Romanian Language Evolution: Transylvania's Influence & Latin Character Adoption, Study notes of Linguistics

Download Romanian Language Evolution: Transylvania's Influence & Latin Character Adoption and more Study notes Linguistics in PDF only on Docsity! RUMUNŲ SK Alexandru Niculescu, Outline history of the Romanian language, Bucharest: Editura ştiințifică şi enciclopedică, 1981. Dar čia tinka Elizabeth Close… STANDARTIZUOTI VARIANTAI “The Romanian Language up to circa 1650. In the history of the Romanian language, what we usually call “the 16th century” is actually a period which lasted until 1640 or 1650.” (Niculescu 1981, 95). “The structure of Romanian in the 16th century and up to the middle of the next (1640 or 1656) reveals a close connection between the literary texts and the popular dia//lects spoken in regions where they were written. One may distinguish one group of “Northern” texts (The Rhotacizing Texts, cf. supra) and another, of “Southern” texts (the printings before Coresi, his own, and the popular books of Braşov, Sibiu, Orăştie, in South and South West Transylvania).” (Niculescu 1981, 95-96). “In this way, the structure of Romanian in the 17th-18th centuries proved equally open to the vernacular spoken in the Romanian regions and to the eastern Greek-Turkish culture. Thus there came into being a fruitful process of enriching and modernizing the Language of Romanian culture.” (Niculescu 1981, 113). “The Transylvanian School. (,,Şcoala Ardeleană”). The 1780-1840 period in the history of the Romanian language marked a broad opening towards Western Europe in general and towards the Latin-Romance West in particular. To survey the evolution of Romanian during that time means first of all to return to the sources of a process begun in the late 18th century (1770-1780) in Transylvania and continued d i f f e r e n t l y though concomitantly in the three Romanian regions. We could call it the integration of the modern Romanian language and culture into Latin-Romance Western Europe.” (Niculescu 1981, 114). “Transylvania; in the latter, violent social, national, political and religious upheavals adapted Romanian culture to Latin-Romance Europe and from the very beginning vested in it the role of awakening and “enlightening” the Romanian nation.” (Niculescu 1981, 114). NACIONALINĖ SAVIMONĖ “The West European spirit left its mark in the political, religious and cultural events which preceded the emergence of the Transylvanian School.” (Niculescu 1981, 116). “O. Densusianu points out the role of the religious union with the Roman Catholic church promoted by Austria in Transylvania in the 17th-18th centuries. It brought a number of cultural advantages for the Romanians, who thus acquired the right to benefit from higher instructions.” (Niculescu 1981, 116). “With the setting up of “Latin schools” in Transylvania, the “Dominium of Blaj” (1738), a monastery and then, in 1743, also a school, where […] (20 youths should be kept and taught Latin) under the direct guidance of Bishop Inocențiu Clain and with the approval of the Austrian Emperor Charles VI, there came to Transylvania the idea of an Abstand, of the Romanians’ specific identity vis-à- vis other nations, in effect the acknowledgement of their phonetic spelling: he proposed â, ê, î for [î]; he wrote [ea], [ia] as they are written nowadays; he noted [che], [ghe] in the contemporary spelling, changing the cl, gl clusters; he suppressed initial h- without phonetic value, and so on.” (Niculescu 1981, 119). “In Transylvania in the early 19th century the idea was born and grew (gradually winning over the consciousness of all Romanian scholars) of abandoning the Slavonic alphabet in Romanian writing and substituting the Latin one for it.” (Niculescu 1981, 120). ANTRAS REGIONAS: VALAKIJA, MOLDAVIJA “The Romance Westernization of the Romanian Language and Culture in Wallachia. It was in an entirely different way, though during the same period, that the orientation towards the Romance West in Wallachia and Moldavia occurred. The first characteristic of those cultural areas was slowness in the development of consciousness of cultural contacts with Europe.” (Niculescu 1981, 120). “Unlike the similar phenomenon in Transylvania, te: approach of the Principalities to the European Romance world took place through Orthodox influence” (Niculescu 1981, 121). “The orientation of Wallachian and Moldavian bishops and Moldavian bishops and boyars towards the Chest Book place slowly, cantuously and deviously: the resistance of the old Eastern culture, supported by the advocates of Orthodoxy, was rather strong and any step taken towards the West could have been interpreted as an opposition to state authority. Unlike the reforms in Transylvania, under the supervision of state authority, the process of Westernization and modernization was but modest in nature.” (Niculescu 1981, 123). KITŲ KALBŲ MINĖJIMAS On the other hand, this innovating ,,duh sfranțozesc” (= French spirit) had been introduced f r o m a b o v e in the Moldavian-Wallachian society of the 18th century!” (Niculescu 1981, 123). „In the language of culture, Transylvania sometimes differs from Wallachia and Moldavia, in which provinces the philosophical and political terminology was borrowed from Modern Greek.“ (Niculescu 1981, 125). „Thus, in the Romanian Principalities, the literary language was oriented to the West through a few personalities who studied modern Greek culture, but also through direct contact with Italy. Equally true is the fact that the Westernization of the educated Language took place through the limited register of science – and even through only one section of this field. It is significant to compare the intensely Latinized vocabulary of mathematics used ill Transylvania with the Italianized one popularized in Moldavia at the same time // [126] by the writings of Amfilohie Hotiniul.“ (Niculescu 1981, 125-126). „Around the year 1805 the penetration of Western Romance elements into Romanian culture was i n t e n s i f i e d. In our opinion, that cultural and linguistic phenomenon was linked to a particularly significant fact, insufficiently emphasized so far: the appointment of the Romanians Samuel Micu, Gheorghe Șincai and then Petru Maior to the position of ,,ţenzor și revizor,, (censor and superviser) for Romanian books at the printing-house of Buda university.] (Niculescu 1981, 127). „From 1805-1806 up to 1812-1820, Transylvania gradually and ever more intensely entered the Western cultural sphere, in direct contact with Latin and Romance Europe.“ (Niculescu 1981, 129). „Under such circumstances in the development of modern Romanian culture, Tudor Vladimirescu's revolt of 1821 took place, and its serious national and social significance soon yielded political consequences. The year 1822 saw the end of the Phanariot epoch and Grigore IV Ghica and Ioniţă Sandu Sturdza ascended the thrones of Wallachia and Moldavia respectively, triggering off an important chain of events. The necessity for the Romanian people’s transition to modern times became fundamental.“ (Niculescu 1981, 129). “Ion Heliade Rădulescu. It was under such condititions [sic!] of exposure of Romanian culture to the Latin world (in Transylvania) and to the Romance world (in Wallachia) and of crystallization - through ever increasing circulation and through fusion - of a kind of national culture that required the unification of the various methods for modernizing the literary language, that Ion Heliade Rădulescu emerged as a personality of Wallachia in the late 1830's. Heliade - as he is called for short - was a writer as well as a theorist who considered that the literary language […] (must be the same with all learned men of that nation); […] (whoever intends to bring the Romanians along the road of civilization and salvation must mould and perfect their language).” (Niculescu 1981, 131). “Such were the reasons why, after the Transylvanian scholars, he too began “building” the language of Romanian culture, though this time in Wallachia. But, proceeding selectively and advancing modern solutions, Heliade wished […] (that we should unite in writing and create a common language). It is with Heliade that the “cultivation” of literary Romanian actually began: […] ("TO cultivate a language means to purge it of whatever hinders its advance"), i.e. operations for establishing the n o r m for modern and unified literary Romanian.” (Niculescu 1981, 131). 147 “Ion Heliade Rădulescu on the other hand was a philologist much preoccupied by the idea that Romanian was in every way to resemble its good sister - Italian. After 1839, Heliade attempted Italian purism, the Italianization of Romanian. In his work Paralelism între limba română și italiană (Parallelisms Between Romanian and Italian, 1840) he asserted that Italian and Romanian were dialects of the same language, initially spoken in Italy; therefore he tried to replace Slavonic, Turkish, Hungarian and Greek elements by Italian ones” (Niculescu 1981, 147). “Following the Akkerinan Convention (1826) and the Adrianople Treaty (1829) between Russia and Turkey, the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia found themselves under a Russian protectorate.” (Niculescu 1981, 148). “The close cultural contacts between Transylvania and Romania caused the ideas of the “Transylvanian School” (particularly Petru Maior's) to spread beyond the Carpathians into Wallachia and Moldavia after 1840, upholding puristic Latinizing tendencies.” (Niculescu 1981, 149). “in 1879 the Romanian Academy - a national scientific forum made up of Wallachians, Moldavians, Transylvanians and Bucovineans (and even of Macedonian-Romanians). The Romanian Academy included historians, philologists, intellectuals and writers such as Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Timctei Cipariu, Gheorghe Bariţiu, Vasile Alecsandri, Constantin Negruzzi, August Treboniu Laurian, I. C. Massim, C. A. Rosetti, Titu Maiorescu, A. Hurmuzaki and I. G. Sbiera, V. A. Urechia and Ion Caragiani.” (Niculescu 1981, 151). “After long discussions, in 1869, the Romanian Academy established an orthographic system derived from the etymologizing ideas of the Latinizers - di, si, ti, ci instead of z, ș, ţ, the use of accents as well as the apostrophe marking the articulated form – cas’a (=the house) - and double letters justified etymologically, etc.) In 1866, Titu Maiorescu had published his study Despre scrierea limbei române (On the Writing of Romanian) an issue to which he reverted in 1867 and 1873. He proposed the establishment of the phonetic principle in Romanian spelling (with the preservation of some etymological elements); he was the first to assert that letters are employed to write down semantically significant sounds, phonemes (“essentially logical signs, not merely phonetical ones”) thus grounding phonological writing in Romanian. Titu Maiorescu’s pro-//[152]posals in matters of spelling were officially adopted in 1880-1881. Having been criticized by O. Densusianu, in 1889 they were reconsidered by a board made up of Titu Maiorescu, O. Densusianu, Ion Bianu and Iacob Negruzzi and brought even closer to the phonetical principle; thus they were rendered official by the Romanian Academy’s decision of 1904. But even then there were deviations from phonetical principles justified by “etymological necessities”. In 1932, Romanian orthographic norms were again altered under tee guidance of Sextil Pușcariu, while in 1953 an Academy board made up of Alexandru Graur, Iorgu Iordan and Emil Petrovici removed further aspects of etymological writing. Current Romanian spelling was actually grounded by Tito Maiorescu.” (Niculescu 1981, 151-152).