What is the language in romania. How the Romanian language appeared

rum (B); ron (T)

Romanian language (limba română), IPA: "limba ro'mɨnə; sometimes called daco-romanian, previously also Wallachian, Vlach, Volosh, Wallachian-Moldavian language) is one of the Romance languages, the native language of Romanians. Is official, native and main spoken language for 90% of the Romanian population. It is also distributed in a number of regions of Ukraine with the highest concentration of carriers in Odessa and Chernivtsi regions.

The Romanian language typologically belongs to the Balkan-Romance subgroup of the East Romance group of the Indo-European family of languages. At the same time, the Romanian language is the most peculiar in the group of Romance languages, revealing the features of the so-called contact languages, formed at the junction of several linguistic areas, in particular, the Balkan linguistic union.

The total number of Romanian speakers is about 20 million. Together with Moldovan and other Balkan Romanesque dialects, as well as the Romano-Slavic bilinguals of Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece and Ukraine, Romanophones number about 25 million (about 5% of all Roman-speaking groups in the world). A rich fiction and scientific literature has been created in the Romanian language.

Self-name

The name "Romanian language" comes from the self-name of the people who speak it - Romanians. The Romanians became the only large Romanesque people that retained the original ethnic name of Old Romania - Romani (singular Romanus)> Romania (singular Romanians). For the first time, the name of the Romanian language appeared in the Cyrillic version - “limba romyne”. It was this name that became firmly established in the Russian language. The preservation of the term Romani precisely on the territory of Romania is partly explained by the fact that the Byzantine Empire, which had long been adjacent to it, from where Orthodoxy came to Romania, called itself Romania until the end of the 15th century. Nevertheless, the exo-ethnonym of the Romanians and the Romanian language among the neighboring (Slavic peoples) was completely different - the Wallachians (compare the Germanic counterparts "Walloons" for the Roman-speaking population of Belgium, "Welsh", "Welsh" for the Romano-British population, etc.) ... In the 19th century in Romania, with the strengthening of purism and linguistic nationalism currents seeking to return the country to its Roman origins, the spelling of the word Romanian changed to Romanian, in the Latin alphabet “română”.

General information

Despite its prevalence on the Balkan Peninsula, the Romanian language became an object of study by linguists only in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Romanian differs from the rest of the Romance languages ​​by its strong foreign language (primarily Slavic) influence at all linguistic levels, which makes the Romanian speech incomprehensible to the speakers of Western Romance languages. Due to its early geographical isolation from the rest of the Western Romanesque massif (see Romanesque Europe), long absence own statehood and a low level of material culture of the Romanesque population, which was mainly engaged in semi-nomadic sheep breeding, writing in the Romanian language appeared only at the beginning of the 16th century, and it arose in Cyrillic. In the X-XVII centuries, the main written language among the Romanians was not Latin, as in the former provinces of the Western Roman Empire, but the Old Slavonic language.

In 1860-1863, the Romanian government introduced a new modified Romanian alphabet based on the Latin alphabet. This led to the separation of the Roman-speaking group of Moldavians from Bessarabia (Russian Empire) from Romania. Immediately before Moldova gained independence in 1989, the alphabet of the Moldovan language was romanized, and later an attempt was made to restore a single name "Romanian" in both countries, which, however, was unsuccessful and was one of the reasons that led to the split of the country (see. Transnistrian conflict). Despite the fact that the Moldovan language is actually a regional variant of Romanian, the two communities are still differentiated for political reasons. Moreover, on the territory of the unrecognized republic of Transnistria, the Moldovan language officially retains the Cyrillic alphabet in the previously fixed order.

The total number of Romanian speakers reached its peak around 1990 and was about 22 million people, together with Moldovans and Balkan-Romance groups about 25 million.Since then, the number of Romanian speakers has been decreasing due to the high natural decline among Romanians and Moldovans, their high emigration abroad and partial assimilation of native speakers living outside Romania and Moldova. Now about 19 million speakers live in Romania (75% of the total number of speakers), about 2.8 million in Moldova (11%), about 0.4 million in Ukraine (Odessa region, Chernivtsi region, Transcarpathia), 0.2 million in Transnistria, some in Serbia, Hungary. About 2 million Romanians and Moldovans currently live in the EU countries (with the largest number in Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, Germany, Great Britain, the USA and Canada), Moldovans - in Russia (especially in Moscow and the Moscow region), on Ukraine, Greece, Portugal and other European countries. According to the 2002 census, Romanian is the mother tongue of 90% of the population of Romania, the second most common language in the country is Hungarian, the mother tongue of 6.6% of the population.

Early history

Main article: History of the Romanian language

The history of the Romanian language is as contradictory as the history of the Romanian people. This inconsistency is explained by two reasons: the lack of historical sources, especially written ones, and also political interests. There are several versions of the development of the Romanian language, which are based on different interpretations of the history of the Romanian people. In general, the chronology of the formation of the modern Romanian language based on the folk Latin of Dacia is as follows:

• The autochthonous languages ​​of the Balkans (Getae, Dacians, Meuses, Illyrians, etc.) until the 2nd century AD NS.
• Folk Latin (Roman Dacia as part of the Roman Empire) II-III centuries A.D. NS.
• Balkan Latin IV-VII centuries before the Slavic resettlement
• The period of Slavic-Roman bilingualism of the VIII-XI centuries
• Formation of the Proto-Romanian language of the XII-XIII centuries
• Old Romanian language of the XIV-XVIII centuries
• New Romanian language of the XIX-XXI centuries

Romanization

The official version of the history of the Romanian language, recognized by most modern historians, is based on the theory of the rapid Romanization of Dacia. According to this theory, the Roman Empire colonized Dacia in a fairly short period in the 2nd-3rd centuries AD. NS. Intense linguistic romanization of Dacia probably took place after the seizure of the territory north of the Danube after 102-103 AD. NS. until the departure of the Roman troops and administration in 275 AD. e., continuing, thus, 175 years. During this period, colonists arrived in Dacia from all over the empire, but about 90% of them were speakers of the folk-Latin speech from northern and central Italy, as well as Dalmatia - the regions of the empire closest to Dacia. The reason for such an intensive colonization was the destruction of a significant part of the male population of Dacia in the wars with Rome, the desire of the colonists to occupy new plots of land, the ties of the Roman soldiers with local women, their desire to settle and retire in the occupied lands. This version is confirmed by an analysis of names in written sources of that time (about 4 thousand inscriptions were studied, of which only 2% contained Geto-Dacian names, while in other Roman provinces the number of names of the local population was up to 30%). Moreover, some of the everyday vocabulary of Romanian contains an imprint of the province's military past:

• sat/ sat / "village" ← lat. fossatum- "moat"
• bătrân/ batryn / "old" ← lat. veteranus
• mire/ world / "groom" ← lat. miles- "warrior"

Presumably by the end of the 3rd century AD. NS. the number of ethnically mixed Roman-speaking population, the bulk of which lived north of the Danube in the area of ​​the former Roman camps Julius and Napoca, reached 1 million people, that is, reached a critical mass, which allowed this community to survive in the future.

Substratal influences of the pre-Romanesque period

The assimilation of Latin, then a prestigious commercial and political language, by the indigenous peoples of the Balkans, to some extent, began even before the Romans invaded Dacia. The population of Albania, Moesia and South Dacia, located south of the Danube, began to assimilate the Romanesque language as early as the 1st century AD. NS. and, probably, widely used it in international and trade contacts. Moreover, even after the withdrawal of the Roman army from Dacia, the contacts of the local Romanesque population with Italy and South Dacia did not stop until the 5th century, which means that the Romanization of the unassimilated Getae and Dacians, including those who lived outside the former borders of the empire, continued, as the prestige Romanesque speech and Romanesque culture was still quite large until the beginning of the mass migration of the Slavs in the 7th-10th centuries and the gradual decline of the Western Roman and Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empires (in which Latin was the official language until the end of the 7th century, despite the fact that the absolute majority the population spoke or knew Greek). Mass colonization led to the fact that the local language of the Dacians, Getae and Mezes in the province disappeared almost completely, leaving some traces in the vocabulary and phonetics. So, many place names are Geto-Dacian, including the names of the rivers - Danube, Siret, Prut, as well as some parts of the body, plants, types of food and others. At the moment, the Romanian language contains more than a hundred words of pure Geto-Dacian origin, among them:

• copac/ kopak / - "tree"
• brad/ brad / - "spruce"
• bucuros/ bukuros / - "merry" (whence the name of the capital of Romania Bucureşti/ bucuresti / - Bucharest)
• țap/ dac / - "goat"
• copil/ saved up / - "child"
• rață/ race / - "duck"
• șopârlă/ shopyrle / - "lizard"
• broască/ brosque / - "frog"
• mal/ small / - "shore"
• buză/ buzet / - "lip"

Most scholars are also inclined to believe that the common Romanian ending -eşti/ -est / (as in the word româneşti/ rominesti / - "Romanian") also has a substrate origin. It also probably left traces in the formation of a number of possessive pronouns.

The transformation of the vernacular into Romanian was long and gradual. Primary romanization led to the emergence of the Eastern Romanesque dialect, which received the name "Balkan Latin", largely retaining the typical Romanesque features. Long-term multi-level contacts of Balkan Latin with the southern and eastern Slavic languages ​​led to the transformation of the original Latin language system and the formation of the Romanian language proper. Thus, Romanization began even before the capture of Dacia by Rome and continued after the withdrawal of Rome from the territory of Dacia, but at this stage the formation of the Romanian language was still far from complete.

Folk Latin in the Balkans

Folk-Latin speech of Roman Dacia in the II-III centuries A.D. NS. was still in a single linguistic and cultural space of the empire and kept in touch with it. The influence of autochthonous languages ​​increased only after the weakening of the empire in the III-VI centuries, and so far the Latin speech of the Balkans was only a dialect of the Latin language. Here, as in all other provinces of the empire, the early Celtic and Italisms penetrated, which managed to spread in Dacia:

• celtic camisia penetrated into Latin very early and gave Romanian camaşă/ kamashe / - "shirt" (compare: Spanish. camisa, port. camisa, ital. camicia, fr. chemise)
• umbrian fenum → fân/ fyn / - "hay" (compare: port. feno, ital. fieno, fr. foins)

During the period of Romanesque unity, a gradual simplification of the Latin multi-reliable system also began, suspended by late Slavic influence. Semantic shifts in the original vocabulary of Romanian are also of a general Roman character:

• celtic caballus → cal/ feces / replaced the classic lat. equus in the meaning of a horse everywhere (compare: Spanish. caballo, port. cavalo, ital. cavallo, fr. cheval)
• lat. casa"Shack", "hibara" → casă/ kase / replaced the classic lat. domus in the meaning of a house, housing, etc. (compare: Spanish. casa, port. casa, ital. casa, fr. chez)

At the same time, the main phonetic process in the speech of Dacia, as in other provinces of the empire, is the evolution of Latin itself: the transformation of the stress system from tonic (musical) to dynamic (power) and, as a result, simplification and reduction of unstressed syllables, as well as the complete disappearance of sound h in Romanesque speech of those times:

• lat. hibernum → iarnă/ yarne / "winter" (compare: Spanish. invierno, fr. fr. hivers)

As in the West, in Dacia the process of re-decomposition of the elements of classical Latin and their gradual "vulgarization" began, especially with regard to service units speech, which received a new colloquial tone through fusion. A number of classical Latin prepositions, pronouns and adverbs in Dacia, of course, survived: in → în/ sn / "v", sub → sub/ sub / "under", super → spre/ spray / "over", per → pe/ ne / "by", de → de/ de / "from", but the majority now are various neoplasms that have arisen in the late Latin period:

• din/ din / - "from" ← lat. de + in
• pentru/ pentru / - "for" ← lat. per + intre + hoc
• azi/ az / - "today" ← lat. ad + dies
• cum/ kum / - "how" ← lat. con modo(cf. Spanish. como, fr. comment)

At the same time, the peripheral nature of the area of ​​folk Latin on the Balkan Peninsula gives the evolutionary processes a peculiar character. Firstly, the folk Latin of the Balkans was largely Italianized, since most of the colonists were originally from Italy and language innovations in Italian speech reached Dacia in waves, which explains the closeness of Romanian to the Italian language, with which it has much more in common. than with other Romance languages. So, in Romanian and Italian languages, the unifying plural form of nouns in -s did not manage to take root, as in all Western Romance languages, the same form in -s, but already to designate the second person singular of the present tense of the verb was supplanted by the form in - i in Italian and Romanian.

A number of typical Latin lexemes, for example, the word lat. grandis"Big", did not take root in the east, where lat was used in this meaning. talis"Such" → tare/ container /.

The beginning of the colonization of Dacia also coincided with the period of the maximum expansion of the empire and the maximum standardization of its language, which had the smallest number of archaisms (unlike, say, the language of Spain, colonized in the II century BC). Nevertheless, the relative short duration of the Romans' stay in the Carpathians led to the fact that the Latin speech was mastered by the local population only in its colloquial form. The absence of cities in Dacia and the strong influence of the primitive communal system of the Getae and Dacians also led to the fact that, unlike the western regions, cities did not develop here (a group of Roman military camps was soon destroyed), there was no urban culture, there were no networks Roman schools and Roman education. The Latin script has not survived in Dacia. Thus, after the departure of the Romans, the folk Latin of the Romanesque and romanized population of the Balkans remained the spoken language of the rural cattle-breeding population, not burdened by the bookish influence of classical Latin. Culturally, another important legacy of Rome was the adoption of early Christianity by mixed and Romanized families. Therefore, most of the basic common Christian vocabulary of Romanian is of romance origin:

• lat. deus → zeu/ zeu / - "god", also lat. dominus deus → dumnezeu/ dumneseu /
• lat. basilica → biserică/ biserike / - "church"
• lat. angelus → înger/ ynzher / - "angel"
• lat. crucis → cruce/ cooler / - "cross"
• lat. rogare → ruga/ swear / - "to pray"
• lat. baptizare → boteza/ botez / - "to baptize"
• lat. credere → crede/ krede / - "believe"
• lat. cristianus → creștin/ krestin / - "Christian"

Despite the rapid assimilation of the autochthonous Illyrian and Dacian population, the vernacular Latin of the Balkans retained some of the peripheral lexemes of these languages, and also began to undergo phonetic adaptation in accordance with the linguistic structure of the substratum languages, just as the vernacular Gaul adopted Celtic, and Spain, Mediterranean elements. In the III-VI centuries, folk Latin underwent a number of rather significant phonetic shifts, specific to this region. Some of the shifts were due to the internal evolution of the Latin language from the tonic stress system to the force one, but the final result of the phonetic changes was due to the influence of the substrate.

Vowels

• diphthongization of stressed Latin o → oa v open syllable: lat. forte → foarte/ foarte / - "very" (compare: Spanish. fuerte)
• diphthongization of stressed Latin e → i in an open syllable: lat. cera → ceară/ chare / - "wax"
• iotacism [e] after Latin aspirated h → ie: lat. herba → iarbă/ yarbe / - "grass"

Consonants

• Betacism of the Latin labiodental at the beginning of a word:
  • lat. exvolare- "fly away" → zbura/ zbura / - "to fly"
  • lat. vocire- "vote" → boci/ boch / "yell"
• Rotacism of intervocal l → r:
  • lat. secale → secară/ sekare / - "rye"
  • lat. solis → soare/ soare / - "sun"
  • lat. talis → tare/ tare / - "strongly"
  • lat. voleo → vreau/ vryau / - "I want"
• A kind of assimilation of Latin consonant groups:
  • ks → ps: lat. coxa → coapsă/ koapse / - "thigh" (compare: fr. cuisse)
  • kv → n: lat. aqua → apă/ ape / - "water"
  • cl → кь: lat. oculus → ochi/ ok / - "eye" (compare: Spanish. ojo)
  • gl → gb: lat. glacies → gheaţă/ gyatse / - "ice" (compare: Italian ghiaccio)
  • gn → pl: lat. lignum → lemn/ lemn / - "tree"
• Assimilative palatalization of Latin consonants c, s, d, t before vowels / u /, / e /:
  • in Romanian, the original Latin palatal "c" (= [k ']) has undergone two assimilation:
    • on the one hand, at [h]
      • lat. ceresia → cireaşă/ chiryashe / - "cherry"
    • on the other - [c]
      • lat. facies → faţă/ face / - "face"
  • lat. sic → şi/ shi / - "and"
  • lat. decem → zece/ zeche / - "ten"
  • lat. terra → ţară/ tsare / - "country"
• Assimilative palatalization of the Latin group "kv" before the vowels [i], [e]:
  • lat. quinque → cinci/ chinch / - "five"
  • lat. quinem → cine/ chine / - "who"
  • lat. que → ce/ che / - "what"
• Loss of intervocal b, v:
  • lat. experlavare → spălare/ spelare / - "washing"
• Inversion of syllables in difficult to pronounce words:
  • lat. paludem → pădure/ padure / - "forest"
• A kind of re-decomposition of words begins and the allocation of new inflections on the basis of false submorphs: lat. corpus → corpora where _ora is interpreted as a plural inflection and in the Balkanized form _ure / _uri begins to be used to form the plural of a number of nouns:
  • gheaţă/ gyatse / → gheţuri/ getsur / - "ice"
• Transition of combinations an, in → ân, în / în /:
  • lat. angelus → înger/ ynzher / - "angel"
• Under the influence of Slavic vocalism, there was a transition of the combination to the nasal vowel [õ] with the subsequent loss of the nasal sound ([õ] → [u]):
  • lat. non → nu/Oh no"
  • lat. con → cu/ ku / - "s"

Phonetic archaisms

At the same time, some classical Latin groups of vowels and consonants remained unchanged in Romanian:

• au: lat. aurum → aur/ auras / "gold" (compare: fr. or, isp. oro); lat. audire → auzire/ auzire / "listen" (compare: Spanish. oir)
• fl: lat. floris → floare/ floare / - "flower" (compare: Italian fiori, but Spanish. flores)
• pl: lat. pluvia → ploaie- "rain", lat. placere → plăcere/ plechere / - "pleasure"

Slavic period

The resettlement of the Slavs in the 7th-9th centuries became the second central moment in the formation of the Romanian language. The migration of the Slavs to the territory of the Byzantine Empire was quite massive and led to the gradual Slavization of the central regions of the Balkans. As a result, the non-Slavic population survived only on the periphery of the peninsula (in the extreme south - the Greeks and Albanians and in the extreme north - the ancestors of modern Romanians - the Wallachians). This fact of mass Slavization of the population is quite surprising in itself, since the official language of the empire was the Greek language, which had a rich history and literary tradition. Although it was spoken by a large part of the population south of the Danube, Greek never became the native language of the majority of the population of the peninsula, and its scope gradually narrowed with each century until it was threatened with being replaced by the Turkish language at the end of the medieval period. Even more modern linguists and historians are surprised by another fact: as you know, the Slavs moved to the territory of the Balkans from the Ukrainian Carpathians and the Carpathians, that is, from north to south. But how then can one explain the persistent preservation of the Roman-speaking population precisely to the north, and not to the south of the Danube, where it was mostly assimilated? One way or another, the Slavic population, like the Germans in the Western Roman Empire, quickly became involved in the political, economic and cultural life of the Byzantine Empire and the Balkan Peninsula. The Slavs are making active and rather successful attempts to create their own statehood, the First Bulgarian Kingdom appears, leading the active annexation of the lands of the former empires. Moreover, unlike barbarian kingdoms West, the Bulgarian kingdom is formed precisely by the Slavic majority (with the Turkic nobility), and the Old Slavonic language (and not Latin) becomes the official language, for which the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced. Moreover, in the course of Slavic migrations, a significant part of the Slavs transited through the territory of the former Dacia, settled on it, as evidenced by the numerous Slavic place names on the territory of Romania and Moldova, and entered into close contacts with the local Romanesque population.

As the Slavic area expands in southern Europe, the influence of the Slavic language becomes comprehensive and is felt at all levels of Balkan Latin, which is finally isolated from the general Romanian area and is in intensive contact with the Slavs and Slavic speech. The process of linguistic interference, apparently, is assuming the scope of mass bilingualism, which embraced up to half of the Roman-speaking population due to the economic and military-political domination of the Slavs. A similar situation is observed in Western Romania, where, say, the predominant Gallo-Roman population lives in conditions of undivided domination of the German minority, which has also established a system of discriminatory-segregation laws. Such extremes are not observed in Dacia, and the integration is quite peaceful, although the spheres of economic specialization of the Slavic and Romanic groups continue to differ. Characteristically, at the first stage, the integration process in the Balkans is clearly one-sided, that is, the Roman-speaking population in dispersed areas south of the Danube quickly assimilates, and even where it absolutely predominates, Slavic elements are significant due to the fact that most population in one way or another is familiar with the Slavic speech, especially with the Slavic vocabulary. At the same time, in Slavic speech, there is much less direct Roman influence. Innovations in the Slavic languages ​​arise mainly with the indirect influence of the Balkan language union as a whole, which also includes the Greek and Albanian languages.

Slavicisms

The influence of the South Slavic dialects leads to a radical change in the internal structure of Balkan Latin. Even in Thessaloniki, the second largest and most important city of the Byzantine Empire, which remained under its rule, a significant part of the population is Slavs. The influence of Rus, a powerful northern neighbor of the Romanians, who also switched to the Old Church Slavonic language when conducting office work, was also an important factor that strengthened the position of the Old Church Slavonic language in Wallachia. The migration of the Slavs and the spread of the Old Slavonic language in Dacia initially led to the termination of the linguistic laws of Balkan Latin, which had been in force before. So, the rotation of the intervocal l lost its relevance, because it was alien to the speech of the Slavs. Late borrowings of the type of fame. force → silă/ force / “violence” no longer turns into a hypothetical “sire” as the tendencies in Balkan Latin demanded (by analogy with lat. solis → soare/ soare / "sun" in the original vocabulary). As the Slavic area expands in southern Europe, the influence of the Slavic language becomes comprehensive and is felt at all levels of Balkan Latin, which is finally isolated from the common Romanian area and is intensively in contact with Slavic speech, gradually evolving into the Proto-Romanian language.

In phonetics, the influence of the Slavs leads to the development not only of positional palatalization of consonants (lat. oculus → ochi/ ok / "eye"), but also meaningful palatalization by re-sounding Latin morphemes (lat. lupi → lupii/ lup / - "wolves"). The general articulation of speech gradually weakens and no longer has such a tense percussive character as in French or Spanish. Neutral middle languages ​​/ e / and / s /, not typical for other Romance languages, are developing and finally consolidating. With the Slavic influence, the consonant [х] is restored with a hard atypical Roman frication: hulub/ hulub / - "dove". Nevertheless, the connection of words into a single speech stream, typical for other Romance languages, remains with some modification of the intonation pattern in the manner of Slavic speech.

• lat. ovum → ou/ oh / - "egg", but isp. huevo(male)

In the field of morphology of Balkan Latin, a real revolution is taking place, since Slavic affixes become an integral part of Romanian word formation and are intertwined with the Romance vocabulary:

• -itsa(rus. damsel, lioness) → ice/ itse /: portice/ portitse / - "gate"
• -ka(rus. Romanian, gypsy ) → că/ ke /: țigancă/ gypsy / - "gypsy", lupoaică/ lupoayke / - "she-wolf"
• not-(rus. bad, unpretentious ): bun/ bun / "good" → nebun/ nebun / - "crazy"
• ras- / times-(rus. robber, seedlings ): război/ razboy / - "war"
• -Nick(rus. shoemaker) → războinic/ slayer / - "warrior"

And the Roman affixes in- / im-, -re of the infinitive are attached to the Slavic roots: bolnav/ bolnav / - "sick" → imbolnavire/ imbolnavir / - "disease", a iubi/ yubi / - "to love" → iubire/ yube / - "love". Thus, the boundaries between the original and borrowed vocabulary are gradually being erased.

In terms of syntax, Slavic constructions have an impact on Romanian:

Mi-e cald/ mi-e kald / or mi-e bine/ mi-e bine / are tracing copies of the Slavic "I'm hot" or "I'm good" and deviate from the typical Romanesque, cf .: isp. yo estoy bien.

Vocabulary

• Nouns:
  • ukr. tato → tată/ tate / - "father"
  • bride → nevastă/ nevaste / - "wife"
  • frying pan → scovardă/ skovarde / - "pancake"
  • plow → plug/plow/
  • swamp → baltă/ balte /
  • robbery → război/ razboy / - "war"
  • pleasant → prieten/ prieten / - "friend"
  • pour → nisip/ nisip / - "sand"
  • prince → cneaz/ prince /
  • pop → popă/ pop /
  • bob → bob/ bob / - "grain"
  • mystery → taină/ taine /
  • boyar → boier/ boyer /
  • ukr. guska → gâscă/ gyske / - "goose"

• Verbs:
  • hope → a nădăjdui/ a nedezhdui /
  • read → a citi/ and cheat /
  • love → a iubi/ a yubi /
  • pay → a plăti/ a plait /

• A characteristic feature of Romanian is its loss of the original Romanesque roots for describing the emotional, psychological and other qualities of a person, replaced by Slavisms:
  • Serbo-Croatian drag "dear" → drag/ drag /
  • Serbo-Croatian simple "stupid" → prost/ simple /
  • robber → războinic/ slayer / - "warrior"
  • funny → vesel/ oars /
  • Serbo-Croatian harmful "useful" → vrednic/ malevolent / - "diligent" / "capable" / "worthy"
  • pathetic → jalnic/ regent /
  • bulg. pure "honest" → cinstit/ chinstit /
  • Serbo-Croatian weak "thin" → slab/ weak /
  • bulg. bolnav "sick" → bolnav/ bolnav /
  • cute → milă/ mile / - "pity"
  • formidable → groaznic/ groznik /
  • rich → bogat/ rich /
  • naked → gol/Goal/
  • love, love → a iubi/ a yubi /, iubire/ yubire / instead of classic western amare and amor

• An interesting in the ethnographic context category of action verbs borrowed from the Slavic language also stands out:
  • catch → a lovi/ and catch / - "hit"
  • beat up → a izbi/ and beat /
  • drive → a goni/ and drive /

a special category of Slavic borrowings - vocabulary related to Orthodox rituals. Although the Vlachs became Christians during the late Roman Empire, much earlier than the Slavs (see, for example, church - biserica- from lat. basilica), the Orthodox rite was entrenched here already in the Middle Ages, along with the Church Slavonic language used in worship.

• rid → a izbăvi/ and be sure /
• eternity → veșnicie/ hanging /
• holy → sfînt/ spynt /
• serve → a sluji/ and serve /
• service → slujbă/ service /
• paradise → rai/Paradise/
• hell → iad/I/
• prophet → proroc/prophet/
• pop → popă/ pop /

Lost vocabulary and archaisms

Main article: Romanian vocabulary

Especially the attention of linguists is attracted by the fact that Romanian has completely lost such a typical Romanic vocabulary as amare, amor, amicus, mundus, centum, cor, grandis and pater, and replaced it with Slavisms:

• love, love → a iubi/ a yubi /, iubire/ yubire /, instead of classic western amare and amor
• buddy → prieten/ prieten / - "friend", instead of the classic western amicus
• one hundred → sută/ sute /, instead of the classic western centum
• ukr. tato → tată/ tate / - "father" instead of pater (but patrie/ patriet / - "Motherland")
• word lume/ lume / from lat. luminis- "light" was traced in meaning from the Slavic "light" (meaning "world")
• latin word cor The "heart" was not preserved, but was replaced by inimă/ inime / meaning "heart" - from lat. anima"soul"
• Romanian neoplasm suflet/ suflet / - "soul" is a rethought tracing paper from the Slavic word "blow" ( a sufla/ a souffla /), and the word "soul" formed from it [ style!]

At the same time, Romanian is the only Romance language that has preserved the original Latin lexeme. albus → alb/ alb / - "white", while the other Romance languages ​​replaced it with Germanism: cf. isp. blanco, port. branco, ital. bianco, fr. blanc.

Where direct borrowing threatened with the disappearance of the Balkan Romanesque dialect itself, the Roman-speaking population resorted to the help of droppings: borrowing Slavic constructions and adapting them for the Romanesque vocabulary. This is especially true for numbers from 11 to 20:

• So, the Slavic "twelve" was first understood by the Roman-speaking population as two-over-tsat, that is, two-over-ten, and then literally translated into the corresponding Latin ones: dos + super + decem later developing into două + spre + zece → douăsprezece/ douesprese / instead of the typical western Spanish. doce, port. doze, ital. dodici, fr. douze, descended from lat. duodecim.
• Likewise, after losing the Latin root viginti(20), from which isp. veinte, port. vinte, ital. venti, fr. vingt, Romanian resorted to tracing paper of Slavism twenty → twenty → two dozen→ lat. dos + deci → două + zece → douăzeci/ doyazzech /.
• The Slavic influence in early medieval Dacia was so strong that the Slavic affirmative particle "yes" passed in the same meaning into the proto-Romanian and caused a shift in the original lexical units. Latin particle sic- "so", as well as in the west, developed in Balkan Latin the meaning of "yes" in the form și/ shi /. However, after borrowing the Slavic root proper and under the influence of the synonymous Slavic meaning of the particle "yes", used in the meaning of "and", the word și assumed the meaning of "and". To avoid homonymy with si(as in Spanish, French and Italian) Latin si- "if" turned in Dacia into să/ se / - "to" and became an integral part of the structure of the formation of the conjunctiva. [ style!]

Foreign language influences

In addition to the Illyrian substratum and the South Slavic superstratum, Balkan Latin was in intensive contact with a significant number of other languages ​​(see adstrath), many of which are not even Indo-European, which is explained by the special geography of Dacia. Unlike Spain, Italy and even France, limited mainly by oceans and seas, most of the borders of Dacia and Romania are land. In general, in colloquial Romanian, primordial Romanic lexemes (not counting late Latinisms) make up no more than half of the entire vocabulary, which, however, is partially offset by their higher frequency compared to borrowed vocabulary. In the past, the Greek language played an important role in the region. Wallachian shepherds, roaming the foothills of the Carpathians and the Balkans, even contacted speakers of Polish, Slovak, Czech, Albanian, Italian, Dalmatian, Croatian and Slovenian languages. Currently, the Romanian linguistic space borders on Hungarian, Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Gagauz, Turkish, Romani and German linguistic areas and enclaves, from which many borrowings have penetrated into Romanian:

Greek

• Greek όφελος / opelos / - "benefit" → folos/ folos / - "useful"
• Greek μπουζουνάρα / buzunara / → buzunar/ buzunar / - "pocket"
• Greek πρόσφατος / prosfatos / → proaspăt/ proaspet / - "fresh"
• Greek κυτίον / cution / → cutie/ kutie / - "box"
• Greek χαρτί / harty / → hârtie/ hyrtie / - "paper"

Hungarian

• Hung. város → oraș/ orash / - "city"
• Hung. költeni → a cheltui/ a celtui / - "to spend"
• Hung. fogadni → a făgădui/ a fagadui / - "promise"
• Hung. menteni → a măntui/ a mantui / - "to save"

Turkish

• tour. kahve → cafea/ cafe / - "coffee"
• tour. pabuç → papuc/ papuk / - "slipper"
• tour. çorba → ciorbă/ chorbe / - "soup"
• tour. çoban → cioban/ choban / - "shepherd"

German

• German Kartoffel → cartof/ potato / - "potato"
• German Bier → bere/ bere / - "beer"
• German Schraube → șurub/ screw / - "screw"
• German Turm → turn/ turn / - "tower"

French

A significant number of gallicisms were fixed in the Romanian language in late XIX century thanks to the literary activity of Romanian writers. Among them:

• fr. chomage → şomaj/ shamazh / - "unemployment"
• fr. gare → gară/ gare / - "station"
• fr. merci → mersi/ merci / - "thank you"

Purism and Relatinization

In the 19th century, French is still the language of international communication and diplomacy, and therefore it is gaining popularity in Romania. A significant part of the Romanian intelligentsia moved to Paris. A period of active linguistic correction of Romanian begins, from which Slavic lexemes are displaced and new French, Latin and Italian roots are introduced. A period of purism and relatinization begins.

A significant number of scientific Latinisms were introduced into the vocabulary of Romanian in the 19th-20th centuries. In the Western Romanesque area, this process never stopped, and therefore had a more natural character. In Romania, it led to an increase in the stylistic gap between oral and written speech, however, most of the Latinisms were mastered rather quickly, although it led to the formation of Slavic-Roman and Romanian-Latin language doublets:

Slavic-Romanesque

• nădejdă/ nedezhde / = speranță/ sperantse / - "hope"
• vreme/ time / = timp/ tymp / - "time"
• văzduh/ air / = aer/ aer / - "air"
• milostiv/ gracious / = îndurat/ yndurat / - "merciful"
• războinic/ slayer / = militar/ militar / - "warrior"

Romanian-Latin

One of the words, strongly modified as a result of phonetic linguistic laws and lexical rethinking, is supplemented by a word borrowed from Latin anew to describe modern realities and is located with it, as it were, in the same nest.

• gheață/ gyatse / - "ice" → glacial/ glacial / - "ice" (from lat. glacies)
• ager/ ager / - "discerning" → agil/ agil / - "dexterous" (from lat. agilis)
• apă/ ape / - "water" → acvatic/ aquatic / - "water" (from lat. aqua)
• drept/ drapt / - "right" → direct / direct / - "direct" (from lat. directus)

Dialectal division

Distribution map of the Romanian language and other Balkan-Romance languages

Main article: Dialects of the Romanian language

A characteristic feature of the Romanian language is its relatively small dialect fraction. The dialects of Muntenia, Moldova, Maramuresh, Banat and Transylvania are almost the same, with the exception of a small number of regionalisms. Accordingly, the following dialects are distinguished in Romanian: Banat, Krishna, Wallachian. The most peculiar are the dialects of Transylvania, which have experienced some influence of the Hungarian language, as well as the Moldavian dialect, which is the most peculiar. So: lat. petra> room. “Piatră” is realized here as “katre”, and vermis> vierme “worm” as “zherme”. This pronunciation is typical primarily for rural speakers of the Moldovan language. A number of scholars also consider the Aromanian language, the Meglen-Romanian language and the Istro-Romanian languages ​​as dialects of Romanian, although they are subject to an increasing foreign-language influence and tend to disappear.

Comparative historical analysis of the Romanian language

Evolution

The Romanian language, which has a long and complex history, is of particular interest to linguistic scholars, especially those who are engaged in comparative historical linguistics and romance. Attempts to analyze the place of Romanian in the circle of Romance languages, as well as its evolution from folk Latin, give interesting and sometimes contradictory results. As an impartial analysis shows, the Romanian language really has an undeniable folk-Latin origin. main feature evolution of folk Latin in the Balkan area - its almost exclusively oral character for at least 10 centuries under the strong influence of the oral and written speech of neighboring peoples, primarily the Slavs, Greeks, Hungarians and Turks. At the same time, it is important to take into account the belonging of the Romanian language to the Balkan linguistic union. At the same time, the forms of the number and gender of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and especially the verb conjugation system, retain the main morphological features of folk Latin in Romanian.

In the circle of Romance languages

Italian, as well as Spanish and portuguese languages where the evolution of the oral and written language happened in parallel. The same can be said about the French language, which cannot be considered completely peripheral, since, firstly, Roman-speaking speakers in Gaul have never lost touch with written Latin speech, and secondly, the so-called innovations of the French language in fact - only extreme manifestations of common Roman tendencies. Moreover, the Celtic and Germanicisms of French affect only positional phonetics and peripheral groups of lexemes. Romanian innovations, on the other hand, have a deeper and almost all-encompassing character and do not correlate well with general Romanian trends in the west. For example, the definite article in Romanian is postpositive, not prepositive, as in the west (cf .: rum. omul"That person" and fr. L'homme). Moreover, the word formation of adverbs of the mode of action from the corresponding adjectives in Romanian is unmarked: reu "bad" and "bad", and in the west this process is carried out using the suffix "ment (e)".

Italian language

On the whole, speakers of Western Romanic languages, especially French, do not understand colloquial Romanian speech, just as untrained Romanians practically do not understand their Western counterparts. Nevertheless, speakers of Spanish, and especially Italian, languages ​​can pick up some lexemes and feel the affinity of Romanian speech. At the same time, scientific texts in modern Romanian in the West (including in an unrelated English-speaking region) can be understood depending on the context, thanks to a significant number of newly introduced Latinisms and Gallicisms.

The closest to Romanian is Italian, which is not surprising, given the geographical proximity. Of great importance was the fact that the capital of the Roman Empire was located in Rome, from where Romanization began in a fan-like manner. Comparing the Italian and Romanian languages ​​reveals deep fundamental parallels in grammatical development, especially in phonetics (similar affricates and palatalization), verb conjugation (affixes, 2nd person singular present) and morphology (preservation of the vocal outcome of the plural. including nouns).

However, due to the fact that the Italian language has a strong dialectal division, Romanian shows similarities with different dialectal zones in different ways. So, there are lexical similarities with northern dialects, for example, the word reu "bad"< лат. reus «подсудный», ср.: сев.-ит. rio, ведь большинство романоязычных колонистов проходили северную Италию на пути в Дакию. Центральные регионы близки румынской речи в плане склонений и спряжений, ведь оттуда произошёл сам латинский язык . Южные регионы обнаруживают сходства в необычной трактовке согласных групп, что объясняется общим для юга Италии и Румынии влиянии (ново)греческого языка. Тем не менее общность румынского с современным стандартным итальянским (тосканский диалект) не стоит преувеличивать, так как имеются и существенные отличия в плане лексики, фонетики и грамматики. При этом эти черты можно обнаружить в других романских языках в большем или меньшем количестве.

French

Romanian is similar to the French language by the loss of the final "y" and the consonant outcome of most nouns and adjectives male: lat. unus> un (y)> un (cf. fr. un, but Spanish, it. uno), also lat. totus> room. that “all” (cf. fr. tout, but Spanish todo, it. tutto). At the same time, the reduced "u" at the end of the word was preserved in Old Romanian.

Spanish

Romanian also shares a number of important features with Spanish. First of all, in phonetics, the loss by both languages ​​of the phonological significance of the longitude and brevity of vowels is striking. In Latin, French, Portuguese and partly Italian, these differences remain. The Meglen Romanian language of the Balkans, although close to Romanian, differs from it phonetically, first of all, on this basis.

Another common feature is the doubling of pronouns that emphasize the object to which the action is directed:

I was led ne proesorul nostra. "I see our teacher." (Literally: I see Him to our teacher).

Este libro no lo he leido. "I haven't read this book." (Literally: This book, I have not read it).

There is also a certain similarity in the use of the Spanish preposition [a], when the action is directed at an animated object: Veo a Helena "I see Elena" and the Romanian use of the preposition ne< лат. per в подобной же ситуации. К слову, в румынском предлог [а] используется для образования описательного инфинитива: а ведя «видеть».

A number of Latin lexemes in Spanish and Romanian have a similar development. Thus, the Latin "passer" "sparrow" in both the Spanish "pájaro" and the Romanian "pasér" developed the meaning of "bird". In both languages, high-frequency products of the development of the Latin folk lexeme plicare (Spanish llegar, rum. Pleka (re)), which opposes the products of the development of lat. adripare (French arriver, Italian arrivare).

Portuguese

The Portuguese language formed on the opposite edge of the Romance area (Western Iberia). And yet it is the very fact of its outskirts location, despite the absence of strong foreign-language influences, that brings it closer to the Romanian phonetic abundance of sibilants and affricates, as well as a weakened (reduced) pronunciation of vowels. In Portuguese, there are also phonemes close to Romanian Y and E, although etymologically these sounds are not identical to each other. In Portuguese, although in smaller volumes than in Romanian, there is a rotacism of the sound [l], which also affects borrowed vocabulary, for example, germ. blank> port. branco "white". In grammar, both languages ​​are distinguished by the presence of special forms of the infinitive, deviated from the standard independent stems by -re.

Geographic distribution

Most of the tourists who come to Romania are deeply impressed by this country. Many residents Western Europe and for some reason the United States does not have a very good opinion of Romania, but it changes in the opposite direction after they personally visit it. Indeed, one cannot remain indifferent to the beautiful Carpathian mountains, to the unique ancient churches and castles, to the Romanian beach, thermal and ski resorts.

Geography of Romania

Romania is located at the crossroads of many European roads. In the west, Romania borders Serbia and Hungary, in the northeast and east - with Ukraine and Moldova, and in the south - with Bulgaria. In the east, Romania is washed by the waters of the warm Black Sea. The total area of ​​this country is 238,400 square kilometers, and the total length of the state border is 3,195 km.

The territory of Romania is geographically divided into three types of landscape: mountainous in the central part of the country (Carpathians), as well as hilly and flat (Pannonian and Wallachian plains). The highest peak in the country is Mount Moldovyanu in the South Carpathians (2,544 meters).

Several large rivers flow through the territory of Romania: Danube, Prut, Siret, and Olt.

Capital

The capital of Romania is Bucharest, which is home to over 1.7 million people. According to legend, a settlement on the site of modern Bucharest was built in 1368 by a shepherd named Bukur.

Official language

The official language in Romania is Romanian, belonging to the Eastern Romance group Indo-European language family... In Transylvania, some cities and communes have Hungarian as their second official language.

Religion in Romania

About 87% of the Romanian population consider themselves Orthodox Christians belonging to the Greek Catholic Church. In addition, 5.2% of Romanians are Protestant, and about 5% are Catholic.

State structure

Romania, according to the 1991 Constitution, is a parliamentary republic. The President of the country is elected every 5 years.

The country's parliament is a bicameral National Assembly, consisting of the Senate (140 people) and the Chamber of Deputies (346 people).

Climate and weather in Romania

In Romania, the climate is intermediate between temperate and continental. In different regions of Romania, the climate is quite different from each other. The average air temperature is + 11.5C. The warmest months are July and August, when the air temperature rises to + 30%, and the coldest is January (the average temperature is -6C). Winters in Romania are cold, most of the snow falls in the mountains.

Sea in Romania

In the east, Romania, as we have already said, is washed by the waters of the Black Sea. The length of the Black Sea coast of Romania is 245 kilometers. The beach season lasts from May to September.

In July, the water temperature on the Black Sea coast in Romania is + 16-20C, in July and August - + 20-28C, and in September - about + 20C.

Rivers and lakes

The Danube, the largest river in this country, flows from west to east along the border of Romania with Bulgaria. Other major Romanian rivers are Prut, Siret, Arges, Olt, Timis, and Mures.

There are over 3.5 thousand lakes in Romania. The largest Romanian lakes are located on the Black Sea coast (estuaries) - Razim and Sinoe. There are several very beautiful glacial lakes in the Carpathian Mountains and the Transylvanian Alps - Zanoaga, Bucura, Capra, Caltun, and Podragu.

Romanian history

In 3000 BC. Romania is inhabited by Thracian tribes of Indo-European origin.

In the 1st century BC. on the territory of Romania, the state of the Dacians was created (as the Romans called the Thracians). By about 100 A.D. the state of the Dacians reaches its heyday. However, in 106 A.D. the Romans still managed to defeat the Dacians, and Romania (Dacia) became one of the provinces of Ancient Rome.

In the XII century, the Romanian lands were divided into three parts: the principalities of Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia.

In the XVI-XVII centuries, Wallachia, Moldova and Transylvania retained their autonomy, but at the same time paid tribute to the Ottoman Empire. In the 18th century, Transylvania and another part of the Romanian lands became part of the Austrian Empire.

The national state of Romania was formed in 1862 as a result of the unification of Wallachia and Moldova. Almost twenty years later, Romania becomes a Kingdom.

During the First World War, Romania fights on the side of Germany, thus planning to regain Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina. In 1918, this, in fact, happened. However, in 1940, the above-mentioned territories were given to the Soviet Union.

In 1941, the dictatorship of Marshal Ion Antonescu was established in Romania, and the country entered World War II on the side of Germany in order to regain Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina.

After World War II, the Romanian king Mihai I abdicated the throne. Soon the Romanian People's Republic was proclaimed (this happened in 1947).

At the end of 1989, as a result of the revolution, the Romanian Communist Party is deprived of its power, and its leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, was shot.

In 1991, the new Constitution of Romania was approved. In 2004, Romania was admitted to the NATO military bloc, and in 2007 - to the EU.

Romanian culture

Romanian culture is very rich in traditions and folklore. Romanians are very hospitable and are always ready to tell old legends to curious travelers. The main one, of course, is the legend about the terrible Count Dracula, who, as it turns out, had a real historical prototype of Count Vlad III Dracula.

Tourists in Romania can take part in folk festivals, festivals dating back to early middle ages. Folk holidays are associated primarily with religious holidays: Easter and Christmas.

However, Easter and Christmas are also celebrated in other countries. However, Ignatov Day is typical only for Romania.

On Ignatov Day, December 20, a sacrificial animal - a pig - is offered to the gods. It is believed that this will help protect a person from diseases, for example. Romanians should not work on Ignatov Day. However, those Romanians who still need to work on December 20 must first take part in the sacrifice. In extreme cases, you can simply prick the chicken, even a few drops of blood will protect against disease.

Ethnographers claim that the sacrifice of a pig on Ignatov Day originates in the depths of centuries, when human lives were sacrificed to the gods.

In the period from December 20 to January 8, Romanian women do not spin, knit or sew, because you can shorten the days of your life.

During Ignatov's day, pumpkin has a special power. For some reason, Romanians believe that pumpkin cures a person from various skin problems.

Kitchen

Most often, pork is used in Romanian cuisine, although, of course, Romanians love chicken, beef, lamb and fish. But what makes Romanian cuisine so unique? The fact is that it was greatly influenced by the Turks, Hungarians, Poles, Austrians, Bulgarians, and Russians.

In rural Romania, people still use earthenware for cooking, which makes them taste unique.

For tourists in Romania who want to learn about traditional Romanian cuisine, we do not recommend relying on the taste of the dishes prepared in the restaurants. Real Romanian dishes are prepared only at home. If you come to visit Romanians, ask them to cook some traditional Romanian dish, and they will not refuse you.

Tourists in Romania are advised to try mititei (beef or pork sausages, grilled or in a pan), frigărui (pork or chicken, roasted on a skewer like a shish kebab), and şniţel (pork fillet stuffed with cheese and ham). Another traditional Romanian dish is hominy, a porridge made from corn.

Traditional alcoholic drinks in Romania are fruit vodka - tsuica and palanica, fruit brandy.

Romania landmarks

In addition to ski and beach resorts, Romania has a lot of different attractions. In our opinion, the top ten attractions in Romania include the following:

Cities and resorts of Romania

The largest cities in Romania are Bucharest, Timisoara, Constanta, Iasi, and Galati.

There are several good ski resorts in the mountains of Romania - Sinaia, Poiana Brasov, Busteni, Azuga, Predeal, Vatra Dornei, and Borsha.

A large number of foreign tourists come to Romania every summer to relax in local beach resorts. The most popular of them are Navodari, Mamaia, Constanta, Eforie Nord, Eforie Sud, Costinesti, Olympus, Neptune, Aurora, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and Mangalia.

Romania has a lot of mineral springs, and therefore this country has several excellent balneological resorts. At the moment in Romania, there are more than 70 balneological and thermal resorts. The most popular of them are Magnalia, Slanic-Moldova, Vatra Dornei, and Sovata.

Souvenirs / shopping

Opening hours of institutions

). An abbreviated version of this text was published about a year ago in the journal " Foreign languages and study abroad. "I look forward to your comments, remarks, additions, corrections.
One request - let's not discuss the issue of "Romanian vs. Moldovan" here. There are many other places to discuss it.

The Romanian language, as you can read in any reference book, belongs to the Romance group of languages, the ancestor of which was Latin. The name of the people - Romanians - comes from the word romanus"Roman". The relationship between Latin and Romanian is easy to see by comparing Latin and Romanian words.

porta"a door" poarta
locus"a place" loc
caput"head" cap
ferrum"iron" fier
decem"ten" zece
dicere"to tell" zice
lingua"language" limba
aqua"water" apa
octo"eight" opt
quattuor"four" patru
sex"six" şase

However, how did the language of the Romance group come about in Eastern Europe surrounded by Slavic and Hungarian? The fact is that after the wars, during which the Roman Empire conquered Dacia (most of the territory of modern Romania), the local population was almost completely destroyed, and the lands were settled by colonists from the west, whose native language was Latin. As a result, the Dacian language that existed before that time disappeared completely. Only a few words from it have survived in modern Romanian. These are the names of the rivers Dunaris, Siret, Prut, and: buză"lip", brad"spruce", copac"wood", mal"Coast", copil"child". The most famous of these words is brînză"cheese", which was later borrowed into Russian.

On the basis of the Romance speech of the population of the Balkan Peninsula, not only the Romanian language was formed. Somewhat farther south there were aromanian(Macedonian Romanian), Istro-Romanian and Meglen-Romanian languages. There are now about 300 thousand people of Aromanian origin in Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia, data on the number of those who speak this language differ. Historical Romanian, as of 1985, was spoken by 555 people in Croatia. Meglenic Romanian is now spoken by about 5,000 people in Greece and Macedonia. When considering this group of languages, Romanian is often called Dacoruman... In the Romanian linguistic tradition, all the Romance languages ​​of the Balkans are often called dialects.

The oldest surviving text in Romanian is a letter from boyar Nyakshu, in which he warns a judge in the city of Brasov about the movement of Turkish ships along the Danube. Judging by the events described in the letter, it was created in 1521. A fairly large number of documents in Romanian have been preserved since the second half of the 16th century. It is curious that then the Cyrillic alphabet was used for writing in this language, only in the 1860s the Romanians switched to the Latin alphabet.

The Latin alphabet to reflect Romanian sounds was supplemented with several letters: ă - denotes a sound close to e, â and î - denote a sound close to s, ţ - c, ş - NS. Letter j in Romanian it reads like well, with- as h before e, i and as k in other cases, g- as j in front of e, i and as g in other cases. To convey the sounds k and g before the vowels e, i, the combinations are used ch, gh: Chişinău"Kishinev". WITH post-war years and until 1994, the letter â was written only in words with the root român- and some proper names, but under the new rules they returned to the pre-war norm - î at the beginning of the word, â - in other places. Letter i at the end of a word after a consonant, it is not pronounced without stress, but only denotes the softness of the consonant: lupi"wolves" reads [loop "], but if i comes after a vowel, then it reads y.

As we said, most Romanian words are of Latin origin. More often than not, Latin words in Romanian retain their meaning, but the meaning of some changes, often in unexpected ways. Latin word barbatus"bearded" in Romanian has become bărbat"Man", anima"soul" in inimă"heart", conventus"agreement" in cuvănt"word", * sufflitus"blow" in suflet"soul". Here are some more examples:

paludem"swamp"> * padulem> pădure"Forest"
passer"sparrow"> pasăre"bird" (similar to Spanish pajaro"bird")
lucrum"profit, gain"> lucru"work", "thing"
pavimentum"compacted earth with rubble, stone floor"> pământ"Earth"
languorem"weakness, lethargy", later "illness"> lăngoare typhus
viridia"greenery"> varză"cabbage"
granum"grain"> grâu"wheat"
torquere"twirl"> toarce"spinning" (from lat. torquere fusum"spin the spindle")
întuneca"to darken" (from "to dress in a tunic")
înlemni"dumbfounded" (from lat. lignum"wood")
monumentum"monument"> mormînt"grave"

History and ethnography help to explain some of the changes in meanings. Lat. pavitum"paved"> * pavatum> room. pat"bed". At first, this word meant a place laid out with boards and slabs, and then - a kind of elevation made of boards, on which they went to sleep. Word rostrum"beak, mouth" turned into rost"speech, order, installation". This meaning, as the philologist-novelist E. Bursier writes, "is associated with the spread of weaving among the Romanians, where this word denoted the angle formed by the threads through which the shuttle is passed."

From latin verb plicare"fold, fold" occurred Romanian verb a pleca"go off", and Spanish llegar"arrive". E. Bursier writes that the Spanish meaning arose from the language of sailors (cf. applicare navis ad terram"to moor ships to the ground"), and Romanian - from the soldier's expression "to give traction (roll up belongings)".

Word mergere"immerse" has become a merge"go". This meaning arose from the late Latin uses of the verb in phrases such as: sol mergit"the sun sinks into the sea." The meaning developed like this: "dive"> "disappear"> "remove"> "go".
Particularly interesting is the fate of the Latin verb invitiare"to corrupt", who gave the word in Romanian învăţa"learn". It is believed that he changed his meaning in this way: "corrupt (Xia)"> "acquire bad habits"> "get used to"> "teach, learn".

There are also many words of Slavic origin in Romanian. Brazdă"furrow", ceas"hour", nădejde"hope", drag"expensive", a citi"read", sticlă"glass jar, bottle", a iubi"be in love", vreme"time". Some of them also changed their meaning when borrowing into Romanian: război"war" ( Al Doilea Război Mondial- The Second World War), zăpadă"snow" (from the verb fall), a munci"to work" (compare Russian to torment), a lovi"hit" (cf. catch), scump dear (cf. stingy), prost stupid (cf. simple), mândru proud (cf. wise). Some words of Latin origin influenced by Slavic languages have developed additional meanings. Word lume"light" also began to mean "peace" (as Slavic light: lamp light and become famous all over the world), word parte"part" also received the meaning of "fate".

Slavic languages ​​influenced Romanian in word formation as well. For example, the word room. bun"good" (from Latin bonus), a nebun"crazy" (lit. "bad"). It is easy to recognize the Slavic negative prefix here. There is influence in the syntax as well. It was from the Slavic languages ​​that Romanian borrowed constructions with the dative case, meaning state. Compare mi-e frig and I'm cold.

You can find among the Romanian words and a number of loanwords from Hungarian. These are the words belşug"abundance" oraş"town", a cheltui"spend", gând"thought" and others. There are also borrowings from Turkish, Greek and other languages ​​in Romanian.

Old football fans must remember the football team. " Constructor", which played in the USSR championships, it still exists in Chisinau. The name of the team means" builder ", the Latin base is easily guessed in it, but what does it mean - st at the end? Here we come to one feature of the Romanian language. It contains articles. And the definite article in Romanian is different from the articles in languages ​​you know (eng. the, it. der, fr. le, isp. el). These articles precede the word; the Romanian definite article is in many cases attached to the back of the word. Such an article is called postpositive by linguists. Let's see what Romanian words with an article look like.
lup"Wolf" lupi"wolves"
lupul"wolf (def.)" lupii"wolves (def.)"
lupului"wolf (def.)" lupilor"wolves (def.)"
The vocabulary form of Romanian nouns is also derived from the form with the article. lupule"oh wolf!"

How did such a seemingly unusual article come about? The fact is that the word order in Latin was relatively free. There, for example, the phrase "this person" could be transmitted as ille homo, but could and how homo ille... Gradually, in the western part of the range of the Latin language, the first variant began to prevail, and in the eastern part, the second. From latin pronoun ille and articles appeared in Romance languages, French le and spanish el- before the word, and the Romanian article after.

The post-positive article is one of the features that include it in the so-called "Balkan language union". Over the centuries of coexistence different languages Balkan peoples - Bulgarian, Greek, Macedonian, Romanian, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian - have developed a number of common features. Thus, the post-positive article is also found in the Bulgarian and Macedonian languages. Take a look at Bulgarian examples: vijdam wife that "I see a woman" darvo"wood", darvoto"tree, the tree".

If a noun has dependent words, the article does not appear after the noun itself, but after the leftmost of these words. Compare: băiatul"young man" băjatului"young men (genus. n.)", frumosul băjat"handsome youth" frumosului băjat"handsome youth". In the Old Romanian language, the post-positive article accompanied every word of the noun phrase. Here are some examples: preasfinţitu lui părinte lui patriarhu lui "blessed father of the patriarch", au dat dzile tom ei vornicu luişi lui Iordachie vistiernicu lui "saved the lives of Tome vornik and Iordaka the treasurer", icoana Maic ii Precist ei "Icon of the Most Pure Mother". In modern Romanian, these phrases look like preasfinţitu lui părinte patriarh, vornicu lui Toma, vistiernicu lui Iordachie, Maic ii Preciste... A similar phenomenon is typical for Bulgarian language: winter "winter" - zimata "this winter" - student winter "this cold winter" - balgarskata cold winter "this cold Bulgarian winter".

Another striking feature of the Balkan linguistic union, which is also in the Romanian language, is the formation of the future tense with the help of the auxiliary verb "want". The verb for this purpose in Romanian goes back to Latin volere"to want". The forms of the future are as follows:
voi cânta i will sing
vei cânta you will sing
va cânta he will sing and so on.
However, the Balkan language union, its emergence and specific traits languages ​​included in it - this is a topic for a separate conversation.

Romanian language(per room. limba română / român) belongs to the Romance languages ​​and has about 24 million native speakers in Romania, Moldova and Ukraine. The Romanian language retains a number of features of the Latin language, including the cases of nouns that have long been lost by other Romance languages. The Romanian language contains many words borrowed from the Slavic languages ​​of neighboring countries, as well as from French, Old Slavic, German, Greek and Turkish.

The first written monuments of the Romanian language appeared in the 16th century. and are mainly religious texts and other documents. The oldest text in Romanian dates back to 1521 - this is a letter from boyar Nyakshu from Campulunga to the mayor of Brasov. The letter is written in Krill, similar to the Old Slavic script used in Wallachia and Moldavia until 1859.

Since the end of the XVI century. for writing in Romanian in Transylvania, a variant of the Latin alphabet with Hungarian features was used. At the end of the 18th century. a spelling system based on the Italian language was adopted.

The Cyrillic script was used in the Moldavian SSR until 1989, when it was replaced by the Romanian version of the Latin alphabet.

Old Romanian alphabet

This version of the Latin alphabet was used during the transition from Cyrillic to Latin. It is still used today mainly in church texts.

Cyrillic alphabet of the Romanian language (1600-1860)

Notes (edit)

Some letters had special form which was used at the beginning of a word:

The letters Ѯ, Ψ, Ѳ, and Ѵ were used in Greek loanwords.

Romanian modern alphabet

The letters Q (chiu), W (dublu ve) and Y (i grec) are used mainly in foreign loan words.

Phonetic transcription of the Romanian language

Vowels, diphthongs and triphthongs

Consonants

Notes (edit)

• c= [ʧ] before i or e, but [k] anywhere else
• g= [ʤ] before i or e, but [g] elsewhere
• ch= [k] before i or e
• gh= [g] before i or e
• i= [i ̯] before vowels, but [i] anywhere else. When the letter i stands at the end of a polysyllabic word, it is not pronounced, but softens the previous consonant. For example, vorbiţi (you say) =. The exceptions are words that end in a consonant + r + i, as well as infinitive forms of verbs, for example. "A vorbi" (to speak).
  To convey the full sound [i] at the end of a word, the digraph "ii" is used, eg. "Copii" (children) = [kopi].
  iii[iji] is pronounced at the end of a word, eg. "Copiii" (these children) = [kopiji].
• u= [u̯] before vowels, but [u] elsewhere
• k, q, w and y are used only in loan words

Romanian language (limba română[limba romyne], IPA: "limba ro'mɨnə; sometimes called daco-romanian, previously also Wallachian, Vlachian, Volosh language) - one of the Romance languages, native language Romanian. It is the official, native and main spoken language for 90% of the Romanian population. Under the name "Moldavian language" it has an official status in Moldova (native to 78.4% of the population). It is also distributed in a number of regions of Ukraine with the highest concentration of carriers in Odessa and Chernivtsi regions.

The Romanian language typologically belongs to the Balkan-Romance subgroup of the East Romance group of the Indo-European family of languages. At the same time, the Romanian language is the most peculiar in the group of Romance languages, revealing the features of the so-called contact languages, formed at the junction of several linguistic areas, in particular, the Balkan linguistic union.

The total number of Romanian speakers is about 20 million. Together with Moldovan and other Balkan-Romanic dialects, as well as Roman-Slavic bilinguals of Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece and Ukraine - about 25 million (about 5% of all Roman-speaking groups in the world). A rich fiction and scientific literature has been created in the Romanian language.

Self-name

The name "Romanian language" comes from the self-name of the people who speaks it - Romanians. The Romanians became the only large Romanesque people that retained the original ethnic name of Old Romania - Romani (singular Romanus)> Romania (singular Romanians). For the first time, the name of the Romanian language appeared in the Cyrillic version - “limba Romanian”. It was this name that became firmly established in the Russian language. The preservation of the term Romani precisely on the territory of Romania is partly explained by the fact that the Byzantine Empire, which had been adjacent to it for a long time, from where Orthodoxy came to Romania, called itself Romania until the end of the 15th century. It is no coincidence that the gypsies who settled in Romania, who came to Europe through Byzantium, called themselves "romale". Nevertheless, the exo-ethnonym of the Romanians and the Romanian language among the neighboring (Slavic peoples) was completely different - the Wallachians (cf. Germanic analogs "Walloons" for the Roman-speaking population of Belgium, "Welsh", "Welsh" for Romano-British population, etc.). In the 19th century in Romania, with the strengthening of purism and linguistic nationalism currents seeking to return the country to its Roman origins, the spelling of the word Romanian changed to Romanian, in the Latin alphabet “română”.

Foreign language influences

In addition to the Illyrian substrate and the South Slavic superstratum, Balkan Latin was in intensive contact with a significant number of other languages ​​(see adstrath), many of which are not even Indo-European, which is explained by the special geography of Dacia. Unlike Spain, Italy and even France, limited mainly by oceans and seas, most of the borders of Dacia and Romania are land. In general, in colloquial Romanian, primordial Romanic lexemes (not counting late Latinisms) make up no more than half of the entire vocabulary, which, however, is partially offset by their higher frequency compared to borrowed vocabulary. In the past, the Greek language played an important role in the region. Wallachian shepherds, roaming the foothills of the Carpathians and the Balkans, even contacted speakers of Polish, Slovak, Czech, Albanian, Italian, Dalmatian, Croatian and Slovenian languages. Currently, the Romanian linguistic space borders on Hungarian, Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Gagauz, Turkish, Romani and German linguistic areas and enclaves, from which many borrowings have penetrated into Romanian:

Greek

• folos< о́фелос «полезный»
• buzunar< бузуна́ра «карман»
• proaspet< про́сфатос «свежий»
• kutie< кутион «коробка»
• hyrty< хартие «бумага»

Hungarian

• orash< város «город»
• a keltui< költeni «тратить»
• a fagadui< fogadni «обещать»
• a mantui< menteni «спасать»

Turkish

• cafea, cafe< kahve «кофе»
• papuc, papuc< pabuç «шлёпанец»
• ciorbă, chorbe< çorba «суп»
• cioban, choban< çoban «пастух»

German

• potato< Kartoffel «картофель»
• take< Bier «пиво»
• shurub< Schraube «шуруп»
• turn< Turm «башня»

Russian

Many of the later borrowings bear the imprint of the Russian language:

• yamts< немец
• machine< машина (а также английского machine)
• snack< закуска (это - консервированные овощи)

French

A significant number of gallicisms became entrenched in the Romanian language at the end of the 19th century thanks to the literary activities of Romanian writers. Among them:

• Shoomage< фр. chomage «безработица»
• Gare< фр. gare «вокзал»
• Mersey< фр. merci «спасибо»

Latin

Many words of classical Latin were again introduced into the scientific, terminological literature, as well as to give speech more pomp, solemnity and officialdom:

• frequency< frequentus «частый» (а так-же частота - фреквенца,эта тенденция наблюдается и в English, and also in Russian - revolution, indemnity, restitution, etc.) Borrowing of Latin terms is observed in all modern languages.
• importer< importantis «важный»
• superb< superbus «высококлассный»

Geographic distribution

Dako-Romanian is spoken mainly in Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Ukraine. Also, the Romanian-speaking population lives in France, Canada (especially the city of Montreal), the northwestern United States (especially Chicago), Germany, Israel, Australia and New Zealand, where Romanian communities arose thanks to political immigration from cities (primarily Bucharest) before and after World War II. After the fall of the Ceausescu regime, a new wave emerged, mainly of economic and labor migrants from rural areas, especially after Romania's accession to the European Union in 2007 and directed mainly to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Quebec and Argentina. A similar migration pattern is observed in Moldova, where a significant part of the population is working.

There are also other languages Balkan-Roman subgroup, close to Romanian, but located at a considerable distance from Romania and used Aromanians ( Vlachi) - Aromanian language, living in Macedonia and Greece, as well as in Croatia - Istro-Romanian language. In the area of ​​the city of Thessaloniki, you can also find the Meglen-Romanian language. In Serbia, there is the Romanian dialect Tsintsari.