Table of Contents
Tabula Gratulatoria xv
Abbreviations, Etymological Dictionaries and References xvi
a. Abbreviations...............................................................................................................................xvi
b. Etymological and Bilingual Dictionaries with Etymological Relevance.........................................xxi
c. General References (Studies, Books)...........................................................................................xxiv
d. Author’s Studies and Books......................................................................................................xxxiii
Chapter I. General Considerations 1
A New Etymological Dictionary of Romanian. Why? .............................................................................6
Histories of the Romanian Language....................................................................................................12
A Historical View of the ‘Romanian Etymological Problem’.................................................................14
Thracians, Romanians, Albanians, Slavs: Ethnicity in Central and Southeast Europe............................17
General Problems..........................................................................................................................17
The Languages Spoken in the Antiquity........................................................................................19
The Slavic Homeland....................................................................................................................22
The Structure of the Slavic Vocabulary..........................................................................................29
Albanian and Albanians................................................................................................................31
‘The Homeland of the Romanians’................................................................................................36
The Vlachs (Vlakhs). Are They ‘A Kind of Romanians’ or ‘Genuine Romanians’? .................................38
Back to Linguistics...............................................................................................................................41
The ‘Balkan Linguistic Union’ (Balkansprachbund).......................................................................47
Romanian, Its Origins and Its Neighbors......................................................................................49
The Structure of the Romanian Vocabulary...................................................................................55
Chapter II. The Strata of the Romanian Vocabulary 59
The Romanian Language: Its Stratification and the Statistical Data......................................................60
The Latin Heritage...............................................................................................................................61
The Substratum Heritage......................................................................................................................62
Words Shared with Albanian of Non- Latin Origin...............................................................................62
The Slavic Influence.............................................................................................................................63
Statistical Data...................................................................................................................................63
1.a. The Old Latin Heritage..........................................................................................................63
1.b. The New Modern Borrowings of Latin Origin.......................................................................64
2. The Chaotic Group Labeled ‘Unknown Etymology’ (‘et. nec.’) in DEX.................................65
3. The Romanian- Albanian Common Heritage..........................................................................65
4. Re- organizing the ‘et. nec.’ Data as Substratum Elements......................................................66
5. The Slavic Influence from the Statistical Perspective...............................................................66
6. The Hungarian (Magyar) Influence........................................................................................67
7. The Turkish Influence............................................................................................................67
The Swadesh List for Romanian...........................................................................................................67
An Alternative List of 100 Roots...................................................................................................75
Analysis of the Two Lists...............................................................................................................85
Analysis of the Three Scenarios......................................................................................................87
Chapter III. Place- Names and Personal Names 89
Place Names.......................................................................................................................................89
Personal Names..................................................................................................................................94
Chapter IV. The Romanian Language: Structure, Heritage, Etymological Problems 97
A Brief Synthesis.................................................................................................................................97
The Nominal Sphere............................................................................................................................97
Noun.................................................................................................................................................97
Adjective and Adverb.........................................................................................................................100
Pronoun...........................................................................................................................................101
Article..............................................................................................................................................103
The Definite Article of Nouns and Adjectives......................................................................104
The Definite Article in Albanian v. Romanian.....................................................................105
The Definite Article of Demonstratives and Adverbs...........................................................107
Two Exceptional Forms: tată/ tata ‘father’ and popă/ popa ‘a priest’......................................108
The Definite Article of Personal Names...............................................................................109
Summing Up......................................................................................................................110
Verb.................................................................................................................................................110
The Verbs a fi ‘to be’, a aveá ‘to have’ and the Suppletive Forms a vrea, a voi ‘to wish, will’..........112
Conclusions................................................................................................................................115
Numeral...........................................................................................................................................116
Non- Inflected Forms..........................................................................................................................116
Derivational Means............................................................................................................................117
Reduplication...................................................................................................................................117
Affixes: Prefixes and Suffixes...............................................................................................................118
Conclusions.....................................................................................................................................120
Chapter V. Romanian Phonetics and Phonology 121
The Specific Vowels of Romanian.......................................................................................................122
The Consonantal System of Romanian...............................................................................................126
Diphthongs and Triphthongs.............................................................................................................127
The Phonemes [oe] and [oe̯]................................................................................................................127
Letter i.............................................................................................................................................128
Historical Phonetics...........................................................................................................................128
Some Basic Problems of Phonetic Evolution...............................................................................129
Colloquial Latin..........................................................................................................................130
Tentative Phonetic Reconstructions for Thracian................................................................................133
Vocalism...................................................................................................................................133
Consonantism.............................................................................................................................134
The Indo- European Sonants ḷ ṛ ṃ ṇ............................................................................................136
A General Tableau.......................................................................................................................136
The Slavic Phonetic Inventory............................................................................................................137
Vocalism...................................................................................................................................137
Consonantism.............................................................................................................................137
Interferences Between Proto- Romanian, Thracian and Slavic..............................................................138
Treatment of Proto- Romanian Vowels................................................................................................138
Treatment of Proto- Romanian Consonants........................................................................................139
Addenda 143
I. A Note on Romanian Spelling.....................................................................................................143
II. A Comparative Analysis of the Transcriptions Used for the Romanian Dialects...........................145
PART II
The Etymological Dictionary in alphabetical order 153
PART III
Addenda 529
Glossary...........................................................................................................................................529
– Prehistoric Roots.............................................................................................................................536
– Pre- Indo- European Roots................................................................................................................539
– Proto- Boreal (‘Nostratic’) Roots......................................................................................................554
– Indo- European Roots......................................................................................................................575
