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Words possibly of substratum but not generally agreed among linguists are: ''băiat, băl, brâncă, orbalţ, borţ, bulz, burduf, burtă, codru, Crăciun, creţ, cruţa, curma, daltă, dărâma, fluture, lai, mătură, mire, negură, păstaie, scorbură, spuză, stăpân, sterp, stână, traistă''<ref>{{Cite book|last=Brâncuși |first=Grigore |trans-title=Introduction to the History of Romanian Language |title=Introducere în istoria limbii române] |publisher=Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine |year=2005 |isbn=973-725-219-5 |page=49 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Sala |first=Marius |trans-title=From Latin to Romanian |title=De la Latină la Română] |publisher=Editura Pro Universitaria |year=2012 |isbn=978-606-647-435-1 |page=84 }}</ref>
Words possibly of substratum but not generally agreed among linguists are: ''băiat, băl, brâncă, orbalţ, borţ, bulz, burduf, burtă, codru, Crăciun, creţ, cruţa, curma, daltă, dărâma, fluture, lai, mătură, mire, negură, păstaie, scorbură, spuză, stăpân, sterp, stână, traistă''<ref>{{Cite book|last=Brâncuși |first=Grigore |trans-title=Introduction to the History of Romanian Language |title=Introducere în istoria limbii române] |publisher=Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine |year=2005 |isbn=973-725-219-5 |page=49 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Sala |first=Marius |trans-title=From Latin to Romanian |title=De la Latină la Română] |publisher=Editura Pro Universitaria |year=2012 |isbn=978-606-647-435-1 |page=84 }}</ref>


As substrate words have also been identified toponyms in [[Geography of Romania|Romania's geography]], for example the name of main mountain range: [[Carpathian Mountains|''Carpați']]'.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Brâncuși |first=Grigore |trans-title=Introduction to the History of Romanian Language |title=Introducere în istoria limbii române] |publisher=Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine |year=2005 |isbn=973-725-219-5 |page=50 }}</ref> All river names over 500km and half of those between 200 and 500km derive from pre-[[Latin]] substratum.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Felecan |first1=Oliviu |last2=Felecan |first2=Nicolae |title=Etymological strata reflected in Romanian hydronymy |journal=Quaderns de Filología. Estudis Lingüístics |volume=20 |issue=Toponímia Románica |pages=251–269 |year=2015 |issn=1135-416X |doi=10.7203/qfilologia.20.7521 |doi-access=free }}</ref>{{POV statement|reason=According to standard literature, the Romanian forms of these river names show that they were borrowed from Slavic, Hungarian or Turkic, so they cannot represent a substratum language.|date=October 2022}}
As substrate words have also been identified toponyms in [[Geography of Romania|Romania's geography]], for example the name of main mountain range: [[Carpathian Mountains|''Carpați']]'.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Brâncuși |first=Grigore |trans-title=Introduction to the History of Romanian Language |title=Introducere în istoria limbii române] |publisher=Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine |year=2005 |isbn=973-725-219-5 |page=50 }}</ref>{{dubious|reason=In all languages spoken in the Carpathians, a similar name is applied, but those names are not substrate words but neologisms.|date=October 2022}} All river names over 500km and half of those between 200 and 500km derive from pre-[[Latin]] substratum.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Felecan |first1=Oliviu |last2=Felecan |first2=Nicolae |title=Etymological strata reflected in Romanian hydronymy |journal=Quaderns de Filología. Estudis Lingüístics |volume=20 |issue=Toponímia Románica |pages=251–269 |year=2015 |issn=1135-416X |doi=10.7203/qfilologia.20.7521 |doi-access=free }}</ref>{{POV statement|reason=According to standard literature, the Romanian forms of these river names show that they were borrowed from Slavic, Hungarian or Turkic, so they cannot represent a substratum language.|date=October 2022}}


[[Image:Rivers Romania.png|thumb|350px|Major rivers of Romania]]
[[Image:Rivers Romania.png|thumb|350px|Major rivers of Romania]]

Revision as of 02:14, 10 October 2022

Main article: Romanian language
Roman Dacia and Moesia Inferior.
See also: Substratum and Common Romanian

The substratal elements in Romanian are mostly lexical items. The process of determining if a word is of substratum involves comparison to Latin, languages Romanian came into contact, or determining if it is an internal construct, and if there are no matching results a comparison to Albanian vocabulary, Thracian remnants or Proto-Indo-European reconstructed words is made.[1]

In addition to vocabulary items, some other features of Eastern Romance, such as phonological features and elements of grammar (see Balkan sprachbund) may also be from Paleo-Balkan languages.

Romanian developed from Common Romanian language, which in turn developed from Vulgar Latin.[2] The general view is that the territory where the language formed was a large one, consisting of both the north and the south of the Danube (encompassing the regions of Dacia, Moesia, and possibly Illyria,), more precisely to the north of the Jiriček Line[3]

Lexical items

See also: Albanian–Romanian linguistic relationship, List of Romanian words of possible pre-Roman origin, and List of reconstructed Dacian words

The study of the substrate involves comparative methods applied to:[4]

  1. Proto-Albanian, an Indo-European language group considered to have evolved from one of the Paleo-Balkan languages of antiquity[5] spoken in its modern form, Albanian, by approximately 6 million people in the Balkans, primarily in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece[6] that also represents one of the core languages of the Balkan Sprachbund.[7]
  2. Thraco-Dacian or Thracian, a language that although almost unattested has left reminiscences in toponomy and inscriptions.[8]
  3. Proto-Indo-European, if none of the other languages yielded any results.[9]

Words belonging to substratum can be placed into two categories:[10]

those related to nature and natural world

  • terrain: ciucă, groapă, mal, măgură, noian;
  • bodies of water: bâlc, pârâu;
  • flora: brad, brusture, bung(et), copac, druete, curpen, mazăre, mărar; brusture, leurdă, spânz, ciump, coacăză, ghimpe, mugure, sâmbure, strugure;
  • fauna: căpușă, măgar, mânz(at), mușcoi, ţap, viezure, baligă, călbează, ciut, murg, ştiră, bală, balaur, năpârcă, şopârlă, strepede, raţă, barză, cioară, ghionoaie, pupăză, cioc;

and those used in pastoral life for:

  • food: abure, brânză, zară, arichiţă, fărâmă, grunz, hameș, scrum, strepede;
  • clothing: bască, brâu, căciulă, sarică;
  • housing: argea, cătun, vatră, gard;
  • body (some initially used for livestock): buză, ceafă, ciuf, grumaz, guşă, rânză;
  • activities: baci, bâr, buc, grapă, gresie, jete.

Other words from substratum are: bucur(ie), ciupi, copil, cursă, droaie, gata, ghiuj, lete,

Words possibly of substratum but not generally agreed among linguists are: băiat, băl, brâncă, orbalţ, borţ, bulz, burduf, burtă, codru, Crăciun, creţ, cruţa, curma, daltă, dărâma, fluture, lai, mătură, mire, negură, păstaie, scorbură, spuză, stăpân, sterp, stână, traistă[11][12]

As substrate words have also been identified toponyms in Romania's geography, for example the name of main mountain range: Carpați''.[13][dubious – discuss] All river names over 500km and half of those between 200 and 500km derive from pre-Latin substratum.[14][neutrality is disputed]

Major rivers of Romania
Onomastic range of the Dacian towns with the dava ending, covering Dacia, Moesia, Thrace and Dalmatia
Onomastic range of the Dacian towns with the dava ending, covering Dacia, Moesia, Thrace and Dalmatia
Romanian river names of substrate origin[dubious – discuss]
Name in Romanian Proposed etymon Proposed origin
Dunăre Donaris Thracian
Mureș morisjo Dacian
Olt *ol- Proto-Indo-European
Prut *pltus Proto-Indo-European
Siret *ser- Proto-Indo-European
Tisa Tibisio Dacian
Argeș *arg- Thracian
Buzău *bhuǧ- Thracian
Crișul kres- Thracian
Jiu sil Scythian
Someș çam Sanscrit
Timiș *ti- Proto-Indo-European
Ampoi Ampee Daco-moesian
Bârzava berzava Thracian
Gilort sil-arta Dacian
Ibru *eybhro Proto-Indo-European
Vedea *ued- Proto-Indo-European
Nera *ner- Proto-Indo-European
Năruia *ner- Dacian
Săsar *ser- Proto-Indo-European
Strei *s(e)reu Proto-Indo-European

A difficult research topic

Numerous language studies and research papers discuss the problems of the Substrate in Romanian, considered by some to be the most controversial and difficult part of Romanian language since its nature and development could explain the evolution of Latin to Romanian.[15]

Some linguists (including Sorin Olteanu, Sorin Paliga and Ivan Duridanov) propose that a number of words presented as borrowings from a Slavic language or from Hungarian in standard literature may have actually developed from reconstructed (not attested) words of local Indo-European languages and they were borrowed from Romanian by the neighboring languages. Though the substratum status of many Romanian words is not much disputed, their status as Dacian words is controversial, some more than others. There are no significant surviving written examples of the Dacian language, so it is difficult to verify in most cases whether a given Romanian word is actually from Dacian or not. Many linguists however favor a Dacian source for the Romanian substratum.[neutrality is disputed] Many of the Romanian substratum words have Albanian cognates, and if these words are in fact Dacian, it indicates that the Dacian language may have been on the same branch as Albanian.

Other languages

The Bulgarian Thracologist Vladimir Georgiev helped develop the theory that the Romanian language has a Daco-Moesian language as its substrate, a language that had a number of features which distinguished it from the Thracian language spoken further south, across the Haemus range.

There are also some Romanian substratum words in languages other than Romanian, these examples having entered via Romanian dialects such as Bryndza, a type of cheese made in Eastern Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic (Moravian Wallachia), Slovakia and Ukraine, the word being derived from the Romanian word for cheese (brânză).

See also

References

  1. ^ Brâncuși, Grigore (2005). Introducere în istoria limbii române] [Introduction to the History of Romanian Language]. Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine. p. 44. ISBN 973-725-219-5.
  2. ^ Vrabie, Emil (2000). An English-Aromanian (Macedo-Romanian) Dictionary. Romance Monographs. p. 21. ISBN 1-889441-06-6.
  3. ^ Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela, The Grammar of Romanian, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-964492-6, page 2
  4. ^ Brâncuși, Grigore (2005). Introducere în istoria limbii române] [Introduction to the History of Romanian Language]. Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine. p. 44. ISBN 973-725-219-5.
  5. ^ Fine, JA. The Early medieval Balkans. University of Michigan Press, 1991. pp. 10–11. Google Books
  6. ^ Rusakov, Alexander (2017). "Albanian". In Kapović, Mate; Giacalone Ramat, Anna; Ramat, Paolo (eds.). The Indo-European Languages. Routledge. ISBN 9781317391531.
  7. ^ Schumacher, Stefan (2020). "The perfect system of Old Albanian (Geg variety)". In Robert Crellin; Thomas Jügel (eds.). Perfects in Indo-European Languages and Beyond. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Vol. 352. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 978-90-272-6090-1.
  8. ^ Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela, The Grammar of Romanian, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-964492-6
  9. ^ Brâncuși, Grigore (2005). Introducere în istoria limbii române] [Introduction to the History of Romanian Language]. Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine. p. 44. ISBN 973-725-219-5.
  10. ^ Sala, Marius (2012). De la Latină la Română] [From Latin to Romanian]. Editura Pro Universitaria. p. 84. ISBN 978-606-647-435-1.
  11. ^ Brâncuși, Grigore (2005). Introducere în istoria limbii române] [Introduction to the History of Romanian Language]. Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine. p. 49. ISBN 973-725-219-5.
  12. ^ Sala, Marius (2012). De la Latină la Română] [From Latin to Romanian]. Editura Pro Universitaria. p. 84. ISBN 978-606-647-435-1.
  13. ^ Brâncuși, Grigore (2005). Introducere în istoria limbii române] [Introduction to the History of Romanian Language]. Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine. p. 50. ISBN 973-725-219-5.
  14. ^ Felecan, Oliviu; Felecan, Nicolae (2015). "Etymological strata reflected in Romanian hydronymy". Quaderns de Filología. Estudis Lingüístics. 20 (Toponímia Románica): 251–269. doi:10.7203/qfilologia.20.7521. ISSN 1135-416X.
  15. ^ Brâncuși, Grigore (2005). Introducere în istoria limbii române] [Introduction to the History of Romanian Language]. Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine. p. 43. ISBN 973-725-219-5.
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