Romanian
The Romanian/Rumanian language (limba română), spoken in the Eastern European nations of Romania and Moldova and surrounding border regions, is an Eastern/Balkan Romance language. There are four principal varieties of Romanian (i.e. Eastern/Balkan Romance): Dacoromanian (what modern standard Romanian is based on); Aromanian/Macedoromanian (spoken in scattered communities of Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo and Serbia); Meglenoromanian (of northern Greece and southeastern Macedonia – nearly extinct), and Istroromanian (spoken in the peninsula of Istria, which was at one point part of Italy but which is now divided between Croatia and Slovenia – also nearly extinct). There is not that much mutual intelligibility between these varieties, leading some people to class them all as distinct Eastern Romance languages to Dacoromanian. Dacoromanian is what is standard in modern Romania; likewise in the state of Moldova (yes, there are in fact two Rumaniophone states). Romanian has between 20-30 million native speakers today. The Romanian tongue enjoys official status in Romania, Republic of Moldova, the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia and in the autonomous Mount Athos in Greece. In the Republic of Moldova, the language is officially called limba moldovenească (“Moldovan”); Romanian is written in, of course, the Roman alphabet, although in Moldova, under Soviet rule, it was written in Cyrillic script, and called Moldavian.
Salut = Hello
Bună = Hi/hello (literally: “Good”)
Bună dimineața = Good morning
Bună ziua = Good day
Bună seara = Good evening
Noapte bună = Good night
La revedere = Goodbye
Pa = Bye
East + West
One particular theory regarding the further subdivision of the Romance language family is that they can be divided into East + West, down the so-called La Spezia-Rimini line – two cities in Italy on either coastline, the location of the line largely coinciding with the location of the northern range of the Apennine mountains which would have provided a natural border in the development of the family. This line is also called the Massa-Senigallia line.
Ultimately, the La Spezia-Rimini line marks out the boundary of differentiation by the lack or presence of some isoglosses (a.k.a. heteroglosses, or geographically bound language quirks). I don’t think it is of much significance, but it is useful context for the disappearance of Latin’s case system in most of the Romance languages – something which I have been very interested in.
Grammatical case systems are a custom for categorising nouns and demarcating their functions in sentences. Nouns (mainly it is nouns that get categorised by case) have different endings which you “click” on to the “stem” in order to “encase” it and enhance/modify its role in a sentence. The standard case by which you casually identify/NAME things is called the NOMinative. This is thus the standard, “raw”, “organic” form a noun comes in. Beyond that, the nominative -specifically, technically speaking- the case that covers the subject of a sentence. The number of cases per language differs greatly: German has 4, Russian has 6, Hungarian has 18, and one language in the Caucasus has been recorded as having a whopping total of 64 grammatical cases! The Latin language had 6 grammatical cases. Most of the Romance languages spoken today all around the world don’t have case systems, and neither does English, Romanian being the exception in having retained a 4-case system. What happened? Phonological attrition meant that the pronunciation of the cases merged in spoken language, until people stopped bothering. But also…
The Romance languages are very beautiful. The world’s most beautiful language? Most would either say French or Italian or Spanish – thanks to Latin’s eximietas / excellency. How do they maintain their wonderful cultures, too? Much of it is coded for within them by their native tongues and their special ideologies, which promote intellect, productivity etc. On a very basic level, you treasure the words as you use them in Romance languages. That is how they were intended to be used by the Romans, who started the custom. It makes sense that the Romans made use of a 6-fold case system, with this in mind, to enhance one’s ability to “treasure” such words. Nouns are the most concrete word class, and therefore the easiest to “treasure”, and enCASing them with extra meaning only enhances the pleasure. But it also makes sense that their descendants ended up doing away with cases: even Romanian, the only modern Romance language to have kept cases, has clipped it back to 4-fold. Stripping back the tedious layers of case systems has in some ways made it easier to cherish their beautiful words.
Back to the East + West division. Something we can conclude is that as the Latin case system disintegrated in Vulgar Latin, different provinces became aligned with the “philosophies” of distinct cases: people in “Eastern Romania” got the nominative case, and people in “Western Romania” got the second case, the accusative. This we can see by comparing the formation of plurals on either side: as you should see, the formation of the plural in Romanian and Italian mirrors the nominative case in Latin, while the Western Romance language plurals mirror Latin’s accusative case (making these peoples more direct, in fact)! Interesting, huh?
The others: the Italic languages
The Italic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family. However, the only surviving branch of the Italic language sub-family today is the Romance languages, so many just refer to the grouping as the Romance languages. Strictly speaking, however, it is the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. The Italic languages were once spoken in the Apennine Peninsula, now known as the nation of Italy. The family included Latin, along with others: Faliscan, Osco-Umbrian, South Picene, and Venetic. The Italic languages were/are sophisticated, rich languages. An additional relation to the Celtic branch of Indo-European is much discussed. The Latin language was originally spoken by small groups of people living along the lower Tiber River. Eventually, its use would grow with the expansion of the Roman Empire. It was the language of Latium and Rome. The earliest known Latin documents date to the 6th century BCE. Other Italic languages are mostly assumed and deduced to be related to Latin, in spite of a relative scarcity of documentation. Latin was most closely related to the Faliscan language, both belonging to the Latino-Faliscan branch of the family; Faliscan was the language of the Falisci people, who dwelled in the region of Southern Etruria (what is now Northern Lazio). The Falisci collaborated with the Etruscans, another highly civilised ancient people of the Italian peninsula who were not Italic-speaking but Tyrsenian-speaking. Faliscan eventually blended into Latin with the expansion of Rome. It is alleged that the use of Faliscan persisted until at least 150BC. They allegedly called themselves the falesce.
The Buzz-Concept Project 