From: alex@took.enet.dec.com ("Alex Allister Shvartsman, EMF,              LKG2-2/T2 08-Sep-1992 1641")
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: Romanian language
Date: 8 Sep 92 20:51:03 GMT
Reply-To: "soc.culture.soviet via ListServ" <SCS-L@indycms.iupui.edu>

RE: "Yury M. Mukharsky" <muh@PHYSICS.BERKELEY.EDU>

> Can one of you knowlegable guys explain situation to me, without too much
> heat and using terms, coherent at least inside one article.

Gladly! You asked for it -- please be kind enough to read it :-)

Romanian language is a Romance language that developed on the basis of
the "vulgar Latin" in use in the Roman Imperial province of Dacia during
the II-IV Cent. AD. (Some claim it is the closest to Latin among the live
Romance language.) Although I am not that familiar with the existing
historical records, if any attempt was made to write the early Romanian
language, it would have probably been using the Latin alphabet and not
Cyrillic -- certainly this would've been the case before Cyrillic was
even invented.

The term Romania, as a geographical term, had been in existence since at
least the XVth cent. The natives used the term to describe the land
where they lived, and it is only at the beginning of XIXth cent. that
the term acquires additional geo-socio-political meanings. In the rest
of this article I use the term in its contemporary meanings.

Romanian people constituted most of the population in the Principalities
of Wallachia and Moldova that existed from about XIVth cent. They gain
full independence from the Ottomans and unite in circa 1850 forming Romania.
It seems that few in this forum care about Wallachia :-) so let's talk about
the geography of Moldova.

Moldova is bounded by the Carpathian mountains on the West and by the
Dniestr (Nistru) river on the East. River Prut nearly bisects Moldova
into the West and East parts. East Moldova is also known as Basarabia
and is roughly the xSoviet Republic Moldova.

The emerging Romanian language was the vernacular in Moldova and Wallachia
until the early XIXth when Romanian also emerges as a literary language.
This late arrival is due in part to the fact that Romania did not exist
as an independent state. Prior to the XIXth cent, other languages were used
as the official written and sacral languages (this is quite similar to the
situation earlier in Poland, where Latin was the written language of
"dignity", in Muscovy, where Old Church Slavonic was the written language
until the Great Russian literary language was formalised, etc.)

Another poster (D.L.) mentioned church records written in Cyrillic. In fact
all early Romanian chronicles (XV-XVI cent.) were written not in Romanian,
but in European languages that had an established written norm, e.g.,
Old Church Slavonic, Polish, and even German! It is however true that
Slavonic was the predominant written language -- largely due to the fact
that Romanians are primarily Orthodox Christians.

Romanian remains exclusively the spoken language of the "simple people" until
the XIXth cent. I am sure people attempted to write in Romanian, but prior
to the XIXth cent, Romanian was never formalised in ANY alphabet. Romanian
literary language did not exist until 1800s. The first schools that formally
taught Romanian as a native language were established early that century in
Romania. The "literati" that formalised the Romanian language used Latin
alphabet. The Romanian literature was created using Latin alphabet...

In 1812 Moldova is partitioned. West Moldova goes on as a much diminished
principality of Moldova, while East Moldova becomes the Basarabia Gubernia
within the Russian Empire. Needless to say, Romanian culture does not
flourish in Basarabia. There are written records of Romanian written both
in Latin and Cyrillic in Basarabia at the end of last century (just like
there are records of Russian written in both Latin and Cyrillic at the end
of this century :-). In 1918 Romania re-unites Moldova. Stalin creates a
tiny Autonomous Moldovan SSR on the East bank of Dnestr (i.e., NOT in
Moldova, thus seeding the Transnistrian conflict of the 1990s). In 1918-1938
_all_ Romanians write using Latin alphabet. In 1938, the alphabet of AMSSR
is switched to Cyrillic -- this is the first time Romanian is formalised in
Cyrillic. In 1940 Stalin annexes East Moldova. The alphabet is switched to
Cyrillic. After WWII the Soviet Moldovan Communist zealots attempt to
Slavicise the "Moldovan" language and "prove" that it is distinct from
Romanian. Most amazingly, their attempts are stopped by the Romance experts
in Moscow for purely scientific reasons! They conclude that Romanian is
indistinguishable from Moldovan. No further comparative studies of the "two"
languages had ever been produced in xUSSR. In 1989 xSoviet Moldova, i.e.,
East Moldova, reverts to Latin.

Alex
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet