Romanian ethnic identity and language

Originally posted by Anton For Constantine the Greate it is said that once he wrote a book in his home language. Which cannot be Latin or Greek as in this case it would be specified.

Actually his home language was a proto-Vlah, a proto-Romanian.
The same with Justinian.

As a matter of fact the Greeks perceived the Latin speakers of the Balkans as another kind
of Romans, different then those of Rome.

Procopius, when he mentions the event when soldiers hear the military order "torna, torna, fratre"
turn around and run afoul, describes these soldiers as natives, in a derogatory manner,
similarly as Justinian or Constantine are described as speaking their native tongue.

Which leaves you without the argument that Constantine spoke something else than Latin
(or a derivate of it).


Edited by schiau - 11-Jun-2008 at 01:36

Originally posted by Anton Actually until some time they were written exclusively in Bulgarian. Church slavonic, I repeae, does not propose phrases like "pes da ebe materi mu i zhenamu" (let dog f..cks his mother and wife). This is not something Vlachs knew in churches.

Now I get what you are saying (or what you don't understand, or refuse to understand).

In your mind, the Valah ruler, Alexandru Aldea (a son of Mircea the Older) was a very educated
person, able to write in Cyrillik, able to talk Bulgarian, and so on.
Nice.

You have a very good opinion about the Valahian rulers.

You know that during those times, most of the rulers were illiterate. They used to surround themselves
with educated persons capable of writing, capable of speaking, reading, and writing of foreign languages,
such as Bulgarian.

Therefore, the ruler Alexandru Aldea, talks to his scribe, speaks in his own tongue, and the
writer translates.

Based on a fallacy you build a theory: Valahia was a country ruled by Bulgarians.
Or, you are saying: the ruling class was Bulgarian.
Or, I don't know what you are saying.

Anyway, you avoid the most important point: Ohrida and Via Egnatia, and the fact,
that around 1774, the Turks destroyed (plundered) the biggest Vlah city in the vicinity
of Ohrid, which at that time had a population of 70 000 people (all Vlah).


Edited by schiau - 11-Jun-2008 at 01:53

Originally posted by Carpathian Wolf So one can learn whatever language is needed. This doesn't mean the entire population was subject to Bulgarian influence in this aspect. There were influences of course, going both ways.

Originally posted by schiau How about a Biblia Bessika written in a proto-Vlah?

Well, for short, the romanian language is considered ( alongside sard dialect of italian language ) the most close to ancient latin, and the folklore of romanians is considered mostly from dacian origin ( with presence even oldest, from neolithic ), so is not a big debate here, about daco-roman theory.

Originally posted by diegis    Well, from what i know, we have the "Martisor" celebration, wich i heard bulgarians have to ( Martenitsa, or something like that )

Originally posted by Anton You can only speculate about this. You do not have any proofs really.   Probably. However there are plenty of arguments that Romanization of Thracians were not signifficant at his time, so it is logically to propose that it was actually Thracian.

Everything what you are saying is 100% full proof.
It fits very well the nationalist vision promoted by the Balkan nations.

According to this vision, the Albanians are the followers of the Illyrians, the Bulgarians are
the followers of the Thracians, the Croats are the followers of the Illyrians, the Serbs are
the followers of the Dardanians, and so on.

Similarly, north of the Danube, the Romanians are the followers of the Dacians.
The funniest part is that according to this theory, the Hungarians are the followers of the Huns.

Obviously this is a nationalism of the worst quality.
I call it junk nationalism, which, during the communist period, was inflated to huge proportions,
beyond science fiction, becoming national-communism, similar to Hitler's vision,
the national-socialistic vision of pure Aryans.

Why don't we look at history, at the facts surrounding the Balkans events up to the year
600 to understand better the reality? Why do you exhibit this kind of fallacies which lead us to
nothing, but bullshit?


Edited by schiau - 11-Jun-2008 at 15:41

Originally posted by Anton I have nothing more to say.

Exactly.
What is the point of talking nationalism (pure national-communistic propaganda)
on a history forum?

Originally posted by Sarmat12 There are some interesting words in Romanian language which probably came as a part of Turkish influence, like for example Dushman for the enemy. AFAIK it's actually a Persian word. But most likely it came with the Turks.

Dushman is ancient greek (Dusmanis) word not turkish, in XIV century had one albanian tribes, Dushmani...even later Leke Dushmani foght along Skanderbeg againt Othomans.


Edited by GoldenBlood - 11-Jun-2008 at 19:11

"It is not exclusively Turkic and unfortunately for many Bulgarian inscriptions can hardly be read using this script."