Old Romanian language

Historical stage of the Romanian language

A page from Hurmuzaki Psalter

Old Romanian (Romanian: română veche) is the stage or period of Romanian language from the 15th or 16th century until 1780. It is set between Common Romanian, the Early Middle Ages language spoken by the ancestors of today's Romanians, Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, and Istro-Romanians, and Modern Romanian, the period of Romanian language set in post-Enlightenment times. It continues the intermediary stage when the dialects known as ‘Daco-Romanian’ (also known in Romanian language literature as graiuri), to which standard Romanian belongs, developed from Common Romanian.

## Overview[edit]

Attested words in documents written in Slavonic, Latin, or Hungarian over the current territory of Romania prior to the 16th century bridge the period between Common Romanian and the first written documents. The literary stage begins with the oldest preserved Romanian writings such as Neacșu's letter and the Rhotacizing Texts.[1] Religious literary texts written in Romanian appear first during this period of time, followed by historical chronicles and the popular literary texts, and translations such as the narratives Varlaam şi Ioasaf and Alexandria. The period is characterized by the advent of the printed books and the almost exclusive use of the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet.[2]

## Pre-literary and literary history[edit]

Main article: History of the Romanian language

See also: Common Romanian

In the 9th century Proto-Romanian already had a structure very distinct from the other Romance languages, with major differences in grammar, morphology and phonology and was already a member of the Balkan language area. It contained around a hundred loans from Slavic languages, including words such as trup (body, flesh),[3] as well as some Greek language loans via Vulgar Latin, but no Hungarian and Turkish words, as these peoples had yet to arrive in the region. In the tenth century or some earlier time, Common Romanian split in two geographically separated groups. One was in the northern part of the Balkan peninsula (in a large area between the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea), from which the Daco-Romanian branch of Common Romanian subsequently formed. The other one was in the south of the peninsula (Dardania, Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace), where the Aromanian branch of Common Romanian presumably was spoken.[4]

Neacșu's letter is the oldest surviving document written in Old Romanian that can be precisely dated

From the split in the 10th or 11th century and before the 16th century, the language is thought to have been divided in varieties, without a standardised form. The earliest writings seem to have started in the fourteenth century but none of them have survived until today.[5] Old Church Slavonic was primarily used instead by both the church and the Princely Chancery, in both Moldavia and Wallachia \- the two countries founded in the same century - for administrative and cultural purposes.[6] The oldest preserved texts are Neacșu's letter which can be dated to 29th or 30 June 1521 based on the historical account it describes, and a number of manuscripts known together as Rhotacizing Texts (i.e.: showing rhotacism of intervocalic /n/).[7] The Rhotacizing Texts (Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, Codicele Voronețean, Psaltirea Voronețeană, Psaltirea Scheiană, and others) are religious writings and carry evidence of being translations of manuscripts written in the other languages vehiculated of the region. The four texts were located in Moldavia and are copies of manuscripts from the Banat-Hunedoara area.[8] Of them, Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, a translation of the Psalms, has been dated to the last decade of the fifteenth-century - first decade of the sixteenth century by watermark, making it the oldest preserved manuscript in Romanian.[9]

From the 16th century onwards Romanian starts to be used in the chronicles of Moldavia.[10] Probably drawing from Letopiseţul de la Bistriţa, a manuscript in Old Church Slavonic narrating main Moldavian events from 1359 up to 1519,[11] the nobleman Grigore Ureche (ca. 1590-1647) writes the first chronicle in Romanian, recognising the linguistic connection between Latin and Romanian, and the unity of the language spoken in Moldavia and across the Carpathian Mountains.[12] His work was continued by Miron Costin and Ion Neculce, and it peaked with Dimitrie Cantemir who was the first to write an allegory, a biography, and a novel (Istoria ieroglifică)[8] in Romanian.[13] In Wallachia the historical writing develops later and is represented mainly by Stolnic Constantin Cantacuzino (ca. 1639-1716) and monk Radu Popescu (ca. 1655-1729), and Romanian language writing will even regress during Phanariote rule in particular in the epistolary segment.[14]

### Printed literature[edit]

The room and printing press of Deacon Coresi, Brașov

The printing press was introduced to Wallachia during the reign of Radu IV the Great (1467 - 1508), and placed in Târgoviște then the capital of the country. The leading work was done by Hieromonk Makarije and the first books, written in Slavonic, were the religious texts Liturgy Book from 1508, the Oktoih from 1510, and the Four Gospels of Târgoviște from 1512.[15]

Numerous printing houses functioned over the next two centuries in cities like Alba Iulia, Brașov, Bucharest, Buzău, Câmpulung, Cluj-Napoca, Iași, Sebeș, Sibiu, Snagov, Târgoviște. Some books were printed outside the Romanian language area for example the Psalter versified by Archbishop Dosoftei of Moldova was printed in Univ in 1673, and translations from Italian and German were printed in Milan around 1760 by the Romanian printer Vlad Boţulescu.[8]

## Internal history[edit]

### Phonology[edit]

Main article: Romanian phonology

Old Romanian had a phonemic inventory of seven vowel and twenty-nine consonants, yet differences existed from one subperiod to another.[8]

#### Vowels[edit]

Stressed [ə] from Common Romanian developed into the vowel [ɨ] in the pre-literary stage of the language. The Old Romanian vowel system is preserved in the current phonology. [16] The asyllabic final sound [u]'s devoicing was not complete in Old Romanian.[8]

| Front | Central | Back

|
|
|

Close | i | ɨ | u
Mid | e | ə | o
Open |  | a |

#### Consonants[edit]

Old Romanian retained the consonants [ʎ] and [ɲ] from Common Romanian, but with a limited distribution, mainly in the Banat-Hunedoara-Oltenia area. It also had two consonants characterized as intense, after which the front vowels [e] and [i] underwent velarization.[8]

| Labial | Dental/
Alveolar | Post-
alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal

|
|
|
|
|
|

central | sibilant
Stop | voiceless | p | t |  |  | c | k |
voiced | b | d |  |  | ɟ | ɡ |
Affricate | voiceless |  |  | t͡s | t͡ʃ |  |  |
voiced |  |  | d͡z | d͡ʒ |  |  |
Fricative | voiceless | f |  | s | ʃ |  |  | h
voiced | v |  | z | ʒ |  |  |
Nasal | m | n |  |  | ɲ | nˠ |
Trill |  | r |  |  |  | rˠ |
Approximant | lateral |  | l |  |  | ʎ |  |
central |  |  |  |  | j | w |

#### Allomorphy[edit]

Like in Modern Romanian, there were complex patterns of allomorphy, in particular affecting the lexical root. Voiced dental alveolar affricate [d͡z] > [z] is found in Muntenia, Oltenia, and central Transylvanian varieties (as well as in the Istro-Romanian and the Megleno-Romanian dialects) but not overall in Moldova, Maramureș, Banat, and in the Aromanian dialects.[8]

Particular sound changes took place in Old Romanian such as merger of [ɲ] and [ʎ] as a glide and reclosure of the diphthong [ea] before an unstressed [e] (for example leage became lege), and as such in Modern Romanian the [ea] alternant no longer appears when followed by [e]. Vowel centralization where [i], [e], [ea] acquired centralized articulations in the form [ɨ], [ə], [a] also occasionally took a particular forms in Old Romanian either as sporadically triggered by sibilants and by the affricates [t͡s] and [d͡z] (*țeri > țări) or affecting mid front vowels triggered by immediately preceding labial consonants but not when the immediately following vowel is a front one (*vesku > vâsc ‘mistletoe’ but *veneri > vineri ‘Friday’). Unlike in Megleno-Romanian and the northern and western varieties of Aromanian, in Old Romanian preceding yod or central vowels acted on following central vowels which become fronted (for example cară \- cărând).[8]

### Morphology[edit]

The complex morphology of Romanian was already developed in Old Romanian period, with its vestigial inflexional case system comprising two case forms and determiners and desinences that mark the vocative, both in the singular and in the plural. Overall, derivational morphology in Romanian tends to be of a more agglutinative character than inflexional morphology.[17]

Compared to the modern language, Old Romanian had a higher degree of unpredictability of plural endings with feminine nouns taking either -e or -i (inemă–inemi, but grădină–grădine) and neuter nouns either -e or -uri (veștmânt \- veștminte/veșmânturi). Verbal forms showed differences compared to the standard language. The simple perfect presented two variants in the first century of the period: the one preserved, with stress on the inflectional ending (făcui \- I did, mersei \- I went), and one with stress on the root (faciu \- I did, merșu \- I went). Synthetic and analytic forms were used for pluperfect, imperfect, and conditional for example mersere vs ară mearge could both express the conditional "she/he/they would go".[8]

## References[edit]

1. ^ Iliescu, Maria (2021-05-26), "History of the Romanian Lexicon", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.471, ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5, retrieved 2024-03-03
2. ^ Hill, Virginia; Alboiu, Gabriela, "Preface", Verb Movement and Clause Structure in Old Romanian, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0191056146
3. ^ Brâncuș, Grigore (2005). Introducere în istoria limbii române] [Introduction to the History of Romanian Language]. Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine. p. 62\. ISBN 973-725-219-5.
4. ^ Vrabie, Emil (2000). An English-Aromanian (Macedo-Romanian) Dictionary. Romance Monographs. p. 21\. ISBN 1-889441-06-6.
5. ^ Maiden, Martin; Dragomirescu, Adina; Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela; Uţă, Oana; Zafiu, Rodica (2021-03-23). The Oxford History of Romanian Morphology. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198829485.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-186798-9.
6. ^ Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela, ed. (2016-03-03). The Syntax of Old Romanian. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712350.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-178089-9.
7. ^ Iliescu, Maria (2021-05-26), "History of the Romanian Lexicon", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.471, ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5, retrieved 2023-08-22
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Pană Dindelegan 2016.
9. ^ Ledgeway, Adam; Maiden, Martin, eds. (2016-06-30). The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Oxford University PressOxford. p. 95\. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199677108.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-967710-8.
10. ^ Kellogg, Frederick (13 June 2020). "A history of Romanian historical writing". Academia.edu. p. 3. Retrieved 4 August 2023.
11. ^ Czamanska, Ilona (2016-09-13), "Letopiseţul de la Bistriţa", Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, Brill, retrieved 2024-03-04
12. ^ Kellogg 2020, p. 3.
13. ^ Kellogg 2020, p. 3-6.
14. ^ Kellogg 2020, p. 7-10.
15. ^ Erich, Agnes (2010). "The Appearance of Printing Activity in the Romanian Space: an Integral Part of a European Phenomenon". academia.edu. Retrieved 6 March 2024.
16. ^ Sala, Marius (2012). De la Latină la Română] [From Latin to Romanian]. Editura Pro Universitaria. p. 147\. ISBN 978-606-647-435-1.
17. ^ Maiden 2021. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMaiden2021 (help)