# Talk:Romania in the Early Middle Ages

1200s is ambiguous: it can either mean 1200 to 1209 or 100 years-a century.  So what are the facts?  1200s (decade) or 13th century, the standard for century notation?  Thanks Hmains (talk) 03:19, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your message. I think 1200s is good. However, my problem was that your edit destroyed an image. Borsoka (talk) 15:42, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

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"Romanian did not preserve Latin words connected to urbanized society. Likewise, the term sat ("village") may have been borrowed from Albanian and not directly inherited. The Medieval Romanian word obște 'village community' came from Slavic, and the Romanian word for its boundaries (hotar) is of Hungarian origin."
This Passage take's sources as 3 pages From Spinei's Book and the rest are litterally dictionaries of Romanian, Albanian and Hungarian. Even so the pages 249-250 from Spinei that given as source aren't even about words and their origin, but a mentions of structure of "obște" and "hotar." 
I always knew "cetate"(citadel in modern romanian) and "sat"(village in modern romanian) as romanian words surviving from latin.
Anyways I'm fairly sure this is a case of individual research from one of the editors. DiGrande (talk) 17:20, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Spinei writes: "Since the cities in existence during Antiquity in the Lower Danube region disappeared during the subsequent centuries, no traces were left in the Romanian language of the Latin vocabulary of city life." (Spinei 2009, p. 202) Vladimir Orel was a leading linguist and his work is not a dictionary, but an etymological dictionary. He writes that Albanian fshat ("village") derives from Latin fossatum ("ditch") and the Romanian word sat ("village") was not directly inherited from Latin. The webpage dexonline.ro is not a classical dictionary either because it contains etymologies of Romanian words. No Hungarian dictionaries are cited in the two sentences (and in the rest of the article). Borsoka (talk) 02:24, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
I used the term dictionary in the wider sense of the word. The exact Passage I have given abouve, with the exception of the first statement, is personal research. It doesn't source any study on the origin of romanian words related to urban or rural settlements. By the same same principles I could add other words from romanian and cite there etymolgy. DiGrande (talk) 05:16, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

@Borsoka the passage is a near word by word quotations of the source. The old variant was a synthesis of two sources, one of them (Kopecký) dealing mostly with the topic of fishing and water fauna. The new source is a complete analysis of the entire field and is be double checked by Schulte:
"Loanwords from Slavic have, in many cases, replaced inherited words even where their meanings have been continually present since Roman times..." - Loanwords in Romanian, page 244, 3rd paragraph.
Any particular reason to disagree with this? Aristeus01 (talk) 15:36, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
Your proposed changes are the following:

"A great number of Romanian words of uncertain origin" > "A great number of Romanian words of substratum": actually, we do not know that those words are of substrate origin. For instance, Kim Schulte writes that those words are of Albanian origin: "In most cases, our lack of precise knowledge of [possible substrate languages] makes it impossible to determine whether Romanian words with cognate counterparts in Albanian were borrowed directly from the substrate languages, or from Albanian at a later stage." (Schulte, Kim (2009). "Loanwords in Romanian". In Haspelmath, Martin; Tadmor, Uri (eds.). Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. p. 234. ISBN 978-3-11-021843-5.) We cannot present assumptions as facts as per WP:NPOV.
"Romanian has preserved Latin terms for agriculture and the Latin names of certain crops, but a significant part of its agricultural lexis originates from a Slavic-speaking population." > "Romanian has preserved Latin terms for agricultural activities and the Latin names of certain crops, but a significant part of its agricultural lexis was replaced by Slavic words." First of all, your above reference to Schulte is not relevant as Schulte does not write of agriculture, but of cases when some dialects preserved the Latin terminology, but other dialects adopted a Slavic term, and Schulte does not mention a single agricultural term among the examples. Secondly, we cannot pretend that Latin and Romanian are the same languages: Romanian developed from Latin but not Romanian words were replaced by Slavic loanwords, but Latin terms were lost during the early history of Romanian and the same terms were later borrowed from Slavic languages. For instance, Romanian did not preserve the Latin term for Germans (likely because the Romanians' ancestors did not have much contact with Germanic peoples before the 12th century), so later it borrowed a Slavic term (neamț). The alternative Romanian term for German (german) is a 19th-century loan from Latin.
If you read Kopecký's work, you will realise that he deals other topics as well. Borsoka (talk) 02:34, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, Kopecky deals with the topic of Slavic loanwords in general but not with this semantic field in particular. Here his work matches Schulte's in the sense it can be used as second source. There are however chapters in books dedicated specifically to the field and they should be the primary source of information.
Even if we agree on the technicality of "substrate" vs "uncertain", although there is sufficient information nowadays to distinguish between them, the issue of "some dialects preserved the Latin terminology, but other dialects adopted a Slavic term" together with " and "Latin terms were lost during the early history of Romanian and the same terms were later borrowed from Slavic languages" are incompatible. Either Common Romanian had this words in its inventory and they were replaced in some dialects or it did not have them and they were acquired from Slavic. The later is obviously false since we have example such as "arat" for plough, Daco-Romanian "plug". We are also contradicting published experts on the matter by continuing on this trend.
Also, the example with German is irrelevant since none of the Romance languages inherited a name for the population from Latin, allemand and tedesco are derived from Medieval Latin. By this logic neither the French nor the Italians had any contact with Germans either.
I understand you have your own interpretation of the situation but this is outdated and incomplete information we keep on this page. The least we can agree on is that a flag on the paragraph is needed. Aristeus01 (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
No, the two statements do not present my own interpretation. Both statements are verified and contain facts that are not questioned by mainstream literature. 1. "A great number of Romanian words of uncertain origin are related to animal husbandry." No one has proved that certain words are of substrate origin so their substrate origin is not a fact, but an assumption. On the other hand, that they are of uncertain origin is a fact. For instance, Marius Sala writes: "The identification of the Romanian words of a Thraco-Dacian origin is a difficult task, as the Thraco-Dacian language is .. unknown. ... there is no criteria by means of which to establish whether terms [shared by Albanian and Romanian] were loaned from one language to another, and consequently it can be assumed that in both languages they come from the same language ... the reconstruction of a Thraco-Dacian form is quite difficult and nearly always uncertain..." (Sala, Marius (2005). From Latin to Romanian: The Historical Development of Romanian in a Comparative Romance Context. University, Mississippi. pp. 79–81. ISBN 1-889441-12-0.). We could add that these words of uncertain origin are of "possible substrate or Albanian origin" but in the article's context it is not highly relevant. 2. "Romanian has preserved Latin terms for agriculture and the Latin names of certain crops, but a significant part of its agricultural lexis originates from a Slavic-speaking population." There is no reliable sources stating that Romanian has not preserved Latin terms for agriculture and the Latin names of certain crops, and there is no reliable source stating that the ratio of Slavic loanwords in the semantic field of agriculture is low. Borsoka (talk) 02:29, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
1. The full passage from the author is "there is no criteria by means of which to establish whether terms [shared by Albanian and Romanian] were loaned from one language to another, and consequently it can be assumed that in both languages they come from the same language spoken in the Balkan Peninsula (Thraco-dacian, the substrate language of Romanian, a variety of Thracian language from which Albanian descends)." It writes black on white "substrate" (also, why did you leave parts out?)
As for reliable sources we have:
G. Brancusi - An Introduction to Romanian Language - 2005
A. Berciu - Aromanians, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanians - 2012
G. Pana-Dindelegan- The Grammar of Romanian - 2013
E. Vrabie - An English-Aromanian Dictionary - 2000
And these are only some of the most recent and all of them give the same 89-91 words as substratum. But again, I agree - calling them susbtratum or unknown is a technicality in the context and we should not get stuck in such debate.
2. Do we agree then that "some words from Latin were replaced by Slavic loanwords" is ok to be used in the text? Aristeus01 (talk) 09:58, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
1. We agreed: uncertain is the proper term, because their origin is uncertain. 2. No, because no mainstream linguist deny that Slavic loanwords make up a significant part of Romanian vocabulary, but not all scholars agree that these loanwords replaced words of Latin origin in Romanian: if the Latin equivalents of the Slavic loanwords had not been used by the Romanians' ancestors, we cannot speak of replacement but only borrowing. Borsoka (talk) 12:43, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
I see. And here I was thinking we are actually having a conversation and reaching a compromise.
I asked for third opinion. Aristeus01 (talk) 15:56, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Good idea. Thank you. Borsoka (talk) 02:02, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Borsoka
I listed Substrate in Romanian in the OR noticeboard to help get another opinion since third opinion did nothing. Hopefully we can get some closure on the topic. Aristeus01 (talk) 18:22, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I suggest to delete this map:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania_in_the_Early_Middle_Ages#/media/File:RomaniaHistRegions.jpg
I do not understand why does some territories in this map "historical regions of Romania" which belong to Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, Ukraine. It is total inaccurate.
The modern Romanian state was established in 1859. The united principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia officially adopted the name Romania in 1866, later gain independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. The German-French Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, proclaimed the first king of Romania in 1881. Pre-Romanian states, Wallachia was founded in 1330, Moldavia was founded in 1346.
The mentioned regions in the map how can be "historical regions of Romania" if those regions never belonged to Romania? Which means this map is not only inaccurate, but irredentist. By the way, the Romanian ultra-nationalists like to use this map with this slogen: "From the Dniester to the Tisza". This is a verse from the poem "Doina" published by famous Romanian writer, Mihai Eminescu in 1883. Why would those regions in the map "historical regions of Romania", just because that is a 19th century ultra-nationalist slogan?
For example, Magyar tribes of Arpad came from today's Moldova, Ukraine. Principality Hungary occupied Vienna, half of today Austria until the Enns river in the 10th century. King Matthias of Hungary occupied huge Austrian, Czech, Polish lands in the 15th century. Poland had 2 Hungarian kings (Louis I, Bathory). Wallachia was a Hungarian vassal state (Ungro-Vlachia), and it had some Hungarian poulaiton. Moldavia was  founded as a buffer state by the Hungarian king in 1346 after when the Hungarian army defeated a large Tatar army in 1345 and the Golden Horde was pushed back behind the Dniester River. I do not see any Hungarian map which would say "historical regions of Hungary" which was outside of the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary. Habsburg Monarchy gave Holy Roman Emperors, ruled Spain, Netherlands, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, etc... I do not see any Austrian historical map which would name those countries of "historical regions of Austria". However comparing with these examples, those mentioned regions in the problematic map never belonged to any pre-Romanian states (Wallachia and Moldavia), and modern Romanian state.
I do not know any or how many Romanians ever lived in that mentioned "historical regions of Romania" outside Romania, but for example, many Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks, Turks, Russians, etc live in USA, Austria, England, Italy, Germany, etc and nobody say that those regions would be "historical land of the mentioned countries". 
OrionNimrod (talk) 19:16, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, mostly agree. I have to more things to highlight: first, the page which the image subtitle redirects to doesn't say all these territories. Second, Early Middle Ages (from the 5th to the 10th century, so even before the founding of Wallachia and Moldavia) Romanian entities have nothing to do with the states the "historical regions of Romania" (this is how they are called on the map) largely consist of. The article looks a very nice one to me, it shouldn't be ruined by Romanian irredentist dogma. I also suggest deleting the picture. Gyalu22 (talk) 16:36, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
I agree. The map is fictional and misleads the reader. Aristeus01 (talk) 19:23, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Regarding this discussion, it should be known that the virulent nationalism which is currently spreading, is trying to rewrite history by presenting exclusive points of view. In the case of this map, a historical region cannot straddle current borders but must belong to only one present country. To represent it as both Romanian and Hungarian is necessarily ″to claim the Hungarian part″ (and vice versa for the Romanian nationalists). More generally, concerning the history of the Romanians, who were mainly transhumant shepherds before the 13th century, Hungarian historiography denies that they could have been present on north of the Danube before this time, while Bulgarian and Yugoslav historiography denies that they could have been present on south of the Danube, as if this river and the Carpathian mountains were impassable borders. So that all the secondary sources which refer to this, express a view that the speakers of the Eastern Romance languages ​​totally disappeared at the end of Roman rule, for miraculously reappear after a millennium of absence. Of course, this nonsense is not ″fictitious″ and does not ″mislead the reader″.
2A01:CB1C:821F:A400:B9E0:CB11:12AE:C234 09:58, 24 February 2023 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:CB1C:821F:A400:B9E0:CB11:12AE:C234 (talk)  

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