Etymological Dictionary of the Romanian Language

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.

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 Paliga’s 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 Krahe’s 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 author’s 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 María PrósperUniversity of SalamancaDepartamento de Filología Clásica e Indoeuropeo

• Tabula Gratulatoria xvAbbreviations, Etymological Dictionaries and References xvia. Abbreviations...............................................................................................................................xvib. Etymological and Bilingual Dictionaries with Etymological Relevance.........................................xxic. General References (Studies, Books)...........................................................................................xxivd. Author’s Studies and Books......................................................................................................xxxiii Chapter I. General Considerations 1A New Etymological Dictionary of Romanian. Why?.............................................................................6Histories of the Romanian Language....................................................................................................12A Historical View of the ‘Romanian Etymological Problem’.................................................................14Thracians, Romanians, Albanians, Slavs: Ethnicity in Central and Southeast Europe............................17General Problems..........................................................................................................................17The Languages Spoken in the Antiquity........................................................................................19The Slavic Homeland....................................................................................................................22The Structure of the Slavic Vocabulary..........................................................................................29Albanian and Albanians................................................................................................................31‘The Homeland of the Romanians’................................................................................................36The Vlachs (Vlakhs). Are They ‘A Kind of Romanians’ or ‘Genuine Romanians’?.................................38Back to Linguistics...............................................................................................................................41The ‘Balkan Linguistic Union’ (Balkansprachbund).......................................................................47Romanian, Its Origins and Its Neighbors......................................................................................49The Structure of the Romanian Vocabulary...................................................................................55Chapter II. The Strata of the Romanian Vocabulary 59The Romanian Language: Its Stratification and the Statistical Data......................................................60The Latin Heritage...............................................................................................................................61The Substratum Heritage......................................................................................................................62Words Shared with Albanian of Non- Latin Origin...............................................................................62The Slavic Influence.............................................................................................................................63Statistical Data...................................................................................................................................631.a. The Old Latin Heritage..........................................................................................................631.b. The New Modern Borrowings of Latin Origin.......................................................................642. The Chaotic Group Labeled ‘Unknown Etymology’ (‘et. nec.’) in DEX.................................653. The Romanian- Albanian Common Heritage..........................................................................654. Re- organizing the ‘et. nec.’ Data as Substratum Elements......................................................665. The Slavic Influence from the Statistical Perspective...............................................................666. The Hungarian (Magyar) Influence........................................................................................677. The Turkish Influence............................................................................................................67The Swadesh List for Romanian...........................................................................................................67An Alternative List of 100 Roots...................................................................................................75Analysis of the Two Lists...............................................................................................................85Analysis of the Three Scenarios......................................................................................................87 Chapter III. Place- Names and Personal Names 89Place Names.......................................................................................................................................89Personal Names..................................................................................................................................94 Chapter IV. The Romanian Language: Structure, Heritage, Etymological Problems 97A Brief Synthesis.................................................................................................................................97The Nominal Sphere............................................................................................................................97Noun.................................................................................................................................................97Adjective and Adverb.........................................................................................................................100Pronoun...........................................................................................................................................101Article..............................................................................................................................................103The Definite Article of Nouns and Adjectives......................................................................104The Definite Article in Albanian v. Romanian.....................................................................105The Definite Article of Demonstratives and Adverbs...........................................................107Two Exceptional Forms: tată/ tata ‘father’ and popă/ popa ‘a priest’......................................108The Definite Article of Personal Names...............................................................................109Summing Up......................................................................................................................110Verb.................................................................................................................................................110The Verbs a fi ‘to be’, a aveá ‘to have’ and the Suppletive Forms a vrea, a voi ‘to wish, will’..........112Conclusions................................................................................................................................115Numeral...........................................................................................................................................116Non- Inflected Forms..........................................................................................................................116Derivational Means............................................................................................................................117Reduplication...................................................................................................................................117Affixes: Prefixes and Suffixes...............................................................................................................118Conclusions.....................................................................................................................................120 Chapter V. Romanian Phonetics and Phonology 121The Specific Vowels of Romanian.......................................................................................................122The Consonantal System of Romanian...............................................................................................126Diphthongs and Triphthongs.............................................................................................................127The Phonemes [oe] and [oe̯]................................................................................................................127Letter i.............................................................................................................................................128Historical Phonetics...........................................................................................................................128Some Basic Problems of Phonetic Evolution...............................................................................129Colloquial Latin..........................................................................................................................130Tentative Phonetic Reconstructions for Thracian................................................................................133Vocalism...................................................................................................................................133Consonantism.............................................................................................................................134The Indo- European Sonants ḷ ṛ ṃ ṇ............................................................................................136A General Tableau.......................................................................................................................136The Slavic Phonetic Inventory............................................................................................................137Vocalism...................................................................................................................................137Consonantism.............................................................................................................................137Interferences Between Proto- Romanian, Thracian and Slavic..............................................................138Treatment of Proto- Romanian Vowels................................................................................................138Treatment of Proto- Romanian Consonants........................................................................................139Addenda 143I. A Note on Romanian Spelling.....................................................................................................143II. A Comparative Analysis of the Transcriptions Used for the Romanian Dialects...........................145PART IIThe Etymological Dictionary in alphabetical order 153PART IIIAddenda 529Glossary...........................................................................................................................................529– Prehistoric Roots.............................................................................................................................536– Pre- Indo- European Roots................................................................................................................539– Proto- Boreal (‘Nostratic’) Roots......................................................................................................554– Indo- European Roots......................................................................................................................575