Talk:Romanian language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Romanian language article.
Article policies
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Romanian language was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: October 4, 2007
This article has been reviewed by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team.
Version 0.7
 This article has been selected for Version 0.7 and subsequent release versions of Wikipedia.
Other languages WikiProject Echo has identified Romanian language as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the Romanian or Spanish language Wikipedias.
Archive
Archives

Contents

[edit] Failed GA nomination

Even though the article has made some good information and does contain a lot of information with references, there are a few points which need to be addressed before I can really call it a good article. I'm going to give examples of problems by going through the good article criteria one by one:

  1. well written
    There are some seriously listy and very technical sections in the article. "Grammar" is an example of a fairly concise summary that uses terminology that might not be known to everybody but isn't excessive. "Phonology" is a whole different matter. It is msotly a long list of (certain) sounds with an excess of IPA notation and the likes. The only comparison is historical and related to Latin and the info on phonotactics is also very selective.
  2. factually accurate and verifiable
    I'm not an expert on Romanian, but I do have some concerns about what to me look like excessesive generalizations or outright speculation. Here are some examples:
    • "...Romanian was probably the first language that split from Latin..." - How is this "split" actually defined here? Is this supported by linguists?
    • "'Romanian' in a general sense envelops four hardly mutually intelligible speech varieties..." - Is this really the most common definition of Romanian? Isn't the problem that "Daco-Romanian" is actually just a more specific term for what most people call "Romanian"? Please note that the perspective needs to be a bit greater than just the debate among the Romanian academia.
    • "...the high homogenity and uniformity of the language." Not an outright challenge to the accuracy of the statement on my part, but it would be nice to know what the statement i based on.
    Through I am no fan of footnote counting, there are some statements (and even entire sections) that are screaming for even a minimum of reference and I will fact tag these accordingly.
  3. broad in coverage
    Largely, yes. There are at least minimal mentions of all the linguistic aspects one would expect from an article like this, but some aspects are heavily over-represented while others are largely ignored. "Dialects" is mostly concerned with defining the general dichotomy of language vs. dialect and has minimal information about the actual dialects and nothing on the standard language. "Classification", "Writing system" and "Geographic distribution" take up more than half the article, and in the last section, most of it is a very tedious read on the finer points of the legal status of Romanian. Especially the latter is a very obvious example of undue weight which is obviously a result of strong nationalist sentiment.
  4. neutral
    As far as I can tell, yes, except for the undue (or just overly zealous) coverage of the legal status of the langauge.
  5. stable
    The article is edit-protected and I've seen some overly aggressive edit summaries without any serious attempts at discussion from certain parties.
  6. properly illustrated
    It has plenty of pics, but unfortunately these are still very much focused on nationalist-political information, which really isn't merited. At least not in this article. A bonus, though by no means a requirement, would be some samples. Preferably from a text of some sort, like a poem or an excerpt of some well-known novel.

I'm going to help out with tweakage over the next few days, but I can't really bring the article up to GA quality with some copyediting. If anyone wishes to renominate the article again, they are welcome to contact me again for a reassessment of the article.

Peter Isotalo 14:55, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that literally all of these complaints don't need to be fixed for the article to be receive a GA status, just the really major issues. If all of the above are addressed, I'd say the article will probably be up for a featured article nomination.
Peter Isotalo 08:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with all the points you made. Hope somebody with better editing skills than me will jump in. -- AdrianTM 12:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Error in Italian phrase on this page

The Italian phrase should be "Lei apre sempre la finestra prima di cenare" Please change this! /Jannika —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jannikaojeda (talk • contribs) 22:51, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too many maps that don't really add info

I think we have too many maps that are not really useful, for example we have two maps for Vojvodina when in Vojvodina there are only 0.1% of the Romanian speakers of the world. This constitutes under any criteria WP:Undue weight. Also, I don't think it's very relevant to Wikipedia to have a map where we show areas were 1-3% or less than 1% of the people learn Romanian as a second language. Also, the map of "places where Romanian is taught as foreign language" seems highly non-Encyclopedic to me, where are the sources? The author of those maps showed all the traces of ownership and accused me of abusive edits right from the start, even more, he continued that behaviour in my talk page choosing to ignore WP:AGF completely, therefore, I choose not to remove the maps a second time, since this can be interpreted as a personal war, but I'd like to see the opinion of other editors: do we really need two Vojvodina maps in this article? Is it undue weight or not? -- AdrianTM 00:57, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I whole-heartedly agree with Adrian. These maps belong in a sub-article on the official/legal status of Romanian, not the main article itself. This may be a controversial topic, but it does not deserve excess coverage just because a few people feel very strongly about it. This edit along with its edit summary is very uncompromising and needlessly beliggerant.
Peter Isotalo 14:55, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Anybody else? -- AdrianTM (talk) 01:13, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
the yellow/green map with Vojvodina has little weight in the context. should be only in the sub-article Nergaal (talk) 01:43, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I know this is an old topic, but I agree that the map that shows where Romanian is taught as a second language is not needed. I haven't seen any such map in any other language article and think it clutters the page. Kman543210 (talk) 02:45, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Latin origins

Please note that latin declensions had six cases, not seven as it is said at the beginning of "History" chapter. You can verify it by searching for the latin language rules on Wikipedia.

Ciocionheart 01:55, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Latin language

I apologize: on "Latin declension" in Wikipedia it is said that latine had seven cases, mentioning the locative. It is also said that it is marginal, and this is the reason, I guess, for in the "Latin" page it is not mentioned. Ciocionheart 02:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] H is never aspirated

The article currently says:

h always represents /h/. It is never aspirated, nor mute.

I'm a little confused as to what this means. Doesn't /h/ represent an aspiration? How can it not be aspirated, unless it is mute? Grover cleveland 04:10, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

It's like in "Hartford, Hereford, and Hampshire", whene "hurricanes hardly ever happen". Dpotop 19:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Though I got my Linguistics Ph.D. 30 years ago or so, I am 'a bit' confused, too, when reading the explanation above — do we have to understand that this /h/ is neither a voiceless (aspirated) consonant [h] nor a mute [∅] (like in Spanish, French and others), but the voiced glottal fricative [ɦ]? If so, why not indicate it simply this way? Or am I too old to understand anything? — Kanġi Oĥanko (talk) 22:35, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Romanian /h/ is usually the voiceless glottal fricative. Depending on the phonetic context, /h/ is sometimes realized as the voiceless palatal fricative (for example when followed by /i/) or as the voiceless velar fricative (for example at the end of the word). — AdiJapan ☎ 05:50, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I think the sentence should be rephrased as something like "h always represents /h/; it is never silent, as in other Romance languages like Spanish and French". —Angr If you've written a quality article... 13:41, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Done. — AdiJapan ☎ 16:23, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Though "H" is always pronounced, it has dropped from words that are of Latin origin (om, omolog, oră, onoare, etc.). In modern Romanian, "H" always (as far as I know?) comes in words that are not of Latin origin (old Romanian words, either Slavic, borrowed from other nearby languages, or possibly from whatever language was spoken by Romanians before the Romans came). Ssmith619 (talk) 05:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Language Map

There are major flaws with the map: an exagerated number of speakers in Timoc and Bugeac. Plus the person that edited the previous version went over the borders, damaging the quality of the map. Dapiks (talk) 21:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I had the occasion to travel extensively during the last 10 years in the areas of Timok and Bugeac and I can testify that alot of local people are speaking Romanian and alot of people are learning Romanian, especially because it is increasingly a prestigious language to do bussines in and to have acces of higher culture. Especially after 2000, the fast growing economy of Romania and the penetration of the Romanian media in those areas are boosting the number of the local Romanian-speakers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.105.123.228 (talk) 19:42, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New grammar rules?

I strongly believe that there should be a list with the most important changes to the grammar rules. I really not up-to-date to the new modifications and I would love to see a list of them. I have added a link that seemed to be quite comprehensive. Please add more links like this one, and if you know enough information about this, then please add it to the article - possibly a new section? But if you add it to the article, please do not decrease its quality.

(Romanian) [1] Nergaal (talk) 00:48, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dacian and Balto-Slavic

I took out this statement:

Dacian was probably close to the neighbouring Balto-Slavic branches of Indo-European.

Not enough support for this statement and the article on Dacian itself makes no mention of it. Besides, how can a language be close to two language groups that really have only a few similarities to each other and are rather controversially placed together? Kasnie 07:46, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, Balto-Slavic isn't really controversial among linguists, it's only controversial among Baltic nationalists. Baltic and Slavic have far too much in common for them to be anything but descendants of a common post-Indo-European ancestor. But I agree the claim that Dacian (about which next to nothing is known) is close to Balto-Slavic is not sufficiently well sourced to be included at this point. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 16:10, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lingustic typology

I think we're in much need of a classification of Romanian according to linguistic typology.
The current version of the article deals almost exclusively with etymology, vocabulary, and similarities with other languages. We do have, however, some info about word order in Romanian grammar.
So please, can someone with much more linguistics knowledge than mine, do it?
There is also no word on t-v distinction. But maybe just a link to the article t-v distinction will do. --Disconnect 6 (talk) 12:20, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree, I think there were a bit about T-V distinction but that probably got removed. Here's the info T-v_distinction#Romanian for anybody who wants to edit, I'm not sure where it should go, we probably need only to mention that Romanian has a T-V distinction and for more info link to that article. -- AdrianTM (talk) 16:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] etymology

  • cutie < kutu (Turkish) "box"

i think it is obvious that it should be cutie < κυτίον cution "box" (medieval Greek) the Turkish is also from the Greek. --Lucinos (talk) 00:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure that entered Romanian from Greece or is it from Turkish? I know the word is present in both languages, and Romanian has borrowed words from both languagues. -- AdrianTM (talk) 02:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
It's difficult to see how the -ie ending could have come from the Turkish -u, but it's easy to believe it came form the Greek -ίον. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 05:19, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, changed. Pushing the luck here, how about "papuci", I know that Greeks have "paputsia" (my guess is that Greek took the word from Turkish) but at the same time they have the word "pantofles" and Romanians have "pantofi" (similar meanings but reversed pantofi = paputsia and papuci = pantofles). -- AdrianTM (talk) 05:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
Paputsi Παπούτσι (Greek) is from Turkish papuç and the Turkish is from the Persian pāpūš "footcover". Παντόφλα pantofla (Greek) is from an Italic language (French?) and somehow is back from the Greek (*Pantofello "all of cork") --Lucinos (talk) 06:53, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sunt vs what?

There's a footnote in the article about "decision of the General Meeting of the Romanian Academy from 1993-02-17, regarding the return to „â” and „sunt”".

The part about â is explained in the article - it's â vs. î.

But what is the alternative to sunt? Was it spelled differently? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 22:54, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I have a Communist-era Romanian grammar book where sunt is spelled sînt, and I've been informed that it's still pronounced sînt despite being spelled sunt. Presumably the decision was that sunt would be spelled sunt and not sânt, as would otherwise be expected per the new rules on the distribution of â and î. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 07:29, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
It is the verb fi, right? I found it here: http://www.verbix.com/cache/webverbix/5/fi.shtml
Is it the same in the 1st singular and 3rd plural? (As in Italian sono?)
If it is pronounced as sânt/sînt, why did they want to spell it differently? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
I asked on the language reference desk a while back and was told it's because they wanted it to be spelled the same as the Latin word sunt, which also means "they are". —Angr If you've written a quality article... 08:19, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
My question to the reference desk is archived here. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 08:22, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Another explanation: my understanding is that in this case "n" almost takes the place of the vowel -- has vowel value, as in Serbian or some other Slavic languages, it could probably be written as "snt" (ask any Romanian to pronounce "snt" and you'll get the same pronunciation for the word "sunt" or "sînt") because Romanians are not used with consonants that take places of vowels (or so I think) they try to put there a vowel (or something that has vowel value, like "î"), since "sânt" would really be atrocious -- actually there are other atrocious changes like "râu" instead of "rîu" or "râpa" instead of "rîpa" since in Latin the words had "i", but I digress, in this case the word "sunt" is more common and important so when they made the rules for changing î to â they made a special provision for this word. I've actually noticed people saying "u" in "sunt" so it's clear that spelling influences the actual pronunciation, but in most of the cases is a short "u" and it's not far from "î" ( /u/ and /ɨ/ are actually close sounds, there's only slight difference that comes from where it is pronounced: "back" vs. "central") BTW, consider all this comment as original research, but I thought it might be interesting though to provide a different explanation. -- AdrianTM (talk) 04:17, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Concerning "snt", most (if not all) consonants are also pronounced as if they had a vowel next to them, thus making "s" sound similar to either "sî" or "es". 89.36.53.11 (talk) 18:33, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reliable source

The IPA pronunciation providing this link might not be a reliable source. Please use a more verifiable reference for this. NHJG (talk) 01:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I removed the link altogether. It was a rather good text-to-speech output, that is, when compared to other TTS engines, but not as good as an actual recording. One thing I notice is that the phoneme /ɨ/ is pronounced too close to /u/, which could be misleading. That appears to be the most difficult Romanian vowel for English native speakers, so it is especially important to get it right. I should remember to make a recording and upload it. — AdiJapan ☎ 05:32, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Romanian-specific words

QUOTE About 300 words found only in Romanian (in all dialects) or with a cognate in the Albanian language may be inherited from Dacian, many of them being related to pastoral life (for example: balaur "dragon", brânză "cheese", mal "shore"). UNQUOTE

"Brynza" (брынза) is a Russian name for a certain type of cheese. So this word is not inherent to Romanian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Offensive ru (talk • contribs) 19:48, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Romanian-specific words

QUOTE About 300 words found only in Romanian (in all dialects) or with a cognate in the Albanian language may be inherited from Dacian, many of them being related to pastoral life (for example: balaur "dragon", brânză "cheese", mal "shore"). UNQUOTE

"Brynza" (брынза) is a Russian name for a certain type of cheese. So this word is not uniquely Romanian. Offensive ru (talk) 19:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Is that a Slavic ward or is it loaned from another language? It's possible that Romanian linguists have made some mistakes about some words, if that's the case we need to find a reference from other linguists. -- AdrianTM (talk) 01:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
No. Actually, this particular word has been borrowed in many languages from Romanian. bogdan (talk) 01:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 90%

Pray where do you get these numbers? Ninety percent Latin words? I don't think the Vatican can lay that claim. --VKokielov (talk) 20:58, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] From the Italian Wikipedia article

it:Lingua rumenica

"il lessico latino nella lingua letteraria avrebbe costituito solo il 20%," --VKokielov (talk) 20:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


The language map is not very accurate - in fact it may be original research. The Romanian speaking population in Timok Valley is not a big mass encompassing cities as well as villages but rather it is formed of scattered villages around cities which are and have historically been populated by Serbian speakers. Also, in the Bugeac, Romanians are rather scattered as well (only 13% of the population). They are concentrated mainly in Reni raion, however on the current map they are shown to include almost half of the Bugeac. I have added bellow an improved version based on the Languages of Europe map as well as the map for Bugeac and the one on Vlachs of Serbia. Dapiks (talk) 20:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Major varieties of Romanian.
Major varieties of Romanian.

[edit] Addition of Sicilian

Hello,

I just wanted to add Sicilian to the list under Classifications. I was unable for some reason. Following is what I wanted to add:

"Idda sempri chiudi la finestra àntica cina. (Sicilian)"

There are of course synonyms that could be used, such as "sirra" for "chiudi", "prima ca" for "àntica" and "pistìa, mancia" for "cina". There is also a variation of "àntica" that is similar to what Romanian shows, that is "in àntica" or "n'àntica".

If someone would add the above phrase to the list, I would much appreciate it. Thank you.

--M scalisi (talk) 08:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)