Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:23, 1 July 2019

The re-latinization of Romanian (also known as re-romanization or re-Romancing tendency) is a process during the development of the Romanian language which strengthened its Romance-features. Due to this process, Romanians adopted a Latin-based alphabet to replace Cyrillic script and new terms of French, Latin or Italian origin were borrowed to replace Slavic loanwords. The process was initiated by Greek Catholic clerics in Transylvania in the 18th century and taken up by the somewhat exaggerated “Latinist current”. Figures associated with this trend include Samuil Micu-Klein, Gheorghe Șincai and Petru Maior of the Transylvanian School. Their method involved direct borrowing from Latin. It reached its peak in Wallachia in the early 19th century, when Ion Heliade Rădulescu introduced large numbers of Italian neologisms. Subsequently, literary figures at Iași, in Moldavia, began borrowing from French, at the time the language of high European culture.

Terminology

The term "re-latinization" was introduced by Alexandru Graur in 1930; it was subsequently taken up by Ovid Densusianu and other linguists. Sextil Pușcariu preferred “re-romanization”, first using the phrase in 1931. Alexandru Niculescu (1978) opted for “Romance westernization”, while Vasile D. Țâra (1982) suggested “the Latin-Romance direction in the modernization of the Romanian literary language”.

Other scholars consider that the "re-latinization" and "re-romanization" terms are being used improperly. 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", while historian Ioan-Aurel Pop points out that the lack of precision of the terms may lead to confusion, in the context of the already numerous historical writings that mention, starting with the 15th century, the Latin character of the language, and explicitly place the Romanian language in the Romance languages group.

Background

Romanian is a Romance language with about 25 million native speakers. It is the official language of Romania and Moldova and has a co-official status in Vojvodina (in Serbia). Ethnic Romanians also live in Ukraine and Hungary. Significant Romanian diasporas developed in other European countries (especially in Italy and Spain) and in North America, Australia and Israel.

The origin of the Romanians is subject to scholarly debates. The core of the debate is the continuous presence of the Romanians in the lands now forming Romania north of the Lower Danube. Scholars who propose that the Roman province of Dacia Trajana (which existed to the north of the river for about 165 years) was an important venue of the Romanians' ethnogenesis accept the continuity theory. Scholars who consider that the origins of the Romanians included an area located both in Dacia and south of the Danube (which was under Roman rule for centuries) also accept the continuity theory. Scholars refuting all these theories say that the Romanians' ethnogenesis started only in the south-Danubian provinces and the Romanians' ancestors did not settle to the north of the river before the 11th century.

Romanian emerged in territories which were isolated from other Romance languages for more than a thousand years. This geographic isolation gave rise to the development of a number of specific features. For instance, palatalized dental consonants (especially "z") replaced the non-palatelized consonants in verbs. The number of Romanian words directly inherited from Latin (about 1,550) is low even in comparison with Medieval Greek (which contained about 3,000 Latin roots). On the other hand, Romanian along with Spanish and Portuguese retained more archaic lexical items from Latin than other Romance languages, most propably due to their peripherial position. For instance, the classical Latin word for beautiful (formosus) can still be detected in Romanian frumos, Portugese formoso and Spanich hermoso, but it was replaced by words derriving from another Latin word, bellus (like French beau and Italian bello).

Romanian shares linguistic features with the non-Romance languages of the Balkan Peninsula, which gave rise to the idea of a "Balkan linguistic union". There are some further common features of Albanian and Romanian. Scholars assume that Albanian was closely related to the language whose Romanization gave rise to the development of Romanian, or descends from it. Slavic languages influenced the development of Romanian for centuries. Romanian borrowed hundreds of loanwords from Slavic languages and Slavic influence can be detected in Romanian phonology and morphology.

When comparing Romanian with other Romance languages, linguists noticed its pecularities. In the early 19th century, the Slovene linguist, Jernej Kopitar, suggested that Romanian emerged through the relexification either of an ancient Balkan language or of a Slavic idiom, instead of directly developing from Vulgar Latin. Friedrich Diez, who was the first scholar systematically studying Romance philology, described Romanian ("Wallachian") as a semi-Romance language in early 19th century. Due to the high ratio of Slavic loanwords, Romanian used to be even regarded as a Slavic language. Nevertheless, as linguist Graham Mallinson, concludes, "Romanian in its various forms retains enough of its Latin heritage at all linguistic levels to qualify for membership of the Romance family in its own right".

Recent developments

Linguist Graham Mallinson concludes that due to the re-latinization process modern Romanian "has attained, if not necessarily retained, a high level of Romance vocabulary, though raw lexical statistics fail to give an adequate picture of precisely how much a Romance language it really is". He argues that some syntatic features also demonstrate how Romanian is "gradually returning to the Romance fold". He refers to the revival of the true infinitive in Daco-Romanian and the gradual disappearance of use of reflexive verbs in impersonal passive situations.

References

1. Mallinson 1988, p. 415.
2. Sala 2005, p. 100.
3. Schulte 2009, p. 244.
4. Pop 2015, pp. 33–34.
5. Zwannenburg 2006, p. 259.
6. Mallinson 1988, pp. 415–416.
7. Aldea 2017, p. 18.
8. Macrea 1982, p. 271.
9. Aldea 2017, p. 15.
10. Moldovanu-Cenușă 2013, p. 194.
11. Pop 2015, p. 34.
12. ^ Schulte 2009, p. 230.
13. Petrucci 1999, p. 4.
14. Harris 1988, p. 22.
15. ^ Wexler 1997, p. 175.
16. ^ Harris 1988, pp. 22–23.
17. Boia 2001, pp. 114–128.
18. ^ Harris 1988, p. 23.
19. ^ Nandriș 1951, p. 15.
20. ^ Wexler 1997, p. 172.
21. Posner 1996, p. 198.
22. Nandriș 1951, p. 26.
23. Millar & Trask 2015, p. 303.
24. Nandriș 1951, p. 22.
25. Wexler 1997, pp. 175–176.
26. Schulte 2009, p. 234.
27. Petrucci 1999, pp. 5–6.
28. Petrucci 1999, pp. 137–138.
29. Wexler 1997, pp. 162–163.
30. Posner 1996, pp. 3–4.
31. Millar & Trask 2015, p. 292.
32. ^ Mallinson 1988, p. 418.

Sources

• Aldea, Maria (2017). "Reromanizarea limbii române în viziunea lui Sextil Puşcariu" (PDF). Caietele Sextil Puşcariu. III: 15–20. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Boia, Lucian (2001). History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness. Central European University Press. ISBN 978-963-9116-97-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Harris, Martin (1988). "The Romance Languages". In Harris, Martin; Vincent, Nigel (eds.). The Romance Languages. Oxford University Press. pp. 1–23. ISBN 978-0-19-520829-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Macrea, Dimitrie (1982). Probleme ale structurii și evoluției limbii române. Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică. p. 271. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• 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. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Millar, Robert McColl; Trask, Larry (2015). Trask's Historical Linguistics. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-70657-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Moldovanu-Cenușă, Ioana (2013). "Influenţa franceză în cadrul arhitecturii limbii române. Teoria „relatinizării" sau a „reromanizării"" (PDF). Philologica Jassyensia. IX (1): 183–94. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Nandriș, Grigore (December 1951). "The development and structure of Rumanian". The Slavonic and East European Review. 30 (74): 7–33. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Petrucci, Peter R. (1999). Slavic Features in the History of Rumanian. Lincom Europa. ISBN 38-9586-599-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• 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. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Posner, Rebecca (1996). The Romance Languages. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52-128139-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sala, Marius (2005). From Latin to Romanian: The Historical Development of Romanian in a Comparative Romance Context. University, Mississippi. ISBN 1-889441-12-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• 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. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wexler, Paul (1997). "The case for the relexification hypothesis in Rumanian". In Horváth, Júlia; Wexler, Paul (eds.). Relexification in Creole and Non-Creole Languages: With special attention to Haitian Creole, Modern Hebrew, Romani, and Rumanian. Harrassowith Verlag. pp. 162–188. ISBN 978-3-447-03954-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• 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. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

• Romanian language
• Slavic languages
• Language contact
• 19th century in Romania
• Romanian nationalism