Re-latinization of Romanian
The re-latinization of Romanian (also known as re-romanization)[1] is the reinforcement of the Romance features of the Romanian language that started in the 18th and 19th centuries. Romanian adopted a Latin-based alphabet to replace the Cyrillic script and borrowed many words from French as well as from Latin and Italian, in order to acquire the lexical tools necessary for modernization. This deliberate process coined words for recently introduced objects or concepts (neologisms), added Latinate synonyms for some Slavic and other loanwords, and strengthened some Romance syntactic features. Some linguistic researchers emphasize that the use of this term is inappropriate as it conflates the larger process of modernization of the language with the more extreme, and in the end unsuccessful, current of eliminating non-Latin influences, and, secondly, the term's lack of precision is susceptible to lead to confusion as the Latin character of the Romanian language had already been noticed since at least the 15th century.
Background
Romanian is a
The
Romanian developed in territories which were isolated from other Romance languages for more than a thousand years.[12][13] This geographic isolation gave rise to the development of a number of specific features.[12] For instance, palatalized dental consonants (especially "z") replaced the non-palatalized consonants in verbs.[12] The number of Romanian words directly inherited from Latin (about 1,550–2,000, depending on the source) is similar to the other Romance languages,[14] and is low in comparison with Medieval Greek (which contained about 3,000 Latin roots).[15] Romanian along with Spanish and Portuguese retained more archaic lexical items from Latin than other Romance languages, most probably due to their peripheral position.[15] For instance, the classical Latin word for beautiful (formosus) can still be detected in Romanian frumos, Portuguese formoso and Spanish hermoso, but it was replaced by terms deriving from another Latin word, bellus in French (beau) and Italian (bello).[16]
Romanian shares linguistic features with the non-Romance languages of the Balkan Peninsula, which gave rise to the idea of a "
When comparing Romanian with other Romance languages, linguists noticed its peculiarities which can be detected at all linguistic levels.
The re-latinization evolved differently in the Romanian-populated areas.[37] In Wallachia and Moldavia from 1760 to 1820–1830 the lexical influence of French and New Greek was the most influential, while in the Banat and Transylvania the Romanian language adopted words mainly from Latin and German languages.[37] After 1830 the French language became the main source of the borrowings.[37]
When derivations of the Latin type-words are taken into account, research shows that “the proportion of the resulting group in the total vocabulary of Romanian remains, with nearly 80% of types-words in the dictionaries, about the same from the texts of 16/17th centuries to present Romanian”,[38] concluding that “the vocabulary of Old Romanian is as Romanic as the vocabulary of the modern Romanian language”.[38][39]
Terminology
Relatinization, as linguist Franz Rainer defines it, covers "not only borrowings from Latin at all its stages, including medieval and Neo-Latin, but also latinate formations taken from other European languages".[40] This process can be detected during the history of all Romance languages.[40] In Romanian scholarship, Alexandru Graur seems to have used the term relatinizare for the first time in an article in 1930, referring to the French influence on the development of the Romanian language.[41][42] A year later, Sextil Pușcariu proposed a new term, reromanizare, most probably because he wanted to cover both the direct borrowings from Latin and of the borrowings from Romance languages.[42][43] In 1978, Alexandru Niculescu opted for the label occidentalizare romanică ("Romance Westernization"), while Vasile D. Țâra described the process in 1982 as the "Latin-Romance direction in the modernization of the Romanian literary language".[42]
Linguist Maria Aldea emphasizes that the term reromanizare is not adequate to describe the linguistic process which has enriched the Romanian vocabulary with new words of Latin or Romance origin since the early 19th century.[42] Ioana Moldovanu-Cenușă emphasizes the differences between the "Roman Westernization", which took place in Moldavia and Wallachia under the influences of the Age of Enlightenment, and the "re-latinization" carried out by the representatives of the Transylvanian School and of the "Latinist current".[44] Historian Ioan-Aurel Pop points out that the lack of precision of the terms may lead to confusion, because the Latin character of the Romanian language was already noticed in the 15th century, placing it in the group of Romance languages.[45]
Development
Transylvanian School and Latinist current
Educated Romanians started to regard Latin and Italian as linguistic models already in the 17th century.[46] For instance, the loanword popor (from popolo, the Italian word for people) was borrowed in this century and added to the synonymous neam and norod (a Hungarian and a Slavic loanword respectively), both still in use.[46] Scholars of the Transylvanian School were the first to make concerted efforts to eliminate certain non-Romance features of the language in the late 18th century.[5] They were Greek Catholic (or Uniate) intellectuals tutored in Vienna and Rome who were determined to manifest the Latin origin of Romanians.[47][48] Their activities contributed to the re-orientation of the Romanians' intellectual life towards Western Europe.[48]
These scholars promoted the use of
Scholars of this "Latinist school" (or "Latinist current") held extreme views in their works about the language and history of Romanians, for example in 1853, their leader, August Treboniu Laurian, started his History of the Romanians with the legendary founding of Rome in 753 BC.[50] Laurian and Ioan Massim published the two volumes of their Dictionary of the Romanian Language and a glossary to it in the 1870s.[48] They adopted a writing system which demonstrated the etymology of the words and purged the language of most non-Latin terms.[51] The language that they promoted was artificial, bearing "only a vague resemblance to authentic Romanian".[51] The Academic Society (the future Romanian Academy) had initially commissioned the publication of their dictionary, but their exaggerated attempts to purify the language "provoked laughter and permanently discredited the Latinist school",[51] thus their work was the last publication of the Latinist current.
Wallachia and Moldavia
Wallachian and Moldavian writers who took a more conventional approach than the Transylvanian scholars were more successful.
The spread of prefixes borrowed from other Romance languages and Latin also began in the 19th century.[57] Certain prefixes were first directly inherited from Latin, but later their Latin root was also borrowed, thus "etymological doublets" appeared in Romanian.[57] For instance, the prefix cu- descends from Latin con-, and the prefix stră- from extra-, but the original Latin prefixes are now widely used.[57]
The Roman script was introduced gradually between 1830 and 1860.
Effects
The main change brought by the process in comparison to the Old Romanian stage is the adoption of the Latin alphabet (with some peculiarities).[61] It also added a large number of loanwords from French, Italian, and Latin, representing nowadays about 20% of the entire lexis with semantic fields such as Modern World (58%), Law (35%), Emotions and Values (29%), or Clothing and Grooming (27%) being the main areas of distribution in accordance to the changes of the time (post-Ottoman legal system, global development of new technologies and so on).[2] This has also created doublets such as the pair dens from French dense vs des inherited from Latin. The syntax of the language changed from a model imitating the Old Church Slavonic one to a French language inspired type.[62] Re-latinization influenced the grammar of Romanian as well, reanimating the use of the infinitive form of verbs and increasing the use of third conjugation verbs (those ending in –e such as a vinde - "to sell" or a crede - "to believe").[63]
Recent trends
Linguist Kim Schulte emphasizes that "the large number of words borrowed from other Romance languages over the last two centuries" gives Romanian lexicon "a distinctly Romance appearance".
References
- ^ Gess & Arteaga 2006, p. 258-259.
- ^ a b c d e Schulte 2009, p. 230.
- ^ Petrucci 1999, p. 4.
- ^ Mallinson & Bărbulescu 1990, pp. 303–304.
- ^ a b Mallinson & Bărbulescu 1990, p. 305.
- ^ Harris 1988, p. 22.
- ^ a b c Wexler 1997, p. 175.
- ^ a b Harris 1988, pp. 22–23.
- ^ Mallinson & Bărbulescu 1990, p. 304.
- ^ Boia 2001, pp. 114–128.
- ^ a b c Harris 1988, p. 23.
- ^ a b c Nandriș 1951, p. 15.
- ^ Maiden 2010, p. 30.
- ^ Sala 2010, p. 843.
- ^ a b Wexler 1997, p. 172.
- ^ Posner 1996, p. 198.
- ^ Nandriș 1951, p. 26.
- ^ Millar & Trask 2015, p. 303.
- ^ Nandriș 1951, p. 22.
- ^ Wexler 1997, pp. 175–176.
- ^ a b Grant 2000, p. 591.
- ^ a b Schulte 2009, p. 234.
- ^ Petrucci 1999, pp. 5–6.
- ^ Petrucci 1999, pp. 137–138.
- ^ Mallinson & Bărbulescu 1990, p. 306.
- ISBN 973-725-219-5.
- ^ Mallinson & Bărbulescu 1990, p. 303.
- ^ Millar & Trask 2015, p. 292.
- ^ a b Wexler 1997, pp. 162–163.
- ^ Posner 1996, pp. 3–4.
- ^ Diez 1836, p. 3.
- ^ Bossong 2016, p. 64.
- ^ Haarmann 1976, p. 238.
- ^ Schippel 2011, p. 2115.
- ^ Bahner 2015, p. 79.
- ^ a b c d Mallinson 1988, p. 418.
- ^ a b c Zwannenburg 2006, p. 259.
- ^ a b Gerhard 1998, p. 768.
- ^ Dimitriu 1973, p. 206.
- ^ a b Rainer 2016, p. 515.
- ^ Moldovanu-Cenușă 2013, p. 185.
- ^ a b c d Aldea 2017, p. 15.
- ^ Moldovanu-Cenușă 2013, pp. 185–186.
- ^ Moldovanu-Cenușă 2013, p. 194.
- ^ Pop 2015, p. 34.
- ^ a b Schulte 2009, p. 237.
- ^ a b c d e f g Mallinson 1988, p. 415.
- ^ a b c Boia 2001, p. 37.
- ISBN 978-0-19-967710-8.
- ^ Boia 2001, pp. 46–47.
- ^ a b c Boia 2001, p. 87.
- ^ Aldea 2017, p. 18.
- ^ Macrea 1982, p. 271.
- ^ Nicolau, Cătălin (June 2020). "Modernizarea limbii române literare în concepția lui G. Ivănescu". ResearchGate (in Romanian). Retrieved 29 August 2023.
- ^ a b c d e Mallinson 1988, p. 416.
- ^ Chivu 2016, p. 9-12.
- ^ a b c Sala 2005, p. 110.
- ^ a b Boia 2001, p. 31.
- ^ a b Mallinson & Bărbulescu 1990, p. 307.
- ISBN 978-0-19-967710-8.
- ^ Sala 2010, p. 841.
- ^ Sala 2010, p. 861.
- ISBN 978-606-647-435-1.
- ^ Schulte 2009, p. 250.
- ^ Posner 1996, p. 165.
- ^ a b Mallinson 1988, p. 401.
- ^ Buzatu 2007, pp. 173–184.
Sources
- Aldea, Maria (2017). "Reromanizarea limbii române în viziunea lui Sextil Puşcariu" (PDF). Caietele Sextil Puşcariu. III: 15–20.
- Bahner, Werner (2015). "Zur Romanität des Rumänischen in der Geschichte der romanischen Philologie vom 15. bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts". Romanistisches Jahrbuch). 8 (1): 75–94. S2CID 184831935.
- Boia, Lucian (2001). Romania: Borderland of Europe. ISBN 9781861891037.
- Boia, Lucian (2001). History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness. Central European University Press. ISBN 978-963-9116-97-9.
- ISBN 978-0-19-967710-8.
- Buzatu, Mihaela (2007). "Teoria contactelor dintre limbi; cu privire specială asupra contactelor între română şi engleză" (PDF). Philologica Jassyensia (2): 155–189.
- Chivu, Gheorghe (2016). "La modernisation latino-romane du lexique roumain. Le modèle interne". Diversité et Identité Culturelle en Europe. 2 (XIII): 7–18.
- Diez, Friedrich (1836). Grammar of the Romance Languages. Bonn: Eduard Weber. p. 3.
- Dimitriu, Corneliu (1973). Romanitatea vocabularului unor texte vechi româneşti : Studiu statistic. Iaşi: Junimea. p. 83.
- Gerhard, Ernst (1998). Kontrastive Untersuchungen I. Rumänisch und andere Sprachen, in Holtus Günter, Metzeltin Michael, Schmitt Christian, Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. pp. 757–778. ISBN 3-484-50237-1.
- Gess, Randall Scott; Arteaga, Deborah (2006). Historical Romance Linguistics: Retrospective and Perspectives. ISBN 9789027247889.
- Grant, Anthony P. (2000). "Reviewed Work: Relexification in Creole and Non-Creole Languages, with Special Attention to Haitian Creole, Modern Hebrew, Romani, and Rumanian by Julia Horvath, Paul Wexler". Anthropological Linguistics. 42 (4): 589–592. JSTOR 30028575.
- Harris, Martin (1988). Harris, Martin; Vincent, Nigel (eds.). The Romance Languages. Oxford University Press. pp. 1–23. ISBN 978-0-19-520829-0.
- ISBN 90-272-0891-3.
- ISBN 9783110226621.
- Macrea, Dimitrie (1982). Probleme ale structurii și evoluției limbii române. Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică. p. 271.
- Maiden, Martin (2010). "Italian's long-lost sister: the Romanian language and why Italianists should know about it". The Italianist. 30 (sup2): 29–43. S2CID 149202032.
- Mallinson, Graham (1988). "Rumanian". In Harris, Martin; Vincent, Nigel (eds.). The Romance Languages. Oxford University Press. pp. 391–419. ISBN 978-0-19-520829-0.
- Mallinson, Graham; Bărbulescu, Oana Uță (1990). "Romanian". In Comrie, Bernard (ed.). The World's Major Languages. Oxford University Press. pp. 303–321. ISBN 0-19-506511-5.
- Millar, Robert McColl; Trask, Larry (2015). Trask's Historical Linguistics. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-70657-5.
- Moldovanu-Cenușă, Ioana (2013). "Influenţa franceză în cadrul arhitecturii limbii române. Teoria "relatinizării" sau a "reromanizării"" (PDF). Philologica Jassyensia. IX (1): 183–94. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
- Nandriș, Grigore (December 1951). "The development and structure of Rumanian". The Slavonic and East European Review. 30 (74): 7–33.
- Petrucci, Peter R. (1999). Slavic Features in the History of Rumanian. Lincom Europa. ISBN 38-9586-599-0.
- Pop, Ioan-Aurel (2015). "The Significance of Medieval Testimonies about the Romanian Language". Caietele Sextil Puşcariu. II. Institutul de Lingvistică şi Istorie Literară "Sextil Puşcariu", Cluj-Napoca: 33–41.
- Posner, Rebecca (1996). The Romance Languages. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52-128139-3.
- Rainer, Franz (2016). "Derivational morphology". In Ledgeway, Adam; Maiden, Martin (eds.). The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Oxford University Press. pp. 513–523. ISBN 978-0-19-967710-8.
- Sala, Marius (2005). From Latin to Romanian: The Historical Development of Romanian in a Comparative Romance Context. University, Mississippi. ISBN 1-889441-12-0.
- Sala, Marius (2010). "Romanian". Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire. 88 (88–3): 841–872. .
- Schulte, Kim (2009). "Loanwords in Romanian". In Haspelmath, Martin; Tadmor, Uri (eds.). Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 230–259. ISBN 978-3-11-021843-5.
- ISBN 978-3-447-03954-3.
- Zwannenburg, Wiecher (2006). "German Influence in Romanian". In Gess, Randall S.; Arteaga, Deborah (eds.). Historical Romance Linguistics: Retrospective and Perspectives. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 253–268. ISBN 90-272-4788-9.