Eastern Romance substratum

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According to the official theory regarding the origin of the Eastern Romance languages, they developed from the local Vulgar Latin spoken in the region of the Balkans. That there is a connection between the Vulgar Latin and the Paleo-Balkan languages spoken in the area is a certainty. Taking into consideration the geographical area where this languages are spoken and the fact that there is not much information about the Paleo-Balkan languages, it is considered that the substratal of the Eastern Romance languages should be the ancient Thracian and Dacian.

The Eastern Romance languages are a group of Romance languages. Today, the group consists of the Balkan Romance subgroup which comprises the Romanian language (Daco-Romanian), Aromanian language (Macedo-Romanian) and two other related minor languages, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian; and the Castelmezzano dialect, in southern Italy.

Vulgar Latin Non-standard Latin variety spoken by the people of Ancient Rome

Vulgar Latin or Sermo Vulgaris, also Colloquial Latin, or Common Romance, was a range of non-standard sociolects of Latin spoken in the Mediterranean region during and after the classical period of the Roman Empire. It is distinct from Classical Latin, the standard and literary version of the language. Compared to Classical Latin, written documentation of Vulgar Latin appears less standardized. Works written in Latin during classical times and the earlier Middle Ages used prescribed Classical Latin rather than Vulgar Latin, with very few exceptions, thus Vulgar Latin had no official orthography of its own.

Balkans Geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe

The BalkansBAWL-kənz, also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographic area in southeastern Europe with various definitions and meanings, including geopolitical and historical. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria from the Serbian-Bulgarian border to the Black Sea coast. The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea on the northwest, the Ionian Sea on the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south and southeast, and the Black Sea on the east and northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala, 2,925 metres (9,596 ft), in the Rila mountain range, Bulgaria.

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The substratal elements in the languages are mostly lexical items. Around 300 words are considered by many linguists to be of substratum origin. Including place-names and river-names, and most of the forms labelled as being of unknown etymology, the number of the substratum elements in Eastern Romance may surpass 500 basic roots. Linguistic research in recent years has increased the body of Eastern Romance words that may be considered indigenous.

A lexicon, word-hoard, wordbook, or word-stock is the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge. In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word "lexicon" derives from the Greek λεξικόν (lexicon), neuter of λεξικός (lexikos) meaning "of or for words."

Etymology Study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time

Etymology is the study of the history of words. By extension, the phrase "the etymology of [some word]" means the origin of the particular word. For place names, there is a specific term, toponymy.

In addition to vocabulary items, some other features of Eastern Romance, such as phonological features and elements of grammar (see Balkan sprachbund) may also be from Paleo-Balkan languages.

A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language.

In the phonology of the Romanian language, the phoneme inventory consists of seven vowels, two or four semivowels, and twenty consonants. In addition, as with all languages, other phonemes can occur occasionally in interjections or recent borrowings.

The Balkan Sprachbund or Balkan language area is the ensemble of areal features—similarities in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology—among the languages of the Balkans. Several features are found across these languages though not all apply to every single language. The languages in question may belong to various separate branches of Indo-European or even outside of Indo-European. Some of the languages use these features for their standard language whilst other populations to whom the land is not a cultural pivot may still adopt the features for their local register.

Lexical items

Older Romanian etymological dictionaries tended to assume a borrowing in many cases, usually from a Slavic language or from Hungarian, but etymological analysis may show that, in many cases, the direction of borrowing was from Romanian to the neighboring languages. The current Dicţionar explicativ (the DEX) published by the Romanian Academy continues to list many words as borrowings, though the work of other linguists (Sorin Olteanu, Sorin Paliga, Ivan Duridanov, et al.) may indicate that a number of these are in fact indigenous, from local Indo-European languages.

Slavic languages languages of the Slavic peoples

The Slavic languages are the Indo-European languages spoken by the Slavic peoples. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Early Middle Ages, which in turn is thought to have descended from the earlier Proto-Balto-Slavic language, linking the Slavic languages to the Baltic languages in a Balto-Slavic group within the Indo-European family.

Hungarian language language spoken in and around Hungary

Hungarian is a Uralic language of the Ugric branch spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighbouring countries. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is also spoken by communities of Hungarians in the countries that today make up Slovakia, western Ukraine (Subcarpathia), central and western Romania (Transylvania), northern Serbia (Vojvodina), northern Croatia and northern Slovenia.

Romanian Academy academy of science

The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life.

Though the substratum status of many Romanian words is not much disputed, their status as Dacian words is controversial, some more than others. There are no significant surviving written examples of the Dacian language, so it is difficult to verify in most cases whether a given Romanian word is actually from Dacian or not. Many linguists however favor a Dacian source for the Romanian substratum. Many of the Romanian substratum words have Albanian cognates, and if these words are in fact Dacian, it indicates that the Dacian language may have been on the same branch as Albanian.

Albanian language Indo-European language

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by the Albanians in the Balkans and the Albanian diaspora in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. With about 7.5 million speakers, it comprises an independent branch within the Indo-European languages and is not closely related to any other language in Europe.

The Bulgarian Thracologist Vladimir Georgiev helped develop the theory that the Romanian language has a Daco-Moesian language as its substrate, a language that had a number of features which distinguished it from the Thracian language spoken further south, across the Haemus range.

Bulgarians are a nation and South Slavic ethnic group native to Bulgaria and its immediate region.

Thracian language language

The Thracian language is an extinct and poorly attested language, generally considered to be Indo-European, spoken in ancient times in South-East Europe by the Thracians. The linguistic affinities of the Thracian language are poorly understood, but it is generally agreed that it exhibited satem features.

Other languages

There are also some Romanian substratum words in languages other than Romanian, these examples having entered via Romanian (Vlach) dialects. An example is vatră (home or hearth) which is found in Albanian, Serbian, Croatian, and other neighboring languages, though with modified meaning. Another one is Bryndza, a type of cheese made in Eastern Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic (Moravian Wallachia), Slovakia and Ukraine, the word being derived from the Romanian word for cheese (brânză).

See also

Related Research Articles

The Aromanians are a Romance ethnic group native to the Balkans, traditionally living in northern and central Greece, central and southern Albania, North Macedonia, south-western Bulgaria and Serbia. The term Vlachs (Romanians) is used in Greece to refer to Aromanians, but this term is internationally used to encompass all Romance-speaking peoples of the Balkans and Tatra Mountains regions.

Several theories address the issue of the origin of the Romanians. The Romanian language descends from the Vulgar Latin dialects spoken in the Roman provinces north of the "Jireček Line" in Late Antiquity. The theory of Daco-Roman continuity argues that the Romanians are mainly descended from the Daco-Romans, a people developing through the cohabitation of the native Dacians and the Roman colonists in the province of Dacia Traiana north of the river Danube. The competing immigrationist theory states that the Romanians' ethnogenesis commenced in the provinces south of the river with Romanized local populations spreading through mountain refuges, both south to Greece and north through the Carpathian Mountains. Other theories state that the Romanized local populations were present over a wide area on both sides of the Danube and the river itself did not constitute an obstacle to permanent exchanges in both directions; according to the "admigration" theory, migrations from the Balkan Peninsula to the lands north of the Danube contributed to the survival of the Romance-speaking population in these territories.

Dacian language extinct language

Dacian is an extinct language, generally believed to be Indo-European, that was spoken in the Carpathian region in antiquity. In the 1st century, it was probably the predominant language of the ancient regions of Dacia and Moesia and possibly of some surrounding regions. The language was probably extinct by the 7th century AD.

The origin of the Albanians has long been a matter of dispute among historians.

Paleo-Balkan languages various extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in the Balkans in ancient times

The Paleo-Balkan languages are the various extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in the Balkans in ancient times. Hellenization, Romanization and Slavicization in the region caused their only modern descendants to be Modern Greek, which is descended from Ancient Greek, and Albanian, which evolved from either Illyrian, Thracian, Dacian or another similar tongue.

Megleno-Romanian language Romance language, similar to Aromanian and Romanian, or a dialect of the Romanian language

Megleno-Romanian is a Balkan Romance language, similar to Aromanian or a dialect of the Romanian language. It is spoken by the Megleno-Romanians in a few villages in the Moglena region that spans the border between the Greek region of Macedonia and North Macedonia. It is also spoken by emigrants from these villages and their descendants in Romania and by a small Muslim group in Turkey. It is considered an endangered language.

The Moesi was a Thracian tribe which inhabited present day Northern Bulgaria and Serbia, which gave its name to the Roman province of Moesia after its defeat in 29 BC. Moesia was first established as a separate province in 45–46 AD.

Urbian or Urian is a possible Old European or Pre-Indo-European (Pre-IE) language proposed by Sorin Paliga (1989). Dr. Paliga hypothesized that the Proto-Indo-European (Proto-IE) language, the descendants of which have replaced the Pre-IE language(s), should not include a root-word corresponding to Latin urbs, as the Proto-IE were nomadic or semi-nomadic. Therefore, Paliga proposes that a root reconstructed as *OR/UR- or *OL/UL-, meaning "huge, big, elevated" and used also to refer to an urban settlement, originated outside PIE. He suggests that it may be the source of a cross-cultural repertory of words spanning different language families, such as Latin urbs, "city", Thracian Az-oros, Uri, Basque uri, hiri "township", Greek lab-yr-inthos and Sumerian Urbillum, today the city of Irbil in Iraq.

Thraco-Illyrian is a hypothesis that the Thraco-Dacian and Illyrian languages comprise a distinct branch of Indo-European. Thraco-Illyrian is also used as a term merely implying a Thracian-Illyrian interference, mixture or sprachbund, or as a shorthand way of saying that it is not determined whether a subject is to be considered as pertaining to Thracian or Illyrian. Downgraded to a geo-linguistic concept, these languages are referred to as Paleo-Balkan.

The linguistic classification of the ancient Thracian language has long been a matter of contention and uncertainty, and there are widely varying hypotheses regarding its position among other Paleo-Balkan languages. It is not contested, however, that the Thracian languages were Indo-European languages which had acquired satem characteristics by the time they are attested.

The term Daco-Roman describes the Romanized culture of Dacia under the rule of the Roman Empire.

History of Romanian aspect of history

The history of the Romanian language began in the Roman provinces of Southeast Europe north of the so-called "Jireček Line", but the exact place where its formation started is still debated. Eastern Romance is now represented by four languages – Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian – which originated from a common Proto-Romanian language. These languages also had a common substratum. The latter's morphological and syntactic features seem to have been similar to those shared by the languages – including Albanian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian – which form the Balkan sprachbund. The adoption of a number of Proto-Slavic and Old Church Slavonic loanwords by all Eastern Romance languages shows that their disintegration did not commence before the 10th century.

Aromanian language Eastern Romance language spoken in Southeastern Europe

Aromanian, also known as Macedo-Romanian or Vlach, is an Eastern Romance language, similar to Meglenoromanian, or a dialect of the Romanian language spoken in Southeastern Europe. Its speakers are called Aromanians or Vlachs.

Theodor Capidan

Theodor Capidan was an Ottoman-born Romanian linguist. An ethnic Aromanian from the Macedonia region, he studied at Leipzig before teaching school at Thessaloniki. Following the creation of Greater Romania at the end of World War I, Capidan followed his friend Sextil Pușcariu to the Transylvanian capital Cluj, where he spent nearly two decades, the most productive part of his career. He then taught in Bucharest for a further ten years and was marginalized late in life under the nascent communist regime. Capidan's major contributions involve studies of the Aromanians and the Megleno-Romanians, as well as their respective languages. His research extended to reciprocal influences between Romanian and the surrounding Slavic languages, the Eastern Romance substratum and the Balkan sprachbund, as well as toponymy. He made a significant contribution to projects for a Romanian-language dictionary and atlas.

The Albanian-Romanian linguistic relationship is an important field of the research of the ethnogenesis of both peoples. The common phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the two languages have been studied for more than a century. Both languages are part of the Balkan sprachbund but there are certain elements shared only by Albanian and Romanian. Aside from Latin, and from shared Greek, Slavic and Turkish elements, other characteristics and words are attributed to the Paleo-Balkan linguistic base: Illyrian, Thracian, Dacian and/or Thraco-Illyrian, Daco-Thracian.

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