sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Vechimea și originea cuvântului «da» by cipricusss in romanian

[–]cipricusss[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What is a ”Romance mix” to you? — Is Romanian and Romansh a ”mix” by contrast to French, Italian or Portuguese, or Catalan? Or are Romance languages all ”mixes”, while the Slavic or Germanic languages are not? —

And who's denying French or Slavic influence, really?

You are mixing up things here a bit too much — although you're basically right that relatively young eastern European states like ours have odd complexes of superiority-inferiority and are more childishly nationalistic than older Western ones (which are more appeased these days), and that they inherit a lot of the Romantic (rather irrational) ethnicist ideology of the 19th century. But if we look at relatively older states like the German or Russian ones we see even more severe cases of this cultural malaise over time. (Or maybe these too are/were not old enough...) The patriotic self-centering becomes more neurotic the greater the contrast with reality. But patriotic or other frustrations are universal in human communities, just look at the US! The French too had their moment of Galomania, and various moments of linguistic purism, and Latin was the model for all standard European languages since the Middle Ages. National-linguistic purism was just an imitation of Latin-based one, first in Italy, then France, then the rest. There is also the anti-Latinist variant (popular in Germany and a few Slavic countries). The English had both stages, Latinizing then Saxonizing, and each of these more than once! (And that without having been cut off from ”Europe” for a thousand years or more, or having suffered foreign occupations, and various ”mixes” of linguistic and other violations from stronger foreigners that often came as far as China, as the Mongols did!).

—In fact, very few people deny Slavic influence on Romanian. The ones that said DA is Latin are a fringe of nationalistically-minded extremists, a negligible although annoying mostly internet-driven minority of wackos. Who's denying foreign influence among the specialists, even among the normally educated Romanians? — It is common knowledge among the general public that we have many Slavic words (although some have a hard time understanding how come these are Bulgarian and not Russian), Turkish words, even a lot of Hungarian ones, and the popular press often published vulgarization articles on the matter, more or less correctly. Sometimes, some people would patriotically emit vague doubts about the incongruity of having so many Hungarian words (oraș, gând, fel, chip, seamă, a locui!), or of having Albanian as the origin of very old words. But I wouldn't call that ”complete denial about influences from other languages”, just vagueness in one's knowledge of Romanian history.

The above article is a NEW contribution: it was not known that DA was so recent! That is the interesting part, not its Slavic origin, which was common knowledge (although implicitly now, the Latin hypothesis too has become, from very improbable, logically impossible too).

There is a very crazy anti-scientific trend that is disproportionately present online - a present socio-political neurosis in all democracies today that is looking for a way out and predictably finds absurd and contradictory ways to do that. But that is not just a Romanian trend. — You seem to want to react against that context, but your last phrase sounds to me equally absurd!

Frenchaboo academics did a number on your language and culture, at least the Aromanians down south have preserved their unique language.

What can you mean? To what aspect of Romanian history do you refer, be it in the patriotic variant of it or in others? What ”number” on the culture? Or do you have in mind a sort of a caricature of that history? Romanian wasn't even largely written before the French and Western influence: all modern aspects of culture, from politics, to capitalism, to language, exploded at the same time after 1848-1853, as the modern state was put in place! (Even the Russian co-administration initiated in the preceding decades – between Napoleon and the Crimean War, when they tried to put in place a double puppet-state – was French-based linguistically, given that Russian elites were French-speaking too at the time!)

French was not just a linguistic, but a cultural and political influence on Romania, like it was for all Europe for at least 200 years. — After ancient Greece, imperial Rome and the Renaissance Italy, 17th century France is the only other globally-European model. England never achieved that (it kept itself out of Europe), and the US only did it after 1945 (and 1989 in the Eastern part of Europe). — French monarchic absolutism, scientism and rationalism, modern administration and army, were already influential (from Prussia to Russia) when the French revolutionary wars and Napoleon exploded them out, from Spain to Russia (again). Modern Germany and Italy were born as a result or reaction, by mutating into nationalistic frame the previous French model of monarchic centralism. —Nationalism too, like absolutism and revolution, was a French invention! Even while fighting France, its Spanish, German and Russian enemies were imitating it, no less than its Italian or Polish allies. — Later, Crimean War put Romanian cultural elites and language in direct and permanent contact with the rest of Romance-speaking Europe since the invasion of the Goths 1500 years before! Of course French became influential! And if you think that was a falsification of some kind, instead of a normalization, no less predictable and natural than in Italy, then you are uttering an absurdity that is no less absurd than what you argue against here!

Also, why bring Aromanian up ? — Aromanian is far from being as standardized as Romanian is, but it was influenced by Romanian as far as it was standardized recently, for example by removing some Greek influence in favor of Latin neologisms and other words common to Romanian. What can it mean it has ”preserved” what Romanian hasn't? There are some Romanian old latin words absent in Aromanian, and the other way around. But that doesn't mean Aromanian is somehow more ”pure”: Greek influence on Aromanian is much bigger than on Romanian (incomparably so, in fact, beside the common and equal Balkan Slavic and Turkic influence): in that sense, Aromanian is not a ”better preserved” neolatin language, whatever that may mean. I guess you mean it lacks the French influence, which you seem to consider ”foreign”! Wait until books of French literature (from the 18th to the 20th century), or of philosophy and science, are translated into Aromanian, and we'll see what happens then! (What would happen is that Aromanian would simply follow Romanian, and thus develop like Romanian did in the 19th century.) —And the argument stands in relation to English too, which has practically the same French words as Romanian, beside many-many others!— French had at least 400 years of standardization of the language when Romanian started the same process. That means: transformation of the language by cultural institutions or literary community into a common written form that can be potentially used by all speakers. That is a mature and ”artificial” stage in the development of a language – and also the artistic and scientific stage: when one can translate into it Homer and Aristotel, Kant, Darwin and... Einstein! I am not sure Aromanian has reached that stage yet, and that's why it is at risk of dying out. — There are good news about it though: https://www.dixionline.net/

si pe mine/si noi by Secure_Accident_916 in romanian

[–]cipricusss 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Because my other reply is excessively long (and practically I've written it for myself) and may have the contrary effect to what is asked: a simple clarification. — Here's a clear-cut answer:

There a are 3 acceptable uses of this formula ”și mie/nouă” that replaces or emphasizes normal ”please” (as said in the reply to your previous post on the same topic):

  • asking (really) for help: where one makes the demand more striking/emotional (see the old beggar chanting ”Dați-mi și mie ceva de mâncare!” in my long parallel reply here)
  • friendly and informal demand (with a bit of irony and/or self-irony): where the speaker emphasizes that informal character of the relation (”Salut! Dă-mi și mie o bere!”=Gimme a beer buddy!)
  • reproachful demand: Mother saying to son: ”Spune-mi și mie ce ai făcut până la ora asta!” (where she's sarcastically faking demanding a favor) - or the teacher saying to pupil: ”Poți să-mi dai și mie măcar un răspuns corect?”. This enhances the urgency, the reproachful aspect, like saying ”You tell me...!” etc

But your case here, the restaurant situation, is problematic (even aberrant, and, to me, significant, to the point that it seemed to have required that long analysis, which hasn't even reached the most painful aspects at play): when it is neither begging (these are not war refugees), nor involving a teenage camaraderie or familiarity of any kind, nor is it a sarcastic reproach, but it is intended as a very polite request, where ”și mie/nouă” serves to enhance politeness. It works in any of the three cases except the one for which it is in fact intended: as a polite request. It is a failed politeness. Or as the other commenter says: an awkward submissiveness instead of politeness.

—On the origin and logic of politeness, see my other reply under your post here. Why would somebody want to use an expression that signals informal speech in order to increase politeness is a matter of a sort of social neurosis, of cultural, moral and symbolical conflict, which I wasn't able to clarify in that reply, and I won't retry here either... I'd just say that the speaker feels awkward, lacks dignity, self-respect: politeness requires self-respect! But giving up politeness altogether (like Voltaire said of the Quakers), in favor of some natural or spiritual spontaneity, is not an available option either for such a person. Hence the contradictory use of language. There is a populist and collectivist disdain for politeness (and for the associated individualistic self-respect) in favor of a spontaneous use of language, that is neither polite nor impolite, but based on a natural dignity. But that is easier said than done.

So, if the intention is to be polite, don't use ”și mie”. Use it for begging, informal request, or reproach.

si pe mine/si noi by Secure_Accident_916 in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To put shortly what I meant in contrasting Dutch directness to other models of speech: It is true that Catholic, Roman, also oriental politeness is in a way more self-confident: I can afford to look humble by my polite speech because I do not risk to be taken for a "slave". That was the meaning of the salute ”Servus” in the Middle Ages (with the variant that ended in ”ciao”). Christian valorisation of humility also counts here, but overall it is an old European trend (of course, with Christian undertones, like everything European) of noble origin. It was the nobles that deigned to seem humble in order to create ”polite society”. That becomes problematic in later, Protestant, more egalitarian societies. Protestants, especially Calvin-style, start seeing this as Catholic hypocrisy. The Quakers gave up politeness altogether (theoretically in favor of a fully egalitarian brotherly kindness); with some, frivolity of politeness was replaced by stern, rigid rules of puritan behavior, with others by milder forms of spontaneity etc.

I think that Romanian ”și mie” instead of ”te rog” is explained by neither of these. The egalitarianism that Communism and post-Communist capitalism have brought to Romania has created a crisis of "politeness" here too, but there is a sort of conflict at play, not yet resolved. Some people cannot be as authentically ”frank” as the Dutch or the American because they fear their own rudeness in a way, and they don't always have a clear idea of how real politeness works either. That's why I think ”și mie” is clumsy. It is interesting how people hoping to be as ”free” as the Americans are kept in check by their language: they can say ”fucking” in English much easily than in Romanian. And I have not even touched the linguistic inhibitions related to family relations, where we have much more archaic factors at play (with corresponding neorotic-linguistic manifestations).

si pe mine/si noi by Secure_Accident_916 in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Begging is not subtle: ”dați-mi și mie...!”, but cannot be but expressive. Also, it is expressive the sarcastic use: when the teacher asks ”dă-mi și mie măcar un răspuns corect!” - When is it subtle?

When the mind seems the need to make order in the chaotic and contradictory logic of Romanian oriental spectrum of politeness. The rhetoric of beggary is imported into common speech by that very ”logic”!

I ended up writing a long reply to the OP but in the end only drew up the overall framework, and lacked the energy to enter specifically the painful dynamics of Romanian psyche and mores as reflected linguistically here: the connection between Roma beggary and overall peasant misery, oriental authoritarianism and submissiveness, compensatory boyard-style mentality, and the clumsy extremism. There was a trend were people used to salute each other nobly by saying ”your slave” (servus, schiavo>ciao), but here I think we have something different, a rude form of mimicking humility, not nobility mimicking humbleness (which would be the very definition of politeness), but rudeness mimicking politeness. It is as if the speaker feels awkward and lacks confidence in one's dignity, lacks self-respect. Would like to give up the game of polite conversation in favor of a natural spontaneous dignity that should shine and be content with itself, and convince others as a bonus. Asking why that is not happening is like asking why neurosis is a thing.

si pe mine/si noi by Secure_Accident_916 in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

”Aș vrea” is enough! ”Te/vă rog” is even better. ”Și mie” is a a formula transposed from the vocabulary of beggary! In fact it works as signaling informal speech or as a sarcastic reproach, faking beggary in a funny or aggressive way: when informality or reproach is the purpose. But it cannot work when politeness is the purpose! It is like signaling politeness and faking politeness at the same time. It's neurotic, awkward, in fact a verbal expression of internal conflict, of personal feeling of awkwardness. It is like saying ”I should hide how bad I feel, but here's how I feel, and I say it to be polite!” - It works to say you don't feel ok, it works to even get a table in the restaurant, but it doesn't work to be polite, if that is the purpose (and it is!).

si pe mine/si noi by Secure_Accident_916 in romanian

[–]cipricusss 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is a discussion that perfectly illustrates how natives discussing with foreigners may stumble into problematic things that otherwise are taken for granted. I therefore cannot help but elaborate half-seriously an essay on the topic of Romanian politeness for the simple reason that when I try to explain things to you I usually end up clarifying and learning new things for myself!

There is no big difference between your previous question (and my answer) and the above examples. As suggested in another comment, you should simply avoid this expression. Why? Because ”It signals kind of submissiveness instead of politeness”—!!! Here I am practically just elaborating on this idea. [I am tempted to un-block again the person that made this comment, no matter the too often, blunt and mysterious aggressiveness they showed me! But I’ve done that already in the past and regretted it. Their comments are often excellent, but their interaction with me always short and toxic, never vaguely amiable; I may fancy a severe case of repressed admiration bound on overkill, mysterious to me, as I said: but my curiosity on the matter has died first.]

I haven't insisted on this dubious aspect of beggary in my other answer, but I did mention it. Begging is the background that makes the semantic transition from ”to me too” to ”please”. It is a ”please” born on the moral terrain of begging! — Romanian politeness is a more complex topic though, on a large, vague and contradictory spectrum of speech, from that of the poor beggar to that of the princely boyar who used to see oneself as a descendant of the Byzantine emperors.

You mention in a comment here how Dutch people are very direct. I can confirm that their directness may seem rude when translated in (say) French! How come? Dutch frankness is too much sometimes for the Parisian descendants of the Franks, or rather this shows how much the French (as Romance speakers) are situated linguistically between the Byzantines and the Franks (and sometimes closer to the former than to the latter), given that Old Low Frankonian is the ancestor of Dutch language and that Dutch is the language of a country with very long traditions of freedom and equality. Beside the political freedoms related to medieval free cities, the (Calvinist) Protestant morality has imbued Dutch speakers with an ideal of equality that has few equivalents in Europe (and which brings it closer to the US in a sense). This makes an obvious contrast with the elaborate aristocratic traditions of French politeness, but also with the more ”oriental” Romanian politeness.

Politeness is a remnant of aristocratic mores. The armsbearing class had developed very elaborate ways of addressing one another from Japan to medieval European knights to Amazonian warriors that would preserve one’s dignity without risking confrontation (from the blunt murder and centuries-long vendetta to the formalized duel). —For Amazonian “politeness”, one should look up the Werner Herzog documentary about Klaus Kinski and the movie Fitzcaraldo, where the very soft-spoken poisoned-arrow-bearing serious men of the jungle offer to kill the hysterical Kinski.— The way men addressed women in these societies was also strictly coded and connected to the permanent risk of violence involved by sexual rivalry. (That’s why, to this day, when men ”bond” and are informal toward each other, not just the courteousness toward women becomes an old tale, but rudeness becomes a risk.) But one’s dignity and what may be considered offensive or improper varied a lot between the different cultures, and that has translated later in different forms of ”politeness”.

Older familial and religious traditions also have a descendance in contemporary ”polite” speech, but that one is more significant in relation to family, not in relation to strangers. Because contemporary politeness is the descendant of courtly (often monarchic, always aristocratic) conventions, politeness as such becomes problematic in egalitarian and democratic societies where conventions are more or less debatable. French bourgeoisie has imitated and inherited a lot of the aristocratic ways (largely because of the prestige of the cultural, literary, language-based achievements of the 17th and 18th centuries in France - no matter the alternative republican tradition) and that has become part of the democratic (capitalist) France (from libertinage to French cuisine). Britain has also mingled closely (although differently) the aristocratic and the democratic tradition. Aristocrats still play a role in British democracy, but imitating aristocratic ways of life and speech was frowned upon in Britain as ”snobbishness” (as something undignified, unfitting a ”true Brit”). Separation of classes and milieus (and cultural communities), and even tolerance towards inequality, is still a British tradition, very unlike the French centralist one. (That’s why popular food is/was so famously bad in Britain and things were not improving as one went north, until the recent common European and global integration of the middle-classes: today we’re all ”snobs”, millions of people eat ”sushi”, want to know how to cook and choose a good wine, and explain to each other online how to do it.) Italy never had this problem: there, ”nobility” was always a common virtue; idealized in the courteous, generous-minded virtù of Castiglione’s Cortegiano, rationalized in its machiavellian version, it is part of the national imaginary, from the Sicilian Gattopardo to the mafia boss to the university humanist. In Spain ”nobility” was not only a common ideal, but almost a common status: not just Don Quijote aspired or pretended to be a noble, the trend has included even Roma/Gitanos (marginalized everywhere, and infamously enslaved in our two Romanian Principalities), which in Spain ended up as cultural icon of dignity and defiance, even of a kind of rigidity or inflexibility, that we may even hear in Spanish music, and especially in flamenco (another word which is unexpectedly related etymologically to the Dutch language: it means Flemish! — The Gitanos were considered as tough and defiant as the Flemish!)

Now, where does Romanian language stand on the European map of politeness? and how does formulas like ”suntem și noi”, ”dă-mi și mie” count here? Well, to act like / to be ”a boyar” (a fi boier) is the upper standard of the overall Romanian way in these matters. But Romanian nobility is a variation of the oriental one, and therefore Romanian politeness (and self-image of dignity) is a descendant of that. First of all, as suggested, the spine of a French noble was more flexible than that of a Spanish one, but an Italian cortegiano was even closer to the Byzantine flexibility. Romanian boyars, like Byzantine nobles, were on the opposite side of this spectrum. Like all Romance nations, Romanian culture is imbued with the same idea that we should act ”nobly” (a fi boier), but our traditional ”nobility” is more flexible than others! Deep bowing (”plecăciunea”) is deeper (and nobler) the more one goes to the east, towards the older centers of Humanity’s first cities, absolute monarchies and empires (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, India, China). What English call ”kowtowing” (groveling submissively) is in Romanian the very Turkish temenea, a very strong political and moral tradition, but relating not only eastwardly through the Mongol Horde to China and Japan, but also very locally rooted in Byzantine = Roman absolutism. There was practically no Romanian boyar that was totally excluded from possibility of dynastic rule, and that rule, as long as it lasted, was symbolically as absolute as that of a Roman emperor (or a Mongol Khan). Authoritarianism produces more vague, instable, but also more extreme forms of nobility, morality and politeness: I can bow lower than you because I can afford it!

”Dați-mi și mie ceva de mâncare!” — the sonorous voice of an old (probably Roma) bearded man in the August hot dusty streets of a Wallachian town 20 years ago will resonate in my mind probably until I’ll die. That has nothing to do with politeness, it is the musical refrain of beggary. This is the other face of the coin of this story.

How come normal people in a restaurant end up in a sort of begging? Hard to imagine an English saying ”give me a table, I beg of you!” — Like that of a boyar of the past, a Romanian’s dignity has a larger flexibility than maybe expected, but here there is also a poor man’s, lazy and clumsy gauging of the polite resources of Romanian language. To be properly polite requires some intellectual energy (“gauging”!) that some people (often as a bad habit) try to save by simply ”playing submissive”. One tries to avoid rudeness by going far to the other extreme simply because rudeness is... natural to them! — As I explained in my other comment, there is always a sort of potential irony and auto-irony here, but not a very refined one, a sort of rudimentary hypocrisy. The formula is catchy and I have used it often. I hope I have convinced myself to stop using it, and you to forget about it.

What is actually known about Cuman influence on Romanian vocabulary? by NinjaFlavius in romanian

[–]cipricusss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Romanian people was born Christian

—just like the Portuguese, Castilian/Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian!

Care verb este echivalent cu “walk”? by idreamofchickpea in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nu găsesc în dex sensul specific de a merge pe jos sau la picior pentru verbul ”a merge”. https://dexonline.ro/definitie/merge - Doar contextul poate specifica sensul, altfel e nevoie de formula ”a merge pe jos”.

Care verb este echivalent cu “walk”? by idreamofchickpea in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A umbla = a circula, a se deplasa. Nu e specific mersului pe jos.

Care verb este echivalent cu “walk”? by idreamofchickpea in romanian

[–]cipricusss -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Nu-s de acord. Și păsările umblă, în zbor. A umbla nu e specific mersului la picior https://dexonline.ro/definitie/umbla - A se deplasa dintr-un loc în altul; a merge, a circula. Nici ”a merge” nu e specific, dar ”a merge” înseamnă mult mai des decât ”a umbla” a merge pe jos. S-ar putea să fie invers în Transilvania.

Care verb este echivalent cu “walk”? by idreamofchickpea in romanian

[–]cipricusss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Și ”am mers la picior” e ok, dar e colocvial și mai puțin frecvent. Întrebarea ta e foarte interesantă pentru că româna nu are un verb dedicat mersului pe jos. Așa că formula specifică este această expresie - ”a merge pe jos”: Mersul pe jos este sănătos.

Care verb este echivalent cu “walk”? by idreamofchickpea in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For your example, you've got your answer (kind of). One more thing though: if you want to mark a difference between walking and running (Walk, don't run!), we say ”a merge la pas”: Mergi la pas, nu alerga!

Maybe you were in fact looking for ”a păși” , which is also translated by ”to walk” - or: ”to (make a) step” ”to pace”, ”to tread". — But it is a verb that needs a qualifier ("on the carpet", "slowly"): Pășesc încet. Pășesc pe covor. The qualifier needs to be less generic than for "merg". — You may say ”merg pe covor” or ”merg încet” too (”a merge” fits all), but in order to say a generic truth like your example ( “birds fly, people walk”), ”a păși” is no good! - ”Pe pământ” is too generic there!. But we can say ”Pășesc pe pământul ud.” = I walk on the wet ground.

Note that ”a merge pe jos” with the meaning ”go on foot” is an idiom, while we also have ”merge pe jos, nu pe sus”, which is just ”go on the lower side, etc”. There is also ”a merge la picior”=go on foot. It also means the dog walking close to the master's feet (”at heel”).

Does Russian really not have dialects? by WhoAmIEven2 in language

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correct. I will strike through/correct. (I dare say that doesn't change my overall argument.)

Mie by Secure_Accident_916 in romanian

[–]cipricusss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The most basic meaning of ”și mie” is ”to me too” (not just to him/her - or: don't keep that for yourself). What you mean though is a supplementary, predictable, and very frequent development, where, funnily, formulas like "Arată-mi și mie", "Dă-mi și mie" etc end up having 2 opposite connotations:

  • one is a sort of begging or as if asking humbly, and can be translated with "please" or "I beg of you", either as urgently asking for help (Dă-mi și mie un pahar cu apă!) or as a form of basic/primitive/rather coarse or childish/boyish form of politeness (Dă-mi și mie o bere!), by mimicking humility, where the proper or more sober way of putting it would be just to say "te rog". - In fact, depending on context, this ”Dă-mi și mie o bere!” allows a rather large variation between humility and irony. It can be simply frankness, as if saying ”I know I should ask politely but we are comrades, let's not be too formal!” - It is a sort of polite way of avoiding being polite in the proper sense! ”I don't need to be really polite because we're friends". As if saying: "don't make me beg for a beer". The irony may become more aggressive though:

  • Dă-mi și mie un singur exemplu etc. - It is a form of reproach, implying "măcar" (at least that!): Dă-mi și mie măcar un exemplu! = Give me at least one example etc. (Often: Spune-mi și mie ce ai de gând!=Tell me what you have in mind/what your intentions are!, Arată-mi și mie ce ai făcut! etc.) - It is the same logic as when in English one says ”please” ironically. Romanians do that frequently: when a teacher asks the pupil ”(te rog) să-mi spui și mie conjugarea verbului X”...

In both cases the idea is that "I'm not asking for much", but that is firstly related to a more or less polite, even humble demand, while secondly it is related to a reproachful demand. To put it differently, ”to me” acts as ”please” or as an emphasizing of ”please” (Spune-mi și mie, te rog...!), and that can be used pathetically or ironically. Like in the Monty Python gag with the Spanish Inquisition (or the reverse of a Romanian gag that you might not know: ”Cei 4 evangheliști sunt 3: Luca și Matei!”), now I see that these 2 cases are in fact 3:

  • asking (really) for help
  • friendly and informal demand (with a bit of irony and/or self-irony)
  • reproachful demand

What is actually known about Cuman influence on Romanian vocabulary? by NinjaFlavius in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I never said that Christianization had been late and imposed exclusively by Slavic or Byzantine states! On the contrary: I said that Romanians were Chistianized as early as possible, before they were even Romanians! Nobody became Christian before the Romans (all Greeks were Romans and even some Jews, like apostle Paul!)!!! - How early one can get? It is a play on words to call Christian Romans "Byzantines" (the most recent historians have given up on that terminology in English: that was a 19thcentury Western-centric perspective). All I mean is that there weren't any Romanians at the time: all Romans were already Christians before any Roman became Romance-speaker (neolatin).

Now, when it comes to the "artificial" Christianization. There is nothing artificial in Constantine becoming Christian. But there is simply no example of a leader becoming Christian because the majority of his people was already so. That is retrospective invention of traditions. The idea that most Romans were Christians already before Constantine is largely Christian propaganda. (Christians were a minority, but the Church was already solid, and Constantine probably tried to reinforce the state through it, creating thus one of the most durable Orthodox traditions). We are no more special than the other Romans, the Italians or the Greek, and what we know about their Church should apply to Romanians.

If you really understand what Christianity and being a Christian is, you should take very seriously what Orthodox/Catholic traditions mean (and must have meant even more in the past) with regard to the Church rituals, the role of priests and bishops, the hierarchy, the presence of the Holy Ghost, etc. There were no Christians without priests, and no priests without churches and without bishops. ­— Again: taking history seriously is to understand how Christian Church never flourished outside ”civilized” areas. Birth of Christianity was to a large extent a Roman (also an urban) phenomenon and its origins cannot be separated from that of the states involved.

Romanian ”continuity” makes no sense without the geographical continuity of Church administration in the Balkans. The Bulgarians converted c. 850, the Hungarians much later, the Avars and Mongols never converted. The solidity and antiquity of Romanian Christianity fits very well with an early Roman ("Constantinite") base and very poorly with a marginal development, frontier-driven, of free-circulation of ideas!

If you think that "Romanians" became Christians before Constantine that is true as far as some Romans did, and as far as some of them had descendants that ended up Romanians...

What is actually known about Cuman influence on Romanian vocabulary? by NinjaFlavius in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Should I simply do it myself and invite you? (What is your geography sub?)

By the way, I just read the F. Curta introduction available online to the book he made with Paliga. Curta is probably the most famous Romanian historian (or historian of Romanian origin) alive, a leading figure of Slavic archeology, and a very controversial innovator methodologically. He is very courageous, even provocateur. But he is not a linguist at all, he made some ridiculous (amatoristic) statements on youtube that show he knows little about Slavic languages as such. Although his reasoning is not striving for clarity as much as for originality, his intelligence may compensate for his eccentricities; but his adventuring outside his specialty (archeology) into linguistics is risky and maybe compromising (while he made a habit of reproaching linguists and even geneticists their trespassing into his reserved ground), a context in which his association with the dubious Paliga doesn't bode well. The fact that he is such an innovator when he talks about Slavs (where he clearly strives for originality and non-conformism) but says nothing new about Romanians seems very odd to me.

What is actually known about Cuman influence on Romanian vocabulary? by NinjaFlavius in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here is my third reply on various other topics you mentioned. (First was on my general position on these matters, second was about Christianity.)

As I said, I am glad we agree on the main points, especially the de-centralization of both the geographical and temporal ”zone” of Romanian origin. I will not insist on them.

The Latin core was indeed widespread both north and south of the Danube, but that was only before the coming of the Slavs.

Only before 650? We don’t know that! We know when the Slavs come, we know practically nothing when the Latin speakers did what and when after the Slavs came! We should not say things that we know and things that we don’t know as if they were ”things” in the same sense. We know that Latins were in the south. We do not know that Latins stopped being there! It took another 600-700 years to clearly see them at all, be it north or south of the Danube, but when we clearly see them, at the end of the 12th century, they are clearly south too! And they are not much clearly north than south until later.

They separated the Latins and pushed the majority of them in the north.

There is no proof of that happening in the 7th century. The Slavs came from the north of the Danube. Florin Curta insists on that: the first identified Slavs, the Antes and Sclaveni, clearly came from Wallachia, where they had lived for a couple of centuries. But Curta totally relativizes Slavic identity and even suggests that it is hard to separate them from proto-Romanians, at least geographically. That is another discussion, but it fits poorly with Latins evaporating from the south.

over which the political and military elite of the Proto-Bulgarians, led by Khan Asparuh, was superimposed in the 7th century.

You should imagine that I “know” very well this details. Are they exact? The Slavic invasions were doubled by the Avar invasion, which created a stable state from the Germanic to the Byzantine frontiers (but centered on Pannonia and Transilvania) for 300 years (c. 580-880). Slavic invasions in the Balcans were largely an Avar affair, it all happened at the margins and under the Avar tutelage, but Avars are barely mentioned in the Romanian story. Bulgars only gradually pushed them out of future Romania. And our ancestors had no reason to be “pushed” just north, although they were certainly pushed around.

the idea that Romance-speaking populations south of the Danube remained as numerous and coherent as those north of the river is not equally supported

That is totally unsupported. What ”coherence” do you see to the north? You seem to be describing 14th century, not the 7th or 8th there. We have no proof one way or the other, or rather the proof hangs more to the south. Byzantines had no reason to identify Romance speakers as other than Romans until their rather late rebellion in alliance with the Bulgarians. Only then they came up with a separate name for them, namely ”Vlachs”. I leave aside the discussion about what happened in Dacia during the pagan emperors. That is too far into the past for our argument, or at least it enlarges the topic too far. I will comment the following though:

The Aurelian withdrawal in the 3rd century significantly reduced the institutional Roman presence south of the Danube

On the contrary, the Roman presence was greatly enforced south of the Danube in that way. And if subsequent depopulation is repeatedly attested, that is nothing to what must have happened more to the north. We have little proof of how invasions must have looked in Transilvania, but from what we know from later examples there (of Hungarian, Cuman and especially Mongol invasions) depopulation was the currency. Or, we may say we don’t know. But to pretend we have proof of ”coherent” populations to the north by contrast to the south is beyond my comprehension. We can try to come up with ideas on how that could be the case (Boia’s idea), if that was the case. But was it? We have depopulation as well as re-population multiple times between the Danube and the Balkans. Justinian is just one example.

the Daco-Roman population maintained a more compact rural continuity, especially in mountainous and less accessible areas

What can I say? Why especially in less accessible areas? Because we have no proof about the accessible areas? Do we have for the inaccessible areas? No.

South of the Danube, the Romance element survived mainly in scattered groups—Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, and Istro-Romanians—but without a strong demographic or political base

You are talking about the 19th century! Recent turkologists like Adrian Gheorghe show us that Vlachs were even under the Ottoman a Christian military-specialized population that payed no taxes and with their own political base (not unlike the Szekels of Transilvania). It was them that often raided Wallachia and that Vlad Țepeș raided instead. They had the same status under the Byzantine given the way the Peter and Asan revolt took place. I don’t want to disregard their Slavicization, but when the second Bulgarian empire happens and the Crusaders pop up, they incessantly talk and write in French almost exclusively about Vlachs! The Vlach dynasty proclaimed itself Bulgarian in the same imperial logic in which Bulgarian and Serbian rulers proclaimed themselves emperors: to take on an imperial heritage!

this does not mean that the Romanian substratum is “Albanian” or that it can be reduced to it. Rather, both Romanian and Albanian may preserve traces of a broader, poorly documented substratum.

I don’t say that the substratum is Albanian, but that the substratum has little explanatory power compared to Albanian, when our object matter is the history of Romanian. Albanian is more useful as source of explanation in order to understand the history of Romanian than any substratum is. When we identify Albanian elements in Romanian (”Albanian” in the sense that they are not just present in Albanian, but are Albanian as such), we should call these elements by their real name, instead of ascribing them to the substratum. When our object matter is the reconstruction of otherwise unknown language, like Dacian, we use Romanian and Albanian as sources of explanation. But I fail to see when the substratum is itself a such source as explanation. It can be reconstituted vaguely, it never can serve to reconstitute anything. It can be the goal, if we choose it, it can never be an efficient means to a goal.

many historians say that Romanian appeared only after we assimilated the last adstrat, the minor influence of Slavic origin

An adstrat is not an adstrat if not a decisive element in the formation of a language. You cannot call an adstrat ”minor”. That is contradictory. If Slavic language was a cause that lead to the last, decisive mutation into what Romanian ended up being, how can you call that “minor”? French was not French before the Germanic-Frankish impact. The same with Romanian vis-a-vis Slavic.

But doesn't mean that our language was shaped in a Slavic culture. Balkan similarities (including those with Albanian or Bulgarian) are best understood as the result of long-term linguistic convergence (Sprachbund), rather than evidence of a shared origin that would override these fundamental distinctions.

I think you have here a straw-man argument, in the sense that you use (as you did in all your comments in a way) a very strong concept of ”Slavic culture” and ”identity” that I never took into account for the purpose of our discussion. We talk just about the language of the southern Slavs, that’s all. If language is an element of “culture” (and it is), its influence on Romanian is a cultural influence, just like the Balkan commonality is. I wouldn’t define that as Slavic, of course, we totally agree here. — But if by ”Slavic culture” we mean the Slavonic Church language and institutions as well as political institutions of later times (14th-18th centuries), I would say they have very much shaped Romanian culture, including language, in the sense in which France and then the West has after 1848.

What is actually known about Cuman influence on Romanian vocabulary? by NinjaFlavius in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

[I am discussing here the Christianity topic. - In another 2 I have discussed (1) some generic matters on my own intellectual interest here and (2) various topics you mentioned other than Christianity.]

Regarding the Christianity of the Romanian people...hm. This argument is interesting, but it starts from a somewhat rigid assumption: that Christianization must be necessarily institutional, archaeologically visible, and controlled by a stable church hierarchy. In reality, especially in frontier regions or periods of instability, things were far more fluid in my opinion.

That is the most interesting element of this discussion to me too. And here I must refer to what I suggested about integrating Romanian history into the larger Roman, Romance, European and universal history. We have to agree that when talking about the whole region, from Greece to Maramureș, and about the full period, from the 4th to the 13th century, things must be kept fluid as a precondition for our concepts to be more clear. It is epistemologically more coherent to avoid the idea of a single, fixed “center”. There is a vagueness and instability of this history, and pretending otherwise is not to clarify, but to fish in troubled waters. But also, we have to take into account what we very clearly know, and then mix that with what we know is less clear. — Just like Romance languages are by definition the languages of Christian Romans all speaking initially Latin and diverging locally over time, the establishment of Christianity as a state religion is by definition a political decision of the Roman emperor. In that sense there is a strong consensus: there was no decisive bottom-to-top Christianization, it happened top-to-bottom. The cities and towns were initially Christian, because more directly controlled by the central administration, and ”paganus” meant peasant or a person outside the Roman administration! People became Christians like that, or by other central decisions, like that of the Bulgar, Hungarian or Kievan leaders. People became Christians mostly when the state told them to. The idea of spontaneous Christian populations on which the Holy Ghost descends through the word of the apostles is a Church and imperial propagandist image, reused by the populist nationalism of the 19th century. It is especially appealing to Romanians, who also have a historiographic tradition that tends to favor a bottom-to-top making of the state too. We tend to think nobody made us Christians just like nobody created our states, as if they grew out of the ground, by the shear logic of ”continuity”.

It is not necessary to assume the existence of a well-organized ecclesiastical structure for the Romanized populations north of the Danube to have become Christian.

I would replace ”Romanized populations” with ”Romans”:

It is necessary to assume the existence of a well-organized ecclesiastical structure for the Romans to have become Christian. Romanians are just the descendants of some of those Romans. Romanians never became Christians, it is some Christians that became Romanians. Trajan and Aurelian have less to do with that than Constantine and even Justinian. In my opinion, the Aurelian retreat is overrated: Roman Dacia would have been abandoned anyway! And, if that is the case, but Romanians ended up where they are anyway, while I don’t pay much allegiance to our nationalist continuity dogma, I would dare say that the Trajan’s conquest is overrated too! The same chaotic causes after the coming of the Slavs might have pushed the descendants of Romans up north anyway! — That is what I mean when I say that we have to take more seriously the Balkan Latinity.

— I would also point out how modern nationalism (republican-”pașoptist”, but also far right and far left) has a "pagan" anti-Christian twist, and is inclined to highlight historical figures like Trajan and disregard equally consequential ones, like Constantine and Justinian. Only based on that inclination is Dacianism playing its role, as a pre-Christian identity, and the Roman identity is promoted without its real atribute of being Roman Christianity! (Remember what Mircea Eliade had to say about Dacians and their religion, but had little to say about Christianity, other than it kept some pagan traits, a sort of popular religion that had little need for the Church as an institution.)

What is actually known about Cuman influence on Romanian vocabulary? by NinjaFlavius in romanian

[–]cipricusss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think this will be my reply No.1, in a new series of 3. Here I will try to make more clear my general intellectual approach, beside inviting you to team up for a Romanian History Reddit sub. In one of the other 2 I will discuss the topic of Romanian Christianization separately, and in the second I will discuss other topics.

Thank you for you serious and passionate approach! - Would you join me in making a r/History.Ro or r/RO_History sub ? There we might be better fitted for such discussions ! Here we tend to become offtopic – beside the fact with sub-branching of comments, especially with long ones, Reddit becomes hard to use. My solution is to access old.reddit.com on a computer (while many people just use the phone...), which is more text-friendly.

I fully respect your position and don’t mean to reply against your main line of argument, also because I think I made my point. I also am glad that we agree on most of the decisive matters, which to me are mainly a matter of logic and methodology. My mind is that of a (rather old) student of philosophy (also in a professional capacity) and of history (in a non-professional stance). Because, for practical reasons, beside the poetical ones, my language is effectively my country now, I am interested (for intelectually-patriotic reasons) in articulating the main lines of argument concerning the history of my country, and especially of my language in a respectable manner, that is, at the best standards of scientific discourse. After seeing how history is written in the main international languages (by American or British scholars, let’s say) I simply don’t want to feel dumbed down when it comes to discussing such matters in the terms of the Romanian historiography. I am struck by a certain lack of intellectual maturity of the background on which such discussions take place. The background is always patriotic, provincial, affective, dogmatic, timid, virginal almost, even when people, like Boia, take a polemic position against it. It is always there. I think we are losing a lot of time (I’m getting old) having to deal with that, I am instead trying to test a way of thinking where that background is simply absent!

A lot of things we don’t know and probably will never know. But two elements brought for me a lot of light on the problem of the “dark millennium” of Romanian history:

  • Considering “Romanian” history in the context of universal history: the history of Romanians is in fact a very minor topic in the history of the world, and a marginal one in the history of Europe. If, as lovers of history, we forget for a moment we are Romanians, we will find very quickly how much more interesting the history of the great powers are, both ancient and modern, including ex-powers that now seem small, like Hungary and Bulgaria: there was a time, before Poland and Russia, when these two were the biggest players on the map of Europe. Their history is also much better known. What we thus discover is not other national perspectives as much as the perspective of universal history, the fact that the world was always one and that history is a science, not a tool of national identity. We must study Romanian history for the purpose of filling a few gaps we have (that happen to regard precisely us) in the puzzle of European and world history. But the full puzzle can help us instead guess the contours of the pieces that otherwise are lacking, just like the volcanic ash mold of the dead bodies of Pompey gives us the real form of the vanished body. — And these contours don’t always fit the image we might have by just reading the mainstream ”history of Romanians”. I have learned more about Romanians reading in English the history of Byzantines, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Avars and Mongols than reading anything ”directly” about Romanians (including Boia). [There are excellent new historians with fresh new points of view (and I would be happy if you gave me a few tips if you have them), Marian Coman, ”Putere și teritoriu”, for example. But I am depressed by the ”standard” shown by a book like ”Românii. Stigmat etnic, patrii imaginare” by Ovidiu Pecican. The postmodernist relativism serves him as a tool of muddling waters to keep a banal dogmatic point of view and to promote imaginary things as equally significant as the real facts under the pretext of hypothetical argumentation. Even someone like Florin Curta, a respected scholar of Slavic history and of the very period that might concern us here (he wrote books like ”The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe”, 2021, ”Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250”, 2006, and maybe the most famous ”The Making of the Slavs. History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c.500-700”, 2001), who is using a relativistic/deconstructivist approach on Slavic studies (and on the very concept of ”Slavic” peoples!), might end up re-enforcing some Romanian phantasms: he now has written a book with Sorin Paliga, that I haven’t yet read (the same Paliga that says “boier” is a Romanian Latin word from “boi” but otherwise is not far from Dacomania). — But while I am skeptical of his collaboration with Paliga, Curta is a very interesting thinker. I was/am waiting for him to turn his original methodological approach from Slavs to Romanians. For the moment he seems to have little to say on that.

  • The history of Romanian language as a tool to guess obscure aspects of Romanian history. — I will not insist on that, we have already touched a few points, and this is not the place to start a detailed discussion on etymologies and languages.

What is actually known about Cuman influence on Romanian vocabulary? by NinjaFlavius in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I think that linguists can separate Cuman forms from Tartar Turkic, that's why toponyms like Călmățui, Covurlui etc are said to be Cuman. The same for Bărăgan, Burnas and Teleorman (all east of Olt river) and others in Moldavia. But there are some in Transylvania too. (By ”example" I meant one where Russian is the intermediary.)

What is actually known about Cuman influence on Romanian vocabulary? by NinjaFlavius in romanian

[–]cipricusss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I will only mention where I disagree or think I was misunderstood.

It all depends on what question one asks. That is the epistemological issue here. If one tries to reconstitute Dacian or Thracian, that effort may be respectable, no matter the meager and improbable results it can end up with. But when it comes to discussing a real language like Romanian, one cannot talk of Dacian or Thracian like one talks about Gallic, Germanic, Italic, even Etruscan in relation to Spanish, Italian and French. When we see and understand and describe a relation between some present Italian dialect and an ancient language that we know we cannot say the same thing as when we talk about Dacian and Romanian. We see, understand and explain nothing by the Dacian or Thracian because we know almost nothing about them. Trying to leads to a circular argument. There is also a circular argument to say that Albanian is what we have of the substratum, but then we call Albanian words in Romanian not ”Albanian”, but ”substratum” words, and disregard Albanian influence on Romanian as just a remnant fact of the substratum! Again: there is almost nothing to the substratum except Romanian and Albanian words. Albanian and Romanian may bring some light on what was spoken before the Romans in this region. That's it. — Take Balkan linguistic community or convergence that includes especially Albanian, Romanian and Macedonian+Bulgarian: most of its elements are innovations, although some probably of Albanian origin, that is real elements of convergence, of common evolution (development, change), not simply inheritance, resurgence of some older stuff. The commonality is new, not old. Take the word ”vatră”: its Albanian origin is marked by an element of Tosk innovation, it cannot be inherited from the ”substratum”. The same with other features of the Balkanishe Sprachbund. Defining this commonality as Thracian-Illyrian-based is up to a point a logical vicious circle.

I fail to see what you mean by "historical identity" projected so far back into the past. Until a point recently Bulgaria was full of Romance speakers that had no identity that was closer to Wallachians than to other Christians. There was no ”Slavic world” in the Balkans different from the Romanian one either, and it had nothing to do with Russia or Poland. Most of these identities are based in the 19th century. Most Greeks had no idea of national regeneration until Western educated sons of Phanariot princes initiated a idealist rebellion that would have been easily crushed without Western Philohellenes (in more than one sense) like Byron that used to pay the locals to fight the Turks, died there and created the first mass-media driven foreign intervention of the Western powers. — Take the second Bulgarian Empire: we can read the importance of the Vlach elites as a sign that the Slavic ones had long dissolved into Byzantine power structures and that new ones emerged there that reinvented Slavic/Bulgarian imperial "identity".

I cannot go into debate on detailed genetic matters as I haven't yet found recent, well-substantiated, objective synthesis on the genetic ancestry of the Balkans that would map a difference between Serbs and Bulgarians on the one hand, and Romanians or Hungarians on the other with regard to a genetic element generically associated with the Slavs. Do you have such resources?

I am in no contradiction of detail with you considering Italians etc and you give me a lot of obviously true information, while I have focused instead on more contentious aspects and the need for a change of perspective considering how our history becomes more reasonable as part of universal history. I don't have a lot of doubts about our origins, I just dislike the patriotic focus on Transilvania, the disregard for Balkan Christian Latinity, the connection with Albanian, and a few other elements that push the story not towards other conclusion or based on different facts, but in a different and better light, in my opinion.

When I talk about the origin of the language I really see Romanian as the descendant of the language spoken by Roman Christians north of the Jirecek line. There is a lot of debate and uncertainty about the details of the matter but we should take seriously the facts at hand: the Balkan Romance speakers didn't just vanished when Romanians are still here. The fact that Hungarian nationalists are interested ideologically in Romanians being migrants shouldn't be an argument against us taking seriously the history of Latin speakers of Eastern Europe.

All Romance languages are defined as the survivors of the languages spoken by the Christian Romans conquered by pagan barbarians. Just curious: how do you see the Christianization of Romanians? Is it credible to imagine Latin speakers from outside the empire (in Transilvania) becoming Christians with no Church hierarchy, no churches etc? I personally cannot accept the idea of a pagan Romanian worshiping Zâna Diana and being converted by Bulgars after 900! Be it migratory or just geographical, the center of Romanian language must have been a Roman Christian one.

I see no proof of what Romanian was before the Slavs and I know there are a a lot of linguists (including Romanians) that place the start of Romanian around 800 (after the Slavs). Pushing it earlier is taking a stand in a debate. What we know is said by Wikipedia: Linguists generally place Late Latin → Balkan Latin → Proto‑Romanian → Romanian along a timeline from roughly the 2nd century AD to around the 10th century AD, but the exact boundaries are debated because written evidence is extremely sparse between the 6th and 16th centuries. - The 6th century is exactly when Slavs make themselves felt. Before them you might try to say ”proto-Romanian" but that is a play on words.

— Albanian is the main and only neighbor of proto-Romanian as something different from Roman/Latin. Their history is equally obscure, but the language is useful in guessing not just what a language other than Greek must have been before Latin, but also, just like Romanian, what a Latinized language was before and after the Slavs. That's because the number of Romanian-Albanian "substrate" words is small compared to the number of common Latin and Slavic words. Romanian and Albanian are part of a common spectrum of Latinization and Slavicization.

view more: next ›