An Etymological Dictionary of the Romanian Language

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.

Autorentext

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.

Inhalt

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. Author's 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: tata/ tata …