Tavi13

Dear eva,

it is true that romanian has a huge amount of loan words from French, southern Slavic , Italian, Hungarian some Turkish and Russian. It is also important to note that Romanian is closest to Latin in terms of grammar, even closer than Italian is to Latin. (this is not an opinion). In fact, Romanian is amongst the furthest romance languages from latin lexically, however in terms of its syntax, it is the closest. "Pure" romanian words, (not auxilliary words) thus, must hale from latin. As in, words inhereted from latin directly to romanian (not italian/french/slavic/turkish to romanian, or any other languages of foreign lexical influence for that matter). This is because Romanian like all romance languages developed from vulgar latin (as you probably know).

I guess what im trying to explain, is that the root of the romanian language is of latin origin. Therefore, since the language was once latin, pure romanian words must also have latin origins (not loan words). However, im not sure about the exact etymology of all the romanian words listed by Dana. But to add to Dana's list of Pure Romanian words:

Cuvinte: words (Latin =Cuventum meaning word)
Inteleg: I understand (classical latin= Intellego)
Si: and (of latin origin with a similar meaning)
a Vorbi/Vorba: to talk/saying (Latin=Verbus meaning word)
Barbat: man (classical latin= barbatus)
Alb/Alba: white (Latin= Albidus)
the list goes on...
all of these words I listed are pure romanian words because they originate straight from latin and are also unique to the Romanian language (no other romance language has these words). with a few exceptions. Such as "si" (pronounced "shee" in english") can also be found in portugese as "ji" (pronounced "jhee" in english) meaning "and" in both Romanian and Portugese.

Sincerly, Tavi

sflor

Hello Tavi!

I don´t understand what do you mean by "pure" words in romanian, but I have to say that you can easily find some words above in Portuguese too. It´s not unique in Romanian language.

Intellego: the noun "inteligência" (intelligence) has its origins in this verb

Verbum, i: we have the noun "verbo" which means "palavra" (word) as you well said

Barbatus, a, um: in Portuguese this word means "barba" (beard)

Albus, a, um: we have this adjective in Portuguese "alvo" masculin and "alva" feminin (white)

"Ji" meaning "and" in Portuguese? I can assure you "and" is written "e" in Portuguese and it´s pronounced as an "i".

Bye!

sflor

__________________
The hard way is the right way.

Tavi13

I apologize, "e" is "and" in Portugese. One of my friends is brazilian and she told me otherwise. but maybe i misunderstood.

Joe Gold

Well, Tavi, I don't really understand the point of your first point. I don't think we ever contested the fact, that Romanian is a romance language. It absolutely is. Now to go so far, and say it is the most romance... I don't know. Can you say something like that about any European language, that it is closer to it's roots than the other? Maybe you can, and I'll bend to that, but I still don't see of trying to demonstrate something like that.

When it comes to the lexical part, such elements can be noted for most romance languages (and you can establish similar theories for most language groups). Actually, there is a number of words heritated from latin, that is common to all romance languages, and then somehow transformed by the given language, in example 'son', 'filius': French 'fils', Romanian 'fiu', Italian 'figlio', Spanish 'hijo' (yes, it comes from 'filius'). And then, you'll find some words taken over by only one or two languages. In example, for the word brother, the French (frère), Italian (fratello) and Romanian (frate) words originate from the same word, while Spanish has the word 'hermano'. There are theories about general tendencies in taking over words from Latin, but all of them have their limits. You'll find special cases and exeptions all the time, because the heritance of words is never logic or systematic. But I really don't know, if you can say that any of the romance languages is closer to Latin. And anywhere, even if I'm wrong, and you can, what's the point of showing this?

Tavi13

sorry, I should have specified what I was trying to explain clearer. I was replying to a post that was written by "Ava" asking for "pure" romanian words. I tried to say that such words are of Latin origin. I also tried to list some of these words that I thought can only be found in Romanian and not any other romance language. That wouldn't make the words neccesarily "pure" but unique to romanian. There exists some latin lexicon unique to all romance languages. But, the ones that I listed are Romanian.

Moreover, I also explained that (if you disregard Sardinian), Romanian is the closest spoken language to latin grammatically. The reason for this is because Romanian retained latin declention and the neuter gendre. These are charecteristics shared only by Romanian, Sardinian (not exactly sure) and Latin. Effectively, Im trying to state the charecteristics of Romanian with respect to its fellow romance languages, and were it stands in the romance family. If I gave the impression of me belittling other romance languages, I apologize, this is not my intent. I sincerely, love all romance languages and have no subjectional prefference.