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Development of Romance languages...
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Chilbudios View Drop Down
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Posts: 1900 		  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Development of Romance languages...
    Posted: 17-Aug-2007 at 08:09
But I still think small differences exist between "Romanian dialects". For example some words which are used in Moldovan Romanian or Bessarabian Romanian (the Romanian language spoken in the republic of Moldova) are not used in Romania.
 
For example poama is grapes in Moldova, but Romanians call grapes stuguri etc. 
Well, technically a dialect is not defined only by a certain (and not very large) number of vocabulary elements. The varieties of Romanian (Moldavian, Wallachian, Oltenian, etc.) can be seen as an intermediate forms between accents and dialects been classified either as one or the other, but the most of the times they are considered only accents.
These varieties are chiefly remarked by some pronounciation particularities but they have also few specific words. Since the progress of the education in the 20th century virtually all Romanian speakers understand each other (i.e. in your case in Moldova people understand strugure only that they use poamă coloquially, while also many other Romanian speakers know that poamă - which exists also as a Romanian word meaning "fruit" - in Moldova is used sometimes only to name the "grapes") and most regional words are included in the dictionaries of the Romanian language (if you understand Romanian you can check http://dexonline.ro).
 
Moldovan Romanian (as spoken in the Republic of Moldova) is a special case because of the intense Russification which happened there in the last two centuries. I'm not sure how the current situation of the language is described. Most Romanian linguists reject the existence of a Moldovan language regarding it as an artificial cultural product. Also a part of their cultural elite tries to shift back to their Romanian roots. But only the time will tell if the dialectal features will accentuate or diminish.
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Posts: 157 		  Quote The_Jackal_God Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Aug-2007 at 22:34
when they say a language is just a dialect with an army, it makes a lot of sense in view of France, Spanish, and Italian, where one dialect achieved superiority over the others. i guess not so much for Italian, being standardized italian what we learn but no one speaks.
 
i was just watching godfather pt ii, and sicilian just doesnt have that staccato sound to it imo.
 
Dalmatian is an interesting detail
 
 
going extinct - so sad. the pater noster is so different.


Edited by The_Jackal_God - 17-Aug-2007 at 23:02
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Posts: 0 		  Quote Pelayo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Oct-2007 at 07:08
Smile
 
 
Fantastic replies, I thank everyone for sharing.
 
Can anyone comment on the development of Leonese/Castilian vs. Galician and Catala?
 
I have heard that Iberian languages, esp. Castilian/Andalusian are Latin spoke with a Basque accent and heavy Arabic influences (which gives it a ? harsh quality to Native English peoples), as compared to non-Iberian Romance languages?
 
 
 
 
 
I am working towards my goal of speaking a passable form of every Romance language, before I move onto Scandi/Germanic group, Slavic, then non-Indo.
 
 
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Posts: 281 		  Quote jayeshks Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Oct-2007 at 14:43
IIRC the differences have to do with the pre and post Roman groups in the region.  After the fall of Rome, the Suevi moved into the North West of the peninsula, the Visigoths took over Old Castile and the Vandals Catalonia.  The Germanic rulers didn't leave any significant linguistic influence but they managed to disconnect the regions allowing the dialects to take a different course in each kingdom.  Gallego-Portuguese developed from the heavily accented Latin spoken by the pre-Roman Celtic inhabitants of the region (Lusitani etc.), Catalan was connected (by Vandal conquest) to Southern France and developed in similar fashion to langues-d'oc like Occitan.  Castilian and Aragonese both were influenced by Basque and later Arabic in the case of Castilian.  I don't think that Arabic significantly affected the phonology of Castilian though as in most cases it was Castilian speakers taking up Arabic rather than the other way around.  

Edited by jayeshks - 28-Oct-2007 at 02:21
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-Oct-2007 at 04:27
Originally posted by sreenivasarao s

Originally posted by Cryptic

Spanish and Italian share more vocabulary and pronunciation with each other than they do with French. 

I agree ....
 
Indeed. As an Spanish Speaker I have the sensation that Italian is the closer language to Spanish (Castillian) of all. Closer than Portuguese and of course, closer than French.
 
I also have the sensation that both Spanish and Italian mantain a phonetic pronounciation that is very close to the ancient Latin of Romans. Both Italian and Spanish are languages whose speakers are fanatics of phonetics, while Portuguese and French are a lot less strict in the correspondence between writen and pronounced words.
 
 


Edited by pinguin - 27-Oct-2007 at 04:29
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Posts: 26 		  Quote Alkibiades Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Jul-2008 at 17:46
Fascinating thread, everyone!
 
I'm not a linguist by any means, but I'm fascinated by languages. I've been reading through your comments on Romance languages and their closeness to/distance from Latin, as well as references to Norman French and its influence on the English language, etc.
 
One Romance language that was only mentioned in passing is Sicilian, although many would argue that it is not a language but a dialect. A (Sicilian) friend recently informed me that here are scholars who regard it as a language in its own right (Prof. Gaetano Cipolla at St. John's University, for example). I've also heard it said that it is the oldest Romance language currently in use. Sicilian interests me because of its remarkable wealth of influence from so many other languages: Greek, Norman, Arabic, Catalan, Provencal, Spanish, and so on. It is also rather beautiful to listen to. Pirandello wrote a number of plays in Sicilian, as well as in standard Italian and, much further back, in the Middle Ages, the Sicilian School of poets wrote verses of courtly love during the reign of Frederick II.
 
Interesting also is that many Sicilian words end in "u" rather than the "o," "i" or "a" we associate with Italian noun and verb endings. (Example: "nostru" as opposed to "nostro.") In that respect I'm reminded of Romanian, although the two languages may have little else in common. Does anyone here have information on this?
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Posts: 1962 		  Quote Cryptic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Jul-2008 at 17:58
Originally posted by Alkibiades

I've also heard it said that it (Sicilian) is the oldest Romance language currently in use.
IThe oldest Romance language in use and the one that remains closest to Latin might be the Sardinian Languages / dialects.  Sardinia's isolation has really limited the number of foreign influences.
 
 
 


Edited by Cryptic - 15-Jul-2008 at 17:59
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Posts: 26 		  Quote Alkibiades Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Jul-2008 at 19:31

Yes, good point; another language generally viewed as a dialect (although Sardinian, like Sicilian, has its own dialects).

 
...sed sic sic sine fine feriati, et tecum iaceamus osculantes...
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Posts: 884 		  Quote Carpathian Wolf Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Aug-2008 at 09:21
Sardinian and Romanian are both languages that maintained the original latin grammar where as italian, french, spanish etc, have not. The main difference between the two however is that Romanian was also influenced by slavic, greek, turk, though 90 percent of the words are of latin origin. Sardinians...well they were on an island. :p
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Posts: 43 		  Quote Dacian Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-Mar-2009 at 19:56
Originally posted by Chilbudios

But I still think small differences exist between "Romanian dialects". For example some words which are used in Moldovan Romanian or Bessarabian Romanian (the Romanian language spoken in the republic of Moldova) are not used in Romania.
 
For example poama is grapes in Moldova, but Romanians call grapes stuguri etc. 
Well, technically a dialect is not defined only by a certain (and not very large) number of vocabulary elements. The varieties of Romanian (Moldavian, Wallachian, Oltenian, etc.) can be seen as an intermediate forms between accents and dialects been classified either as one or the other, but the most of the times they are considered only accents.
These varieties are chiefly remarked by some pronounciation particularities but they have also few specific words. Since the progress of the education in the 20th century virtually all Romanian speakers understand each other (i.e. in your case in Moldova people understand strugure only that they use poamă coloquially, while also many other Romanian speakers know that poamă - which exists also as a Romanian word meaning "fruit" - in Moldova is used sometimes only to name the "grapes") and most regional words are included in the dictionaries of the Romanian language (if you understand Romanian you can check http://dexonline.ro).
 
Moldovan Romanian (as spoken in the Republic of Moldova) is a special case because of the intense Russification which happened there in the last two centuries. I'm not sure how the current situation of the language is described. Most Romanian linguists reject the existence of a Moldovan language regarding it as an artificial cultural product. Also a part of their cultural elite tries to shift back to their Romanian roots. But only the time will tell if the dialectal features will accentuate or diminish.



different words from different regions of Romania are most likely the cause of foreign influence (E or S slavic and so on)

as an example the word for watermelon
in Moldova (Romanian province) they use mostly "harbuz"
in the rest of the country the main used word is "pepene (rosu)" as in red=rosu melon
in Oltenia (S part of Romania) the word is "lubenita" (the t has a comma under it so it would be read as lubenitza I guess...dunno the phonetic translation) most likely coming from serbian

for now everybody knows what each one means its just what they are usually using.
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Posts: 4620 		  Quote opuslola Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Oct-2009 at 18:42
"Nobody's really sure about the exact evolution of Romanian, due to the lack of available sources during its formation. I can tell you that it is actually very close to Latin (and was the only modern latin language to have kept quite a few peculiarities from Latin). It also has some very strong slavic influences. One thing which is rather interesting about Romanian is its monolithism: almost alone among the languages of the world with a significant number of speakers, it has virtually no dialects. Thoguh some would consider the 3 related languages of Aromanian, Meglenoromanian and Istroromanian to be dialects of Romanian..." The above is quoted from a page one post! The author will know his / her words, since I am a novice in this site and believe that if I go back and look again at the author, then their words will be deleted! I still do not understand how to show a quotation that is set aside in a white background that others use!

However that is not my point here. I point toward this sentence from the above quote; "Nobody's really sure about the exact evolution of Romanian." This really amazes me, since it is most obvious, at least to me, that it is probably closer to the language spoken in the Byzantine world than any other. At least that is my contention. Close by is this incredible word to describe a place that existed or still exists upon the shores of the Black Sea, that is "Bess-Arabia!"

Bess-Arabia, seems to fall into the classification of places in the modern Arabia, that were at one time, at least, referred to as "Arabia the fair" or "Arabia felix", etc., which is supposed to seperate this part of the Arabian area, from the deserted parts, which have little or no water or even little ancient remains.

I would propose that "Bess" in this word might possibly mean merely "beautiful" or "great", etc., maybe one of you might set me straight about these connections? But, if I am somewhat close, just how does the second part "arabia" come into play? Does it not imply "Arabic?" or "Arabian", etc.? If it does not, then just what does it imply?

Maybe the place now called Arabia was different at one time?
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Posts: 1423 		  Quote Menumorut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Oct-2009 at 00:51
Originally posted by opuslola


However that is not my point here. I point toward this sentence from the above quote; "Nobody's really sure about the exact evolution of Romanian." This really amazes me, since it is most obvious, at least to me, that it is probably closer to the language spoken in the Byzantine world than any other. At least that is my contention. Close by is this incredible word to describe a place that existed or still exists upon the shores of the Black Sea, that is "Bess-Arabia!"

Bess-Arabia, seems to fall into the classification of places in the modern Arabia, that were at one time, at least, referred to as "Arabia the fair" or "Arabia felix", etc., which is supposed to seperate this part of the Arabian area, from the deserted parts, which have little or no water or even little ancient remains.

I would propose that "Bess" in this word might possibly mean merely "beautiful" or "great", etc., maybe one of you might set me straight about these connections? But, if I am somewhat close, just how does the second part "arabia" come into play? Does it not imply "Arabic?" or "Arabian", etc.? If it does not, then just what does it imply?

Maybe the place now called Arabia was different at one time?



The history of the Romanian people in the early middle age is almost not known at all, there are no literary sources for the territory of today Romania. Romanians are the descendants of latinized population from former Dacia and from Balkans, but the percent of each one cann't be estimated. Some are exagerating the role of the local element, others the role of the element that migrated from the South of Danube. Anyway, there is not any proof, literary source or archaeological discoveries to show a migration from South of Danube but that doesn't mean that such a movement didn't exist. The way and time this migration happened also cann't be established.

The differences between Romanian and Aromanian language (the former being the main Romance language spoken in Southern Balkans, in the areas of Epir, Macedonia and Thessaly) are such great to show that the two languages developed separately. It is not known if the language spoken in today Bulgaria before the slavization of this territory was closer to Aromanian or to Romanian, perhaps was sort of an intermediary.

There are some words and grammatical structures showing that Romanian is at least in some degree the descendant of a local, Carpathian Romance language. Is sure that the language spoken in Moldavia has no original Latin elements, being entirely an emanation of the language spoken in Transylvania. As for the South of Romania, there are two areas conserving some original latin elements each one (Banat and Oltenia), so the Romanian language has developped from three regional dialects. The unity of the Romanian language in all Romanian regions can be explained by the very reduced population that existed in early middle age. For the territory of Southern Romania (Wallachia), an archaeologist estimated that the total population in 6th century was no bigger that 50,000 and this was the most densed populated area.

The name Bessarabia derives from the Wallachian Basarab dynasty, who allegedly ruled over the southern part of the area in the 14th century. (Wikipedia)

The name Basarab is of Cuman or Pecheneg origin: Basarab

Edited by Menumorut - 05-Oct-2009 at 00:57

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Posts: 4620 		  Quote opuslola Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Oct-2009 at 15:31
Thank you Menumorut, I enjoyed your post, and I have learned some new facts from your post! Learning new facts is very important to us all.
I did realize the currently accepted view that "the Wallachian Basarab dynasty, who allegedly ruled over the southern part of the area in the 14th century." is considered the source of the name we now spell "Bessarabia", and it might well be true? But, we are still left with "Bes-arab", which in English / French or Frankish (what ever it was) might well have meant "the beautiful or wonderful Arab?" or maybe even the language "Arabic?"

In my reading of the final and successful attack of the Othmans upon Constantinople, it appears that they controlled the lands to the North or West,and East of Constantinople, before they controlled the lands on the opposite side of the Bosphorus! But, maybe I read the information incorrectly?

But, if I am correct?, then it seems the Othmans (Ottomans) might well have conquered all of the area of the Black Sea, before trying to take out the "choke point" (narrows) that were still under Byzantine or maybe even Florentine, Pisan or Genoan control?

Regards,

Edited by opuslola - 05-Oct-2009 at 16:05
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