunicare). Well,.... I do understand your point when it cames on hungarian people in romania. Come on...they are so many in Transilvania... and just like you were saying: many of them they didn't even bother to speak romanian, even if they never went out of transilvania for all their life. Those are not romanian, of course. They have romanian citizenship, but hungarian nationality. They ARE NOT romanian. Even they are recognizind it.

As for myself, both of them, citizenship and nationality, are romanian. Maybe my romanian language changed a little bit, trying to speak with all those people using their own ... let's say... regional accent/dialect or languages.

Si desigur, imi aduc aminte de LETOPISETUL TARII MOLDOVEI ca find una din primele lectii la... istorie?!, parca...

Hei, nu vreau sa judec care este adevarata limba romana standard, probabil cea din arges, ea (din nou probabil) a fost impusa ca fiind standard la vremea respectiva. Ideea e ca limba romana standard nu se vorbeste, nici chiar in arges, si acolo folosindu-se regionalisme. Ideea e ca fiecare limba are regionalismele ei, dupa cum stii foarte bine. Si din punctul meu de vedere nu exista o limba standard, ci un "dialect regional" care a fost impus ca fiind standard. Daca se intampla sa fi fost capitala la Alba (cum a fost propus mai demult) si nu la Bucuresti, pun pariu ca acum standardul limbii romane ar fi fost folosindu-se regionalismele ce se vorbesc acolo (limbajul din Apuseni). ;)
Nu spun ca ar fi fost cea mai buna idee, dar nici cea mai rea. Am dat doar un exemplu.

Salutari!

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"I hate spam" - yeah, sure
eu   Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:06 pm GMT
2992,

If you say it so convincing, I believe now that you are a 100% Romanian... and I also understand why you might have forget some Romanian...it is normal in your situation.

Have a great day!
bunny   Tue Feb 20, 2007 7:30 pm GMT
For those of you who question the predominant latin origin of the romanian language I propose a simple (mental?) experiment. Ask 100 native romanian speakers who have not learned a foreign language to try translate a text from a either a slavic language or a romance language. I would expect that most of them wouldn't understand the slavic text but will roughly understand the romance one. As a native romanian speaker I don't understand a thing in any slavic language. It's all gibberish (like chinese). This shouldnt happen if romanian was a slavic language.