Slavic superstratum in Romanian
Encyclopedia
The Slavic influences on Romanian are especially noticeable and can be observed at all linguistic levels: lexis, phonetics, morphology and syntax. This situation is due to the migration of Slavic tribes who traversed the territory of present-day Romania during 6th century, corresponding to the formative stage of Eastern Romance.
And indeed, while Dacia was part of the Roman Empire for less than 2 centuries, various Slavic tribes crossed, ruled and settled the former Roman province from the 6th to the 12th century. Their presence was even stronger in Moldova and Bessarabia, where in the 16th century Rusyn-speaking Slavs made up at least a third of the population. The Moldavian principality was thus referred to as Русовлахия (i.e. Russo-Vlahia). It is interesting to note that even though the Slavs migrated from the north, they were assimilated immediately north of the lower Danube. At the same time, they almost completely subsumed the Romanized population (the Vlachs
) immediately south of Danube.
Unlike in the West, Dacian Romance-speaking population was rural and did not preserve written Latin language. Therefore, it was the written Old Slavonic that originated around the Byzantine city of Salonika and quickly spread in use as the literary language of Vallachia and Moldavia. Modern Romania and Vallachia continue to be surrounded by the Slavic languages (with the exception of Hungarian after the 10th century) and thus have influenced Romanian through centuries of interaction. Interestingly, early Slavic features in Romanian have primarily Balkan (Bulgarian) character, whereas later borrowings (especially in the modern Republic of Moldova, where the majority of the population continues to be bilingual or even multilingual), have Eastern European (mostly Russian and less frequently Ukrainian or Ruthenian) origin.
Of great importance was the influence of Old Church Slavonic
, as it was the liturgical language of the Romanian Orthodox Church
(compared to western and central European countries which used Latin
) from the Middle Ages
, until the 18th century. However, Latin did get an important position in Transylvania
after the 12th century, a part of the western-styled feudal Kingdom of Hungary
at that moment. Liturgical Romanian was first officially used there after the union of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Transylvania with Rome, giving birth to the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church
in 1698 (the most widespread denomination in Transylvania until World War II
.) This caused Romanian to lose some of its Slavic borrowings, as the first standardisation (among others the switch to the Latin alphabet
) was done by Şcoala Ardeleană, founded in Transylvania. However, the capital of independent Romania (Bucharest) was located in the Eastern part of the country where Hungarian, German, and Latin influences were practically non-existent.
Most Slavic words were acquired through direct everyday contact with Slavic merchants, peasants, soldiers, etc. Due to massive influx of Slavs, much of the original Vlach population, estimated at 1 million people at the end of the Roman rule, became more or less bilingual during the 6th-12th centuries. Apparently, interethnic marriages were very common as Slavs settled among the Romanians and mingled with them very intensely. Indeed, some words describing family relations are Slavic or show heavy Slavic influence: tată < тата "father", nevastă "wife" < невеста, rudă "relatives" < родня; mezin "youngest child" < мезинец; plod "baby", the suffix -că added to Latin root fi- in fiică "daughter" (compare Slavic: дочка), bunică "granny" or maică "mommy". The degree to which Slavic and Romance populations interacted is also illustrated by the fact that practically all words that describe affection are borrowed from Slavic. A direct proof of this is the usage of Slavic particle "da" for affirmation in Romanian, which caused the native sic to shift its meaning to şi (and).
At least a quarter of the basic spoken Romanian lexis is based on common Slavic roots such as: a iubi "to love", a citi "to read", glas "voice", nevoie "need", cinstit "honest", prieten "friend", trebuie "necessary". This situation is akin to the number and usage of French borrowings in English. Slavic borrowings are especially frequent when strong emotional terms or feelings are involved: silă "compulsion", vină "guilt", jale "sorrow", milă "compassion", boală "illness, disease", iubire "love", dragoste "love", slavă "glory", nădejde "hope", etc. Slavic-derived adjectives and participles seem to have been borrowed in droves and form a whole lexical layer: slab, drag, bolnav, bogat, prost, drăgúţ, cinstit, iscusit, iubit, jalnic, zadarnic, vrednic, obraznic, voinic, groaznic, harnic, straşnic, darnic, milostiv, mucenic, etc.
Romanian uses numerous Slavic verbs to describe various actions and changes of state: a lovi "to hit", a goni "to chase", a topi "to melt", a găsi "to find", a trezi "to wake up", a pomeni "to mention", etc. Many others borrowings exist in different spheres of life: silă "force", război "war", noroi "dirt", bogăţie "richness", trup "body", plod "fetus", oglindă "mirror", copită "hoof", zori "dawn", zăpadă "snow", ceas "time", nisip "sand", vreme "weather", etc. Compare essentially the same, but less numerous Germanic borrowings in Western Romance languages such as in Spanish: guerra "war" (Slav. război in Romanian), rico "rich" (Slav. bogat), ganso "goose" (Slav. gâscă), buscar "to search" (Slav. a gasi "to find" in Romanian).
Names of many animals, birds, fish, and plants also made a swift transition from Slavic: vrabie "sparrow" (воробей), lebădă "swan" (лебедь), veveriţă "squirrel" (вевeрица), vidră "otter" (выдра), ştiucă "pike" (щука), rac "crayfish" (рак), păianjen (паук) "spider", lobodă "pig-weed", bob "seed, bean" (боб), morcov "carrot" (морковь), sfeclă (свекла) "beets", hreniţă (хрен) "water cress", râs (рысь) "lynx", etc.
Various onomatopoeic verbs and expressions such as a plescăi "splash" (compare Slav. плескать), a şopti "whisper" (compare Slav. шoпот, шептать) a hăui "echo" (эхо), tropot "clatter" (топот), a clocoti "to boil over" (клокотать), etc. are closer to their Slavic rather than Western Romance equivalents (compare Spanish: chapoteo/roción; susurro/murmurro; eco; pataleo/trapa trapa).Certain interjections such as ba! "oh yes!" and iată! "Look!" (< это) are taken from the Old Slavic (mostly Old Bulgarian) language.
Borrowings from Old Church Slavonic are also very numerous in certain lexical fields and include the following: a izbăvi < избавить "to deliver", veşnic < вечный "forever, perpetual, undying", sfânt < святой "holy, saint", a sluji < служить "to serve", amvon < омовение "pulpit", rai < рай "paradise", iad < ад "hell", proroc < пророк "prophet", hram < храм "church patron", duhovnic < духовник "confessor", dihanie < дыхание "wild beast, monster".
Slavic terminology is almost exclusive when used to assign the titles and ranks to medieval nobility (boier, cneaz, rob, slugă, a sluji, etc.). It is also used to describe various concepts of urban life and finances that emerged with the arrival of Slavs: a plăti "pay", târg "market", rând "row", sticlă "glass", etc. Seafaring concepts are no exception: corabie "ship" , lotcă "boat", ostrov "island" and vâslă "oar" all come from their Slavic equivalents virtually unaltered.
In general, most Slavic borrowings have become well incorporated into Romanian and are no longer perceived as foreign. In fact, many Romanian words occur as a natural combination of Slavic and Romance elements: devreme "early", aşíjderea "likewise", a se îmbolnăvi "to fall ill", a împleti "to weave", a învârti "to turn, rotate", a îmbogăţi "to enrich", nebunie "craziness", răzbunare "revenge", răscruce crossing",
bunică "granny", portiţă "wicket", româncă "Romanian woman", evreiesc "Jewish", neaşteptat "unexpected", neruşinat" "unashamed", citire "reading", iubită "girlfriend", iubesc "I love", prostie "foolishness", hulubăríe "dove-cot", slăbiciune "weakness", milos "charitable", etc.
The indirect Slavic influence on Romanian lexis and expressions is also very important. Many words and expressions were calqued from their Slavic equivalents or created to reproduce the patterns of the Slavic speech. Words such as suflet "soul" copy the logic of the Slavic word душа, and the original Latin anima shifted its meaning to inimă "heart". The development of the Romanian particle şi "and" hints at the usage of the Slavic particle "da" that is often used in both senses ("yes" as well as "and"). Other examples include lună meaning both "month" and "the moon"; "lume" (originally light) used in the sense of the world. Certain expressions such as din topor meaning "unrefined" also tend to be similar to their Slavic equivalents: топорный = грубый.
Another prominent feature of modern Romanian that has resulted from intense contact with Slavic speakers is the formation of numerals from 11 to 20. For instance, unsprezece "eleven" is based on three components "un+spre+zece" literally "one above ten". Even though the elements themselves are Romance in origin, the model itself is word-by-word imitation of a typical Slavic "один+над+цать" literally "one above ten" and is not found in the West where original whole Latin words were preserved (Spanish: once, doce, quince, veinte).
As a result of the long tradition of written Church Slavonic, most Slavic borrowings in Romanian are surprisingly well-preserved phonetically and changed little over the centuries. Some phonetic adjustment has taken place in certain cases: ohileti > a ofili, ljubiti> a iubi, protiva > potrivă, podkova > potcoavă. Importantly, many Slavic borrowing changed their original meaning after being incorporated into Romanian speech. Most notable examples are: a găsi "to find" < гасить "to extinguish", a lovi "to strike" < ловить "to catch", clipă "moment" < клепание "rhythmic movement" etc.
To a significant extent, Slavic speech patterns have also influenced borrowing from other languages. For instance, Latin schola/scola > Slav. школа shkola > modern Rom. şcoală "school". Had the original Latin word been preserved in Dacia, it would have sounded as "scoară".
Thus, Slavic borrowings in Romanian help reveal the historical development of the language even though it is difficult to determine what was the cause and what was the effect of certain developments. Whatever the cause or effect, the migration of Slavs clearly separated the old Balkan Latin from the Western Romance area. The Old Romanian language emerged. By the 6th century the previously common shift of intervocal l>r (solis>soare); an, am, in, im > ân, în; si>şi etc. stops, as new borrowings from Old Slavonic do not undergo the process: сила > silă instead of the hypothetical "şiră'". New developments such as sv>sf, h>f occur instead.
substratum
.
But even in modern literary Romanian, Slavonic influences are evident in phonetics and morphology, heavily influenced by Slavic speakers. Phonetic Slavicisms include the iotization of the initial -e in words such as el, ea, este pronounced [jel], [ja], [jeste] (compare Spanish: el, ella, estamos, without the Slavic iotization effect) as well as the palatalization of consonants in the plural form: pom-pomi, lup-lupi pronounced [pomʲ] and [lupʲ] etc. (compare the original Italian sound in lupi). Besides, numerous Slavic prefixes and suffixes such as ne-, -că, -iţă, răs-/răz-, have become an integral part of the Romanian lexis. Especially -că and -iţă are important markers of the feminine gender in Romanian morphology: lup-lupoaică, italian-italiancă, actor-actriţă, etc. Unlike Western Romance languages, Romanian is also quite unusual in the way that its nouns often undergo internal vowel modifications while being inflected: fată-fete, gheaţă-gheţuri, etc. This feature is quite common in the neighboring Slavic languages: лёд-льда, сон-сны, день-дни. These changes indicate that unlike later arriving Hungarians, local Slavs, who settled in the Vlach lands, were also keen on learning Balkan Latin. On the one hand, this process infused Romanian with Slavic features and on the other, led to the eventual assimilation of Slavs north of the Danube.
Noteworthy, the original Latin sound [h] was lost in early Balkan Latin between the 3rd and 5th centuries A.D., just like in the Western Romance languages: hibernum > Rom. iarnă and Spanish invierno "winter". However, Slavic interference after the 6th century lead to a reintroduction of the Slavic hard h sound into Romanian. Thus, most Romanian words with a letter h are Slavic in origin: hram, hrană, hulubărie, hrean, etc.
The addition of numerous Slavic verb stems ending in -i ( a iubi, a citi, a goni, a izbi, a răni, a primi, etc.) and -î (a posomorî, a omorî, a târî etc.) has led to a dramatic expansion of this conjugation pattern in Romanian, which is extremely productive: a opri, a zdrobi, a toropi, a osteni, a podi, a vărui, a beli, a cerni, a plesni, a coji, a ţocăi, a născoci, a grohăi, a glumi, a trudi, etc. By contrast, in Western Romance languages, the number of verbs in the original Latin "-i" group shrank over time.
Certain indirect sentence structures, such as mi-e bine, mi-e frig (literally "to me is cold"), are also Slavic-influenced (compare dobro mi je, hladno mi je). In the West, direct constructions are used instead: Spanish estoy bien. Preservation of cases and neutral gender has also occurred under Slavic influence and is not observed in modern Western Romance. The natural tendency of late Latin was to drop all noun cases and get rid of neutral gender that was redistributed between masculine and feminine (as in all modern Western Romance languages). Slavic languages have kept Romanian from losing these features. Moreover, Romanian developed a Slavic-influenced vocative case ending in -o: Fetiţo!.
South of the Danube, where most Slavs eventually settled, the Vlach population was overwhelmed numerically and eventually assimilated. The processes of linguistic exchange in the Balkans appear to be unequal most likely due to other social and political circumstances. While Romanian exhibits significant Slavic influences, fewer Romance traces are found in the Slavic languages. Still, Balkan Latin influences have caused a simplification of declension in Bulgarian and Macedonian as well as strengthened certain analytical features and constructions in these languages. Overtime, Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Albanian developed typical "Balkan" grammar and phonetics while forming the core of the so called Balkan linguistic union
.
Lower population
This process of the introduction of Slavic in Dacia was similar to the appearance of various Germanic dialects in the Western Roman Empire, where Gallic Latin and Northern Italian dialects became strongly Germanized. However, due to lower Romance-speaking populace in the East, Slavic remained spoken for much longer and did not die out immediately. This partly explains why spoken Romanian is significantly less intelligible to speakers of Western Romance languages.And indeed, while Dacia was part of the Roman Empire for less than 2 centuries, various Slavic tribes crossed, ruled and settled the former Roman province from the 6th to the 12th century. Their presence was even stronger in Moldova and Bessarabia, where in the 16th century Rusyn-speaking Slavs made up at least a third of the population. The Moldavian principality was thus referred to as Русовлахия (i.e. Russo-Vlahia). It is interesting to note that even though the Slavs migrated from the north, they were assimilated immediately north of the lower Danube. At the same time, they almost completely subsumed the Romanized population (the Vlachs
Vlachs
Vlach is a blanket term covering several modern Latin peoples descending from the Latinised population in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. English variations on the name include: Walla, Wlachs, Wallachs, Vlahs, Olahs or Ulahs...
) immediately south of Danube.
Unlike in the West, Dacian Romance-speaking population was rural and did not preserve written Latin language. Therefore, it was the written Old Slavonic that originated around the Byzantine city of Salonika and quickly spread in use as the literary language of Vallachia and Moldavia. Modern Romania and Vallachia continue to be surrounded by the Slavic languages (with the exception of Hungarian after the 10th century) and thus have influenced Romanian through centuries of interaction. Interestingly, early Slavic features in Romanian have primarily Balkan (Bulgarian) character, whereas later borrowings (especially in the modern Republic of Moldova, where the majority of the population continues to be bilingual or even multilingual), have Eastern European (mostly Russian and less frequently Ukrainian or Ruthenian) origin.
Of great importance was the influence of Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
, as it was the liturgical language of the Romanian Orthodox Church
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...
(compared to western and central European countries which used Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
) from the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, until the 18th century. However, Latin did get an important position in Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
after the 12th century, a part of the western-styled feudal Kingdom of Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
at that moment. Liturgical Romanian was first officially used there after the union of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Transylvania with Rome, giving birth to the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church
Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic
The Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic is an Eastern Catholic Church which is in full union with the Roman Catholic Church. It is ranked as a Major Archiepiscopal Church and uses the Byzantine liturgical rite in the Romanian language....
in 1698 (the most widespread denomination in Transylvania until World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.) This caused Romanian to lose some of its Slavic borrowings, as the first standardisation (among others the switch to the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
) was done by Şcoala Ardeleană, founded in Transylvania. However, the capital of independent Romania (Bucharest) was located in the Eastern part of the country where Hungarian, German, and Latin influences were practically non-existent.
Slavic borrowings
Two types of Slavic borrowings can be distinguished in Romanian. First came everyday spoken words that describe animals, emotional states, as well as certain grammatical features that appear in both spoken and written Romanian language. These Slavic features were incorporated into Balkan Latin through everyday contact of Romanian speakers with early Slav settlers. Then, with the spread of Orthodox Christianity and the Cyrillic alphabet, literary high-style words of the official Church Slavonic were introduced to supplement Romanian with terms for abstract concepts that were not present in the local Romance dialect. Writing in old Romanian language first appeared in the Cyrillic alphabet (a modified version of the Greek alphabet) in the 16th century and existed in this form in Romania until 1860s. In Bessarabia under Russian suzerainty the official alphabet had remained Cyrillic until 31 August 1989, the inter-war period being an exception as it was part of the Kingdom of Romania, by which time the republic had acquired some degree of autonomy from Moscow. However the predominantly Russian separatist republic of Transnistria has kept Cyrillic as its preferred alphabet.Most Slavic words were acquired through direct everyday contact with Slavic merchants, peasants, soldiers, etc. Due to massive influx of Slavs, much of the original Vlach population, estimated at 1 million people at the end of the Roman rule, became more or less bilingual during the 6th-12th centuries. Apparently, interethnic marriages were very common as Slavs settled among the Romanians and mingled with them very intensely. Indeed, some words describing family relations are Slavic or show heavy Slavic influence: tată < тата "father", nevastă "wife" < невеста, rudă "relatives" < родня; mezin "youngest child" < мезинец; plod "baby", the suffix -că added to Latin root fi- in fiică "daughter" (compare Slavic: дочка), bunică "granny" or maică "mommy". The degree to which Slavic and Romance populations interacted is also illustrated by the fact that practically all words that describe affection are borrowed from Slavic. A direct proof of this is the usage of Slavic particle "da" for affirmation in Romanian, which caused the native sic to shift its meaning to şi (and).
At least a quarter of the basic spoken Romanian lexis is based on common Slavic roots such as: a iubi "to love", a citi "to read", glas "voice", nevoie "need", cinstit "honest", prieten "friend", trebuie "necessary". This situation is akin to the number and usage of French borrowings in English. Slavic borrowings are especially frequent when strong emotional terms or feelings are involved: silă "compulsion", vină "guilt", jale "sorrow", milă "compassion", boală "illness, disease", iubire "love", dragoste "love", slavă "glory", nădejde "hope", etc. Slavic-derived adjectives and participles seem to have been borrowed in droves and form a whole lexical layer: slab, drag, bolnav, bogat, prost, drăgúţ, cinstit, iscusit, iubit, jalnic, zadarnic, vrednic, obraznic, voinic, groaznic, harnic, straşnic, darnic, milostiv, mucenic, etc.
Romanian uses numerous Slavic verbs to describe various actions and changes of state: a lovi "to hit", a goni "to chase", a topi "to melt", a găsi "to find", a trezi "to wake up", a pomeni "to mention", etc. Many others borrowings exist in different spheres of life: silă "force", război "war", noroi "dirt", bogăţie "richness", trup "body", plod "fetus", oglindă "mirror", copită "hoof", zori "dawn", zăpadă "snow", ceas "time", nisip "sand", vreme "weather", etc. Compare essentially the same, but less numerous Germanic borrowings in Western Romance languages such as in Spanish: guerra "war" (Slav. război in Romanian), rico "rich" (Slav. bogat), ganso "goose" (Slav. gâscă), buscar "to search" (Slav. a gasi "to find" in Romanian).
Cattle-breeders
Apparently, until the arrival of Slavs Romance-speaking Vlachs were rural semi-nomadic cattle-breeders as most Romanian vocabulary related to cattle and cattle-breeding is of Latin origin. By contrast, most tools and utensils related to agronomy as well as new urban life have Slavic names, most likely as a result of being introduced by the agricultural Slavic population: lopată "spade", daltă "chisel", plug "plough", topor "axe", sită "sieve", nicovală "anvil", coasă "scythe", tocilă "grindstone", greblă "rake", sanie "sleigh", potcoavă "horseshoe", gard "zabor", zabrea "trellis", etc.Names of many animals, birds, fish, and plants also made a swift transition from Slavic: vrabie "sparrow" (воробей), lebădă "swan" (лебедь), veveriţă "squirrel" (вевeрица), vidră "otter" (выдра), ştiucă "pike" (щука), rac "crayfish" (рак), păianjen (паук) "spider", lobodă "pig-weed", bob "seed, bean" (боб), morcov "carrot" (морковь), sfeclă (свекла) "beets", hreniţă (хрен) "water cress", râs (рысь) "lynx", etc.
Various onomatopoeic verbs and expressions such as a plescăi "splash" (compare Slav. плескать), a şopti "whisper" (compare Slav. шoпот, шептать) a hăui "echo" (эхо), tropot "clatter" (топот), a clocoti "to boil over" (клокотать), etc. are closer to their Slavic rather than Western Romance equivalents (compare Spanish: chapoteo/roción; susurro/murmurro; eco; pataleo/trapa trapa).Certain interjections such as ba! "oh yes!" and iată! "Look!" (< это) are taken from the Old Slavic (mostly Old Bulgarian) language.
Borrowings from Old Church Slavonic are also very numerous in certain lexical fields and include the following: a izbăvi < избавить "to deliver", veşnic < вечный "forever, perpetual, undying", sfânt < святой "holy, saint", a sluji < служить "to serve", amvon < омовение "pulpit", rai < рай "paradise", iad < ад "hell", proroc < пророк "prophet", hram < храм "church patron", duhovnic < духовник "confessor", dihanie < дыхание "wild beast, monster".
Slavic terminology is almost exclusive when used to assign the titles and ranks to medieval nobility (boier, cneaz, rob, slugă, a sluji, etc.). It is also used to describe various concepts of urban life and finances that emerged with the arrival of Slavs: a plăti "pay", târg "market", rând "row", sticlă "glass", etc. Seafaring concepts are no exception: corabie "ship" , lotcă "boat", ostrov "island" and vâslă "oar" all come from their Slavic equivalents virtually unaltered.
Church Slavonic
Many Romanian names were also influenced by the use of Slavonic in Church and in administration. Over time, especially after the Latin alphabet was adopted, some Slavic words became archaic, but others such as the affirmative particle da "yes", clearly of Slavic origin, have maintained a widespread use.In general, most Slavic borrowings have become well incorporated into Romanian and are no longer perceived as foreign. In fact, many Romanian words occur as a natural combination of Slavic and Romance elements: devreme "early", aşíjderea "likewise", a se îmbolnăvi "to fall ill", a împleti "to weave", a învârti "to turn, rotate", a îmbogăţi "to enrich", nebunie "craziness", răzbunare "revenge", răscruce crossing",
bunică "granny", portiţă "wicket", româncă "Romanian woman", evreiesc "Jewish", neaşteptat "unexpected", neruşinat" "unashamed", citire "reading", iubită "girlfriend", iubesc "I love", prostie "foolishness", hulubăríe "dove-cot", slăbiciune "weakness", milos "charitable", etc.
The indirect Slavic influence on Romanian lexis and expressions is also very important. Many words and expressions were calqued from their Slavic equivalents or created to reproduce the patterns of the Slavic speech. Words such as suflet "soul" copy the logic of the Slavic word душа, and the original Latin anima shifted its meaning to inimă "heart". The development of the Romanian particle şi "and" hints at the usage of the Slavic particle "da" that is often used in both senses ("yes" as well as "and"). Other examples include lună meaning both "month" and "the moon"; "lume" (originally light) used in the sense of the world. Certain expressions such as din topor meaning "unrefined" also tend to be similar to their Slavic equivalents: топорный = грубый.
Another prominent feature of modern Romanian that has resulted from intense contact with Slavic speakers is the formation of numerals from 11 to 20. For instance, unsprezece "eleven" is based on three components "un+spre+zece" literally "one above ten". Even though the elements themselves are Romance in origin, the model itself is word-by-word imitation of a typical Slavic "один+над+цать" literally "one above ten" and is not found in the West where original whole Latin words were preserved (Spanish: once, doce, quince, veinte).
As a result of the long tradition of written Church Slavonic, most Slavic borrowings in Romanian are surprisingly well-preserved phonetically and changed little over the centuries. Some phonetic adjustment has taken place in certain cases: ohileti > a ofili, ljubiti> a iubi, protiva > potrivă, podkova > potcoavă. Importantly, many Slavic borrowing changed their original meaning after being incorporated into Romanian speech. Most notable examples are: a găsi "to find" < гасить "to extinguish", a lovi "to strike" < ловить "to catch", clipă "moment" < клепание "rhythmic movement" etc.
To a significant extent, Slavic speech patterns have also influenced borrowing from other languages. For instance, Latin schola/scola > Slav. школа shkola > modern Rom. şcoală "school". Had the original Latin word been preserved in Dacia, it would have sounded as "scoară".
Thus, Slavic borrowings in Romanian help reveal the historical development of the language even though it is difficult to determine what was the cause and what was the effect of certain developments. Whatever the cause or effect, the migration of Slavs clearly separated the old Balkan Latin from the Western Romance area. The Old Romanian language emerged. By the 6th century the previously common shift of intervocal l>r (solis>soare); an, am, in, im > ân, în; si>şi etc. stops, as new borrowings from Old Slavonic do not undergo the process: сила > silă instead of the hypothetical "şiră'". New developments such as sv>sf, h>f occur instead.
Dialect and style
Generally, the share of Slavic words differs significantly depending on dialect and style. The number of Slavicisms is higher in border regions with significant Slavic-speaking populations. In spoken Romanian in general their share is around 30% and up to 40% in Moldova, where Russian borrowings and constructions are traditionally commonplace (Compare: "Vreau un holodilnic" instead of "Vreau să cumpăr un frigider"). In literary written Romanian, their share is somewhat lower (around 10%), while Latin-based words represent around 85%, with the remaining 5% being of Greek, Hungarian, and Turkic origin as well as from the DacianDacian language
The extinct Dacian language may have developed from proto-Indo-European in the Carpathian region around 2,500 BC and probably died out by AD 600. In the 1st century AD, it was the predominant language of the ancient regions of Dacia and Moesia and, possibly, of some surrounding regions.It belonged...
substratum
Substratum
In linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...
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But even in modern literary Romanian, Slavonic influences are evident in phonetics and morphology, heavily influenced by Slavic speakers. Phonetic Slavicisms include the iotization of the initial -e in words such as el, ea, este pronounced [jel], [ja], [jeste] (compare Spanish: el, ella, estamos, without the Slavic iotization effect) as well as the palatalization of consonants in the plural form: pom-pomi, lup-lupi pronounced [pomʲ] and [lupʲ] etc. (compare the original Italian sound in lupi). Besides, numerous Slavic prefixes and suffixes such as ne-, -că, -iţă, răs-/răz-, have become an integral part of the Romanian lexis. Especially -că and -iţă are important markers of the feminine gender in Romanian morphology: lup-lupoaică, italian-italiancă, actor-actriţă, etc. Unlike Western Romance languages, Romanian is also quite unusual in the way that its nouns often undergo internal vowel modifications while being inflected: fată-fete, gheaţă-gheţuri, etc. This feature is quite common in the neighboring Slavic languages: лёд-льда, сон-сны, день-дни. These changes indicate that unlike later arriving Hungarians, local Slavs, who settled in the Vlach lands, were also keen on learning Balkan Latin. On the one hand, this process infused Romanian with Slavic features and on the other, led to the eventual assimilation of Slavs north of the Danube.
Noteworthy, the original Latin sound [h] was lost in early Balkan Latin between the 3rd and 5th centuries A.D., just like in the Western Romance languages: hibernum > Rom. iarnă and Spanish invierno "winter". However, Slavic interference after the 6th century lead to a reintroduction of the Slavic hard h sound into Romanian. Thus, most Romanian words with a letter h are Slavic in origin: hram, hrană, hulubărie, hrean, etc.
The addition of numerous Slavic verb stems ending in -i ( a iubi, a citi, a goni, a izbi, a răni, a primi, etc.) and -î (a posomorî, a omorî, a târî etc.) has led to a dramatic expansion of this conjugation pattern in Romanian, which is extremely productive: a opri, a zdrobi, a toropi, a osteni, a podi, a vărui, a beli, a cerni, a plesni, a coji, a ţocăi, a născoci, a grohăi, a glumi, a trudi, etc. By contrast, in Western Romance languages, the number of verbs in the original Latin "-i" group shrank over time.
Certain indirect sentence structures, such as mi-e bine, mi-e frig (literally "to me is cold"), are also Slavic-influenced (compare dobro mi je, hladno mi je). In the West, direct constructions are used instead: Spanish estoy bien. Preservation of cases and neutral gender has also occurred under Slavic influence and is not observed in modern Western Romance. The natural tendency of late Latin was to drop all noun cases and get rid of neutral gender that was redistributed between masculine and feminine (as in all modern Western Romance languages). Slavic languages have kept Romanian from losing these features. Moreover, Romanian developed a Slavic-influenced vocative case ending in -o: Fetiţo!.
Romania and Moldavia
The sustainability of the Slavic elements in Romanian is also evident in the toponymics of Romania and Moldova. Despite the fact that Roman Dacia was the core of the ancient empire's influence, Romance population fled the original Roman cities after the fall of the Roman Empire and quickly shifted to semi-nomadic cattle-breeding. As a result, no original Roman placenames survived to the north of the Danube. Newly-founded settlements were largely a result of Slavic, and later Hungarian activities. Numerous Slavic placenames are found to these days throughout Romania and Moldova: Cernavodă, Prilog, Dumbrava, Bistriţa, Talna, Rus, Bistra, Glod, Ruscova, Straja, Putna, Hulub, Bâc, Tecuci, Potcoava, Corabia, Lipova, Holod, Topila, Ostrovu, etc.South of the Danube, where most Slavs eventually settled, the Vlach population was overwhelmed numerically and eventually assimilated. The processes of linguistic exchange in the Balkans appear to be unequal most likely due to other social and political circumstances. While Romanian exhibits significant Slavic influences, fewer Romance traces are found in the Slavic languages. Still, Balkan Latin influences have caused a simplification of declension in Bulgarian and Macedonian as well as strengthened certain analytical features and constructions in these languages. Overtime, Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Albanian developed typical "Balkan" grammar and phonetics while forming the core of the so called Balkan linguistic union
Balkan linguistic union
The Balkan sprachbund or linguistic area is the ensemble of areal features—similarity in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology—among the languages of the Balkans. Several features are found across these languages though not all need apply to every single language...
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