The book is a first attempt to analyze the complex problems of Romanian etymology in English. Romanian is a Romance language, but it also inherits an old Pre-Romance layer represented by both Indo-European and Pre-Indo-European elements such as Greek and Albanian. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 is an extensive introduction which summarises the archaeological, historical, and linguistic problems of southeast Europe, with a focus on Romanian and its neighboring languages (the Slavic languages and Hungarian). It reviews various hypotheses regarding the regions prehistoric cultures and how they developed across millennia; it continues with the Thracian cultural groups, which represent the substratum of Romanian, and how these groups underwent a long and complex process of Romanization; and finally, it analyzes the migration period and the new cultural groups that emerged during this long period.
Part 2, the dictionary, includes more than 5,000 entries reflecting the representative vocabulary, but also rare and dialectal words, and words referring to flora and fauna. It covers the old Latin heritage, the substratum heritage, and Slavic, Hungarian and Ottoman influences, as well as some relevant neo-Romance elements ("the New Romanization of Romanian", a mainly nineteenth-century process.). Part 3 includes a glossary, as well as lists of the relevant prehistoric roots quoted in the dictionary.
The book is a first attempt to analyze the complex problems of Romanian etymology in English. Romanian is a Romance language, but it also inherits an old Pre-Romance layer represented by both Indo-European and Pre-Indo-European elements like Greek or Albanian.
Recenzijas
This etymological dictionary constitutes a novel and provoking contribution to the field, and is likely to prove useful for those of those unfamiliar with specific problems posed by Eastern Romance linguistics. The inclusion of introductory chapters devoted to history, phonetics and morphology, and statistical charts, will be welcomed by non-expert readers.
Sorin Paligas Etymological Dictionary of Romanian seeks to fill a gap in contemporary lexicography in so far as it approaches the very complex case of Romanian considering all perspectives and applying the techniques of contemporary historical and comparative linguistics. It takes account of the difficulties inherent in the special position of Romanian as a Romance language situated in a Sprachbund comprising languages both related and unrelated to Indo-European, and specifically surrounded by South-Slavic languages and Hungarian. As everybody knows, the question of the identification of Romanian with the Romance dialect of the Pannonian Plain, which infiltrated into Transilvania after the decline of the Roman Empire, or, alternatively, with the Latin dialect spoken in Dacia and more southern regions after the comparatively late Roman conquest, is subject to intense debate, and this makes the description of the history of the language and the study of its connections more difficult than that of other Romance languages. The most daring part of this kind of work is, of course, the assumed existence of a substrate language or group of languages that we know very little about, as well as the uncertainties about its initial locus and spread in the so-called dark ages. As is well known, several attempts to identify this substrate have been made: Hans Krahes Alteuropäisch covered the best part of Europe, and, in spite of the meagre or nonexistent written evidence for these dialects, Dacian, Illyrian and Pannonian (a label accepted by some scholars but without direct testimonies) are conceivable candidates. In sum, this etymological dictionary constitutes a novel and provoking contribution to the field, and is likely to prove useful for those of the authors colleagues unfamiliar with specific problems posed by Eastern Romance linguistics. The inclusion of introductory chapters devoted to history, phonetics and morphology, and statistical charts, will be welcomed by non-expert readers. Blanca Marķa Prósper University of Salamanca Departamento de Filologķa Clįsica e Indoeuropeo
Tabula Gratulatoria xv
Abbreviations, Etymological Dictionaries and References xvi
a.
Abbreviations................................................................
...............................................................xvi
b. Etymological and Bilingual Dictionaries with Etymological
Relevance.........................................xxi
c. General References (Studies,
Books).......................................................................
....................xxiv
d. Authors Studies and
Books........................................................................
..............................xxxiii
Chapter I. General Considerations 1
A New Etymological Dictionary of Romanian.
Why?.........................................................................
....6
Histories of the Romanian
Language.....................................................................
...............................12
A Historical View of the Romanian Etymological
Problem.................................................................14
Thracians, Romanians, Albanians, Slavs: Ethnicity in Central and Southeast
Europe............................17
General
Problems.....................................................................
.....................................................17
The Languages Spoken in the
Antiquity....................................................................
....................19
The Slavic
Homeland.....................................................................
...............................................22
The Structure of the Slavic
Vocabulary...................................................................
.......................29
Albanian and
Albanians....................................................................
............................................31
The Homeland of the
Romanians...................................................................
.............................36
The Vlachs (Vlakhs). Are They A Kind of Romanians or Genuine
Romanians?.................................38
Back to
Linguistics..................................................................
.............................................................41
The Balkan Linguistic Union
(Balkansprachbund)...........................................................
............47
Romanian, Its Origins and Its
Neighbors....................................................................
..................49
The Structure of the Romanian
Vocabulary...................................................................
................55
Chapter II. The Strata of the Romanian Vocabulary 59
The Romanian Language: Its Stratification and the Statistical
Data......................................................60
The Latin
Heritage.....................................................................
..........................................................61
The Substratum
Heritage.....................................................................
.................................................62
Words Shared with Albanian of Non- Latin
Origin.......................................................................
........62
The Slavic
Influence....................................................................
.........................................................63
Statistical
Data.........................................................................
..........................................................63
1.a. The Old Latin
Heritage.....................................................................
.....................................63
1.b. The New Modern Borrowings of Latin
Origin.......................................................................
64
2. The Chaotic Group Labeled Unknown Etymology (et. nec.) in
DEX.................................65
3. The Romanian- Albanian Common
Heritage.....................................................................
.....65
4. Re- organizing the et. nec. Data as Substratum
Elements......................................................66
5. The Slavic Influence from the Statistical
Perspective...............................................................66
6. The Hungarian (Magyar)
Influence....................................................................
....................67
7. The Turkish
Influence....................................................................
........................................67
The Swadesh List for
Romanian.....................................................................
......................................67
An Alternative List of 100
Roots........................................................................
...........................75
Analysis of the Two
Lists........................................................................
.......................................85
Analysis of the Three
Scenarios....................................................................
..................................87
Chapter III. Place- Names and Personal Names 89
Place
Names........................................................................
...............................................................89
Personal
Names........................................................................
..........................................................94
Chapter IV. The Romanian Language: Structure, Heritage, Etymological Problems
97
A Brief
Synthesis....................................................................
.............................................................97
The Nominal
Sphere.......................................................................
.....................................................97
Noun.........................................................................
........................................................................97
Adjective and
Adverb.......................................................................
..................................................100
Pronoun......................................................................
.....................................................................101
Article......................................................................
........................................................................103
The Definite Article of Nouns and
Adjectives...................................................................
...104
The Definite Article in Albanian v.
Romanian.....................................................................
105
The Definite Article of Demonstratives and
Adverbs...........................................................107
Two Exceptional Forms: tat/ tata father and pop/ popa a
priest......................................108
The Definite Article of Personal
Names........................................................................
.......109
Summing
Up...........................................................................
...........................................110
Verb.........................................................................
........................................................................110
The Verbs a fi to be, a aveį to have and the Suppletive Forms a vrea, a
voi to wish, will..........112
Conclusions..................................................................
..............................................................115
Numeral......................................................................
.....................................................................116
Non- Inflected
Forms........................................................................
..................................................116
Derivational
Means........................................................................
....................................................117
Reduplication................................................................
...................................................................117
Affixes: Prefixes and
Suffixes.....................................................................
..........................................118
Conclusions..................................................................
...................................................................120
Chapter V. Romanian Phonetics and Phonology 121
The Specific Vowels of
Romanian.....................................................................
..................................122
The Consonantal System of
Romanian.....................................................................
..........................126
Diphthongs and
Triphthongs..................................................................
...........................................127
The Phonemes [ oe] and
[ oe]........................................................................
........................................127
Letter
i............................................................................
.................................................................128
Historical
Phonetics....................................................................
.......................................................128
Some Basic Problems of Phonetic
Evolution....................................................................
...........129
Colloquial
Latin........................................................................
..................................................130
Tentative Phonetic Reconstructions for
Thracian.....................................................................
...........133
Vocalism.....................................................................
..............................................................133
Consonantism.................................................................
............................................................134
The Indo- European Sonants
............................................................................
................136
A General
Tableau......................................................................
.................................................136
The Slavic Phonetic
Inventory....................................................................
........................................137
Vocalism.....................................................................
..............................................................137
Consonantism.................................................................
............................................................137
Interferences Between Proto- Romanian, Thracian and
Slavic..............................................................138
Treatment of Proto- Romanian
Vowels.......................................................................
.........................138
Treatment of Proto- Romanian
Consonants...................................................................
.....................139
Addenda 143
I. A Note on Romanian
Spelling.....................................................................
................................143
II. A Comparative Analysis of the Transcriptions Used for the Romanian
Dialects...........................145
PART II
The Etymological Dictionary in alphabetical order 153
PART III
Addenda 529
Glossary.....................................................................
......................................................................529
Prehistoric
Roots........................................................................
.....................................................536
Pre- Indo- European
Roots........................................................................
........................................539
Proto- Boreal (Nostratic)
Roots........................................................................
..............................554
Indo- European
Roots......................................................................................................................575
Sorin Paliga graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1980. He studied Czech and English, also Slovene, Polish, and Portuguese. His main interests were primarily focused on Central European cultures and languages (mainly Czech, Slovak, and Slovene), but also on southeast Europe and its fascinating evolution from the Neolithic Revolution (8th millennium BCE) until now. His doctoral thesis analyzed the Romance and Pre-Romance (Thracian and Illyrian) influences in South Slavic (1998). Many of the published works cover linguistic and historical problems of Southeast and Central Europe, and are available on academia.edu and researchgate.net. He has translated books from Czech, English, and French. The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs awarded him the special prize for his activity in promoting Czech culture abroad in 2009.
