History of the Romanian language

[1] Between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, following the accumulated tendencies inherited from the vernacular Latin and, to a much smaller degree, the influences from an unidentified substratum, and in the context of a lessened power of the Roman central authority, the language evolved into Common Romanian.

[13] Some linguists like Kim Schulte and Grigore Brâncuș use the phrase "Thraco-Dacian" for the substratum of Romanian,[13] while others like Herbert J. Izzo and Vékony argue that the Eastern Romance languages developed on an Illyrian substrate.

[33] Schütz argues that a number of Romanian words which are traditionally supposed to have been derived from hypothetical Vulgar Latin terms[note 7] are in fact Albanian loanwords.

[37] According to the linguist Rebecca Posner, it is not impossible that the existence of the close central unrounded vowel of Romanian – which is marked by the letters "î" or "â" – can also be traced back to the pre-Latin substratum, but she adds that "there is little evidence to support this hypothesis".

[48] Inscriptions from the Roman period evidence that the Latin tongue of Southeastern Europe developed in line with the evolution of the language in the empire's other parts[49] at least until the end of the 3rd century.

[55] He also met Rusticius from Moesia who acted as interpreter, Constantiolus, "a man from the Pannonian territory",[56] and "Zerkon, the Moorish dwarf" whose words "were a confused jumble of Latin, Hunnic, and Gothic".

[66] Gábor Vékony argues that some place names recorded in The Buildings of Justinian by Procopius of Caesarea show vowel shifts which characterize the development of Romanian.

[82] Some Latin terms connected to an urbanized society survived by being adapted to rural environment, for example pământ from pavimentum,[83] and the vocabulary for navigation, higher religious organization, and education was considerably reduced.

[89] However, as linguist Marius Sala says, the Slavic terms entered Romanian language by designating improved tools compared to the ones used by the Daco-Roman population, replacing the old words inherited from Latin.

[92] Grigore Brâncuș adds to this list that the majority of pomiculture, numerous apicultural, and all the swineherding terms complete a view of a mixed farming society involved in both the growing of crops and the raising of livestock.

[100] Vlad Georgescu cites a "ninth-century Armenian geography" which refers to an "unknown country called Balak", but Victor Spinei emphasizes that it is an interpolation "probably from the first centuries of the second millennium".

[101][108] Huge territories to the north of the Lower Danube were dominated by Goths and Gepids for at least 300 years from the 270s, but no Romanian words of East Germanic origin have so far been detected.

[123] The iotation of e in word-initial position in some basic words[note 38] – that is the appearance of a semi vowel j before e in these terms – is one of the Romanian phonological features with a debated origin.

[124] The formation of numerals between eleven and nineteen clearly follow Slavic pattern – for instance, unsprezece "one-on-ten", doisprezece "two-on-ten", and nouăsprezece "nine-on-ten" – which also indicates that a significant number of originally Slavic-speaking people once adopted Romanian.

[127] Characteristics of this period are the emergence of [ɨ] vowel, dropping of final [u],[128] monophthongisation of ea diphthong from Common Romanian (ex: feată > fată),[129] the influence of Old Church Slavonic,[1] and the entry of Hungarian words in the vocabulary.

[131] The Pechenegs and the Cumans spoke Turkic languages, but the distinction of words borrowed from them and loanwords of Crimean Tatar or Ottoman Turkish origin is almost impossible.

[138] On the other hand, Aromanian, although it is now spoken in regions where its development could not start still uses a number of inherited Latin terms instead of the loanwords[note 45] which were adopted by other Eastern Romance languages.

[142] The oldest surviving writing in Romanian that can be reliably dated is a letter sent by Lupu Neacșu from the then Dlăgopole, now Câmpulung, Wallachia, to Johannes Benkner of Brașov, Transylvania.

The first contributions of Romanian authors (initially an anonymous chronicler, then Macarie, Eftimie, and Azarie) were in Old Church Slavonic as well, but from the time of the Moldavian nobleman Grigore Ureche (ca.

[159] Ion Neculce, a boyar from a Greek family, used a language more alike the vernacular spoken in the northern part of the Moldavia, "sweet and lively", adding events from 1661 to 1743.

Older documents up to early 17th century, representing brief accounts of historical moments and figures, were recorded mostly in Old Church Slavonic or sometimes in Greek, with the notable exception of Neacșu's letter.

[166] Cantacuzino takes a different approach to the topic than the Moldavian chroniclers, asserting that modern Romanians descended directly from Roman aristocrats who he suggested assimilated the Dacians, forming a Daco-Roman nationality.

The first one of them to be recognized by critics, Ienăchiță Văcărescu, also published a study on grammar titled "Observațiuni sau băgări dă seamă asupra regulelor și orânduelelor gramaticii românești".

Deacon Coresi, Wallachian born but active mostly in Brașov, brought his knowledge of the craft introduced to Târgoviște by Hieromonk Makarije and developed under the guidance of Dimitrije Ljubavić, among his prints being books in Romanian.

[175] The emblematic movement that characterized the development of Romanian writing in the Kingdom of Hungary is known as the Transylvanian School, represented mainly by Samuil Micu-Klein, Petru Maior, and Gheorghe Șincai, to whom some researchers add Ion Budai-Deleanu, Ioan Monorai, and Paul Iorgovici.

[177] Significant for the history of the language is the interest shown in the topic of Romanian philology, individual books such as Maior's Orthographia Romana sive Latino-Valachica, una cum clavi, qua penetralia originationis vocum reserantur, together with shorter studies on etymology, orthography, and grammar will be reunited under one print in 1825 as:Lesicon románescu-látinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai multi autori, in cursul' a trideci, si mai multoru ani s'au lucratu seu Lexicon Valachico-Latino-Hungarico-Germanici, simply known today as Buda Lexicon.

This gradual and patchy process resulted in the introduction of new letters (ț - created by Petru Maior and ș - by Gheorghe Șincai), a stage between 1828 and 1859 when transitional alphabets were used, and an academic confrontation between etymologizing (Latinizing) and broadly phonemic approaches to standards of writing.

By the 1st century AD, if not earlier, Latin diphthong ae became [ɛː], with the quality of short e but longer; and oe soon afterwards became [eː], merging with long ē.

The e was often absorbed by a preceding palatal sound: As a result, these diphthongs still alternate with the original monophthongs by occurring regularly before a, ă and e in the next syllable (with the exception that ea has reverted to e before another e, e.g. mensae > mease > mese 'tables', as explained in the next section).

As the definite article -a emerged, it created new word forms with unstressed -/a/: casă /ˈkasə/ ‘house’ ~ casa /ˈkasa/ ‘the house.’ Furthermore, instances of stressed ă arose from original a before a /n/ or a consonant cluster beginning with /m/.