Talk:Romanian language/Archive 5

message: Not archived 4 Dec 2005 because I added a comment to it today. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:58, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The currentversion _is_ a compromise 

message: Lengthy personal attack removed. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:35, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The authority of the user [[Node_ue]] in the matter of languages

message: I have noticed the new map that shows the "graiuri" of Romanian. It's a great map, however it gets a little weird in the Bugeac or southern Bessarabia. According to the last Ukrainian census, Romanians are only 13% or 78.300 of the Bugeac population. According to the same census only about 60.000 of them actually speak Romanian and they are concentrated mostly in the Reni raion(but not in the city itself) and western Izmail Raion. There is also an island of Romanian-speakers in Sarata raion, right next to the city of Sarata itself. See the article of Bugeac for a detailed map of the region and its raions.Constantzeanu 00:29, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this map is very wrong. For one, I wonder what my Romanian colleagues from Miercurea Ciuc would say when put in an area that seems to be in no-man's land (they still speak Romanian, even though they are a minority there). Or the Brasov readers that were assigned to "Graiul Muntenesc". Who on earth created this map? Where does it come from? Saying that in Iasi people are speaking  with Moldovan accent is one thing, but drawing a fronteer between "Graiul Moldovenesc" and "Graiul Muntenesc" is plain dumb. Jacky 09:13, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Also, for English readers it should be explained that "grai"=accent_(linguistics). Otherwise, they mai believe that "grai"=dialect, which is quite different.Jacky 09:19, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done. Jacky 10:05, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New map 

message: Not sure whether this is the right place. But where is the link between the Ur-Latin languages? Portuguese, Romanian, Rhaeto-Romantsch? As a Port (Bra) speaker living in Switzerland, I can understand Romantsch, and can read Romanian OK - pron is hard .... They basically all originated from left behind Roman outposts, innit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.203.236.75 (talk • contribs) 
:Yupe, that's the main ideea. :D --Orioane 22:53, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Question

message: Hi. Why are the Southern Eastern Romance language (Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian classified as dialects in the infobox)? They have articles in their own right, with infoboxes in their own right. And they are not the same language as (Daco)-Romanian. The "Romanian language" article deals with the official language of Romania, Vojvodina (and Moldova), but not with Aromanian and the other southern dialects, which are only mentioned in "Related languages". Therefore, I propose leaving just "ron" as the ISO/DIS 639-3 code.  Ronline ✉ 22:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: But on a slightly different topic, what do you think of the map Ronline?Constantzeanu 23:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I was about to say something about the definition of macrolanguages in the draft ISO 639-3 codes, as this kind of list of codes is given in the infobox in such situations (I've just updated Occitan language's codes: each dialect has its own article and code, but all the codes are listed in the overview). However, the documentation for 'ron' says that it is an individual language (the term used to describe the opposite to macrolanguage; cf. 'oci'). Now I remember when I updated the infobox for this article that this set of codes were already listed (in the old SIL format), so I kept them in. I think there is good reason to follow the language coding documentation and use just 'ron'. --Gareth Hughes 23:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's exactly how it should be, Gareth. Some Romanian linguists consider Aromanian and co to be Romanian "dialects" but they are not mutually intelligible (unless with difficulty) and are hence different languages, part of the same language family (Eastern Romance). Romanian is not a macrolangage and shouldn't be. Romanian's code is "ron" (what a strange code!), and nothing else. The case is comparable to Estonian and Võro, which are two different yet related languages. The ISO-3 is very complicated though, with this whole notion of macrolanguage. But they're in the process of doing a great thing.  Ronline ✉ 08:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would not say that they are less mutually intelligible then HochGerman and Swiss-German.
Still they are mutually inteligible, please check this example:
Comparison: Aromanian versus Romanian
The following text is given for comparison in Aromanian and in Romanian, with an English translation. The word choice in the Romanian version was such that it matches the Aromanian text, although in modern Romanian other words might have been more appropriate. The English translation is only provided as a guide to the meaning, with an attempt to keep the word order as close to the original as possible.
Aromanian                                                                                                                                                                                                             	Romanian                                                                                                                                                                                                                  	English
Vocala easti un son dit zburărea-a omlui, faptu cu tritsearea sonoră, libiră sh-fără cheadică, a vimtului prit canalu sonor (adrat di coardili vocali shi ntreaga gură) ică un semnu grafic cari aspuni un ahtari son.	Vocala este un sunet din vorbirea omului, făcut cu trecerea sonoră, liberă şi fără piedică, a vîntului prin canalul sonor (compus din coardele vocale şi întreaga gură) sau un semn grafic care reprezintă un atare sunet.	The vowel is a sound in human speech, made by the sonorous, free and unhindered passing of the air through the sound channel (composed of the vocal chords and the whole mouth) or a graphic symbol corresponding to that sound.
Ashi bunăoară, avem shasili vocali tsi s-fac cu vimtul tsi treatsi prit gură, iu limba poati si s-află tu un loc ică altu shi budzăli pot si sta dishcljisi ună soe ică altă.                                         	Aşa bunăoară, avem şase vocale ce se fac cu vîntul ce trece prin gură, unde limba poate să se afle într-un loc sau altul şi buzele pot să stea deschise un soi sau altul.                                                 	This way, we have six vowels that are produced by the air passing through the mouth, where the tongue can be in one place or another and the lips can be opened in one way or another.
Vocalili pot s-hibă pronuntsati singuri ică deadun cu semivocali i consoani.                                                                                                                                          	Vocalele pot să fie pronunţate singure sau împreună cu semivocale sau consoane.                                                                                                                                           	The vowels can be pronounced alone or together with semivowels or consonants.
Note: sh=ş
-- Bonaparte  talk 11:01, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I think we should wary about the use of the word dialect: it is not a scientific word. It is usual for linguists to use the word language to refer to any instance of a language. The usual argument given for the label dialect is that it is not a "language in its own right". This sort of approach is entirely subjective: languages do not have natural rights. One can speak of a dialect continuum across a language or group of languages, but the labelling of one a dialect is a socio-political statement. That's why SIL uses the rather awkward term macrolanguage to refer to a language that could also be considered a group of individual languages. Therefore, the lack of this term here means the opposite to what has been supposed above: that the modern Eastern Romance languages are sufficiently distinct not to have a generic code. --Gareth Hughes 12:14, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly my point. There is no dialect continuum between Romanian and Aromanian because they're not spoken in a contiguous geographical area. Secondly, Aromanian is also spoken in Romania by Aromanian migrants - over there, there does tend to be more of a continuum. However, the two languages are distinct, according to ISO, according to SIL, according to most linguists. The fact that they're mutually intelligible is true, but they're only mutually intelligible if words between them are equalized etimologically, and even then, this intelligibility isn't 100%. The case is very similar to Estonian and Võro, and to an extent to Lithuanian and Samogitian, the political situation also being the same (i.e. Võro and Samogitian and often considered by Estonian, respectively Lithuanian, to be the same).  Ronline ✉ 01:44, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: On a slightly different subject, I am still awaiting for some response as to the modificatons to the grai map. 
Constantzeanu 15:40, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, will reply on that really soon. Sorry about this - I'm still involved in Talk:Moldovan language, which is really taxing on one's time.  Ronline ✉ 01:44, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Tell me about it.Constantzeanu 02:18, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The southern Eastern Romance languages 

message: This page now says that "grai" means "accent".
This seems to me to be incorrect -- in addition to differences in pronunciations between graiuri (such as piatra -> kiatry or vorbesc -> vorghesc), there are also some (relatively minor) differences in vocabulary, especially referring to animals and plants and names of family members. Between certain graiuri there are also minor grammatical differences.
So, while I agree that the difference between graiul muntenesc and graiul ardelean is certainly not as big as the difference between say Tokyo dialect and Kagoshima dialect of Japanese, it's certainly bigger than a difference in "accent".
English does not have words like Romanian does for such distinctions between speech varieties -- there is no good direct english translation for grai. But sources I've seen in English refer to them as dialects or regional varieties. --Node 01:43, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Assuming the differences go beyond accent, "variety" is a very neutral term. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:55, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I believe there are two different phenomena: accent ("grai") and words with regional spreading ("regionalisme"). Sometimes they overlap over a linguistic space, sometimes they do not. Even if in the Moldavian accent you'd replace "păpuşoi" with "porumb", the accent will still remain: "ghini" instead of "bine" and all the others. Daizus 11:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grai = accent?? 

message: That picture ought to be removed for accuracy reasons. Occitan is Ibero-Romance, not Gallo-Romance and Dalmatian belongs to the "Italic" (or Italo-Dalmatian) division of Italo-Western. I wont dare delete the image and I dont have a remplacement, but someone should replace it. A replacement should also include non-accounted divisions like the Western part of Italo-WEstern first dividing into Gallo-Iberian and Mozarabic. YoungSpinoza 23:59, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Occitan IS Gallo-Romance, see the Occitan page. Old Occitan and Old French were extremely similar languages, their differences being almost entirely in pronounciation.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.209.81.34 (talk) 13:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language tree 

message: In the following sentence in the lead, someone recently made the insertion "and illegally", as highlighted here: "More than 3,000,000 Romanian speakers live legally and illegally as immigrants in Europe and North America." I suspect that the 3 million number is about right for legal immigrants, but I don't see it borne out by the cited source, which instead refers to there being as many as ten million altogether, legal and illegal (I happen to think that is high, but that's another matter). Anyway, either way the sentence seems not to match the citation. Could someone please try to rewrite this carefully, with accurate citation? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:37, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numbers, yet again 

message: More than 3,000,000 Romanian speakers live legally and illegally as immigrants in Europe and North America.
Would "legally and illegally" be considered superfluous information?  I was about to delete it but I'd like some comments first.
68.143.166.174 19:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Legally and illegally" 

message: *Indo-European 
**Italic
***Latino-Faliscan
****Latin
*****Late Latin
******Romance
*******Eastern Romance
********Romanian
---or a variation thereof, Alexander 007 10:23, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We could just start from Romance. I'm sure all readers can find their way to Indo-European if they really really need to. — AdiJapan ☎ 13:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wait, I just noticed that you've put Romance under Latin. That's not right. Romance should go straight after Italic. — AdiJapan ☎ 14:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well... Vulgar Latin is a form of Latin, isn't it? bogdan 14:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Romance directly under Italic? it depends on who you ask. Some say Latin itself is a Romance language, others restrict the term to the descendants of Latin. Bogdan: yeah, Vulgar Latin is a form of Latin; but Vulgar Latin has its own article. I like the tree as it is in the Infobox in the article at the time of my time-stamp here--> Alexander 007 14:12, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, I mean that way, skipping Latin. Only because I think readers will realize that it goes from Italic-->Latin-->Romance (unless you count Latin as a Romance language). Alexander 007 14:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Tree that's too long for a Template

message: User 83.253.19.47 has added "munca" to the examples of loan words from Hungarian. AFAIK, "munka"/"monka" is of Slavic origin (originally meaning "torture" :). - Mentatus 13:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: indeed, it's from Slavic. bogdan 14:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Munca/Munka

message: It might be helpful to have a link to the T-V distinction page and have someone expand on the brief comments about Romanian on that page.  In particular, the existence of dumneata could be seen as creating a three-level (rather than a two-level) distinction.  Maybe someone (hopefully a native speaker?) could add some examples illustrating the use of dumneata and how the commonly accepted usage of this and other forms of address has evolved over the years. Richwales 22:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: T-V distinction

message: The second infobox is covering up the first half of the article. we should change its position.--Hezzy 00:14, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Oversized Template

message: As a native Romanian, although my grasp of the language isn't as good as it should be (I know colloquialisms without knowing the full set of rules in terms of speaking or writing... this comes from learning English at the same time), I've heard that there are a "fair few" Romanians here in Perth, Western Australia. I have no indication of what a "fair few" means, or whether this qualifies Perth to be put on the map of speakers. Maybe someone who knows how to get this kind of data could look into it? --Sumo Sniper 13:58, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Spoken in...

message: I disagree with this edit. Perhaps Eminescu does not belong in the lead, but as almost certainly the language's most famous poet, I think he merits mention in the article. - Jmabel | Talk 03:36, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eminescu 

message: I heard something unexpected while watching a news broadcast from NIT in Moldova (on SCOLA, http://www.scola.org).  As best I could tell, the reporters were identifying their network by using the English pronunciation of the letters NIT (i.e., [ɛnaɪˈti:]).  I heard this several times from different speakers, so I'm pretty sure this is really what they were saying.  Comments?  Richwales 18:45, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would still like to hear any comments on this.  Anyone??  Richwales 01:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

text: It's also because it's "cool" to read the spelling in English. -- AdrianTM 20:50, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alphabet pronunciation 

message: The section "Classification and related languages" strikes me as odd. Cognates to Latin "semper" aren't marked in bold, while apparently not cognates in Romanian are. I thought abot being bold, but I didn't understand the point of the section. Perhaps the Romanian words had evolved from different Classical Latin words than the modern Romance? Does anyone have proper knowledge of Latin and Romanian/Romance etymology to fix the section? 惑乱 分からん 11:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Classification and related languages

message: Is "k" a part of the "original" Romanian alphabet, or is it used onyl to write loanwords (and names)? The problem is that the sound already is represented through either "c" (care) or "ch" (chemare). When an elementary school student, I learned that "k" is only used in loanwords or names, such as "kilogram", or "Kogalniceanu". Is this still the position of the Academy? Dpotop 15:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why is this relevant? Anyway, the answer is that k is a rare letter in Romanian, as you know, and only found in relatively new words. The same goes for w, y, and q. However, I'm not aware of any explicit position of the Romanian Academy on this. — AdiJapan ☎ 16:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  But on w, y, and q, the article clearly states that they are not part of the "original alphabet", whatever this may be. So, I suggest "k" is put in the same class. Dpotop 18:10, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Ok, I added K to the list. In the meantime I found that 1998 DEX confirms that this letter is used in proper nouns and international neologisms . — AdiJapan ☎ 18:39, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alphabet 

message: As per the Official language article, which states that such a status is conferred by "a state, or other legally-defined territory", I cut mention of the Latin Union from the green sidebar. I did this especially because no other Romance language has the Latin Union under its "official in" section, and because the Latin Union is already mentioned twice within the article. If we followed this precedent of listing international organisations under the "official in" heading, the list for (eg) English would be very long indeed. Biruitorul 03:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latin Union 

message: The section about "particularities" states that: "The main particularities Romanian has relative to other languages using the Latin alphabet are" and then lists several things that supposedly fit this category. Of the list, the following items are all also true of Spanish:
# Dialogues are identified with quotation dashes;
# Punctuation signs which follow a text in parentheses always follow the final bracket;
# In titles, only the first letter of the first word is capitalized, the rest of the title using sentence capitalization (with all its rules: proper names are capitalized as usual, etc.).
# Names of months and days are not capitalized (ianuarie "January", joi "Thursday")
# Adjectives derived from proper names are not capitalized (Germania "Germany", but german "German")
I believe, but can't confirm, that at least 4 and 5 are also true of Portuguese. I suspect 2 and 3 are, too. Don't know about 1.
Cheers! Steve Fishboy 04:05, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No.1 I think is not officially correct in Romanian either... although it's widely used. -- AdrianTM 04:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Particularities

message: Targu Mures sau Tirgu Mures?
Somebody arguments? .. not just possibilities ... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.250.59.34 (talk) 09:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about names? 

message: The article says that Polish-style quotation marks are used in Romania. I had thought that this is just a recent trend (owing perhaps to MS Office?), since almost all books published before the advent of computers had German-style double quotation marks. Is there an Academy regulation about this or anything else that might prove the 'correctness' of Polish quotation marks? Waardijner 21:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotation Marks 

message: The article "Romanian language" contains the following sentence: "Initially, there were as many as 12 additional letters, but some of them disappeared in subsequent reforms." My question: Which 12 additional letters were used in the Romanian language? --88.76.238.110 12:42, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romanian alphabet 

message: As the title says, can we please remove things that don't add any real info. Thanks. -- AdrianTM 16:17, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can we please remove nonsense like "national colors"? 

message: I was surprised to see "salut" listed as a common word or phrase equivalent to "hello" in English.  Not because I think it's wrong but just that it seemed from recent experience that "bună" was far more common.  Perhaps this is a difference in formality, where "salut" is more formal (?), but I recently spent two weeks in Romania and everywhere I went -- Cluj, Sighişoara, Bucharest, Sinaia, Brasov -- it was always "bună", "bună ziua", "bună seara" and so forth.  Humbly submitted.
:Well, why do people say that in English they say "hello" I mostly heard "hi"... I guess it depends on region, persons, situation, both are informal, neither are appropriate for using with older persons or in official situation. I guess if two directors meet (if they are friends) they might say "salut" to each other, while if two young people meet they might say "bună". It's not written in stone either...  -- AdrianTM 23:07, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Common words and phrases: bună vs. salut? 

message: I hope you find interesting the paragraph that I last add it. It's about the comparison with non-Romance languages.WallakTalk 18:41, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comparison with non-Romance languages

message: Hi,
Please take a look at Talk:Moeso-Romanian. Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni 14:26, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I deleted it again. It's a made-up term. bogdan 14:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moeso-Romanian 

message: Should we add a paragraph that makes a summary of general characteristics of Romanian? E.g., belongs to Italic branch of the Indo-European language family, is an inflected language, has 3 cases, 3 genders, SVO language, presents T-V distinction, is a syllable-timed language ... and anything else worth mentioning -- otherwise the article reads a little bit more like a history of Romanian and treats insufficiently the actual _linguistic_ aspects of Romanian. -- AdrianTM 01:07, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: General characteristics