RUMANIAN LANGUAGE, The origin of the Rumanian language dates from the 2d century, when the Roman colonies settled them selves on the left bank of the lower Danube,, By its grammar and vocabulary this language belongs to the group of the Romance languagps, and it is spoken to-day by the vast majority of Rumans over the whole of Rumania, in Transylvania, Bessarabia, Bukovina and the Dobrudja.
Antonio Bonfinius (1427-1502), the learned Latin historian of the Renaissance, was the first to introduce scientific research of the origin of the Rumanians as a people. He enunciated the theory of their Roman descent, regarding them as descendants of the Dacian colonists of Trajan, who spoke a particular Latin dialect, lingua rustica. Bonfinius' con tention was passed on from historian to his torian until by the 19th century it had been credited in very wide circles. In the year 1812 a history of the Rumanians written by a 'Tran sylvanian priest, Peter Major, appeared and aided in establishing the belief in the direct Roman paternity. According to Major, Ru martian is the tongue of Rome transplanted from. Italy to Transylvania. It was held that the nationality and language of the Eternal City coatieued to survive on Teansylvaaian soil even after the disappearance of Dacia as a colony. Other Rumanian, writers, lniceans, Laurianu, Xenopol and Maniu, the theory of unbroken continuity (ecnstismitate rieistrerutta) between the Legions of. Trajan and the preseae-day Rumanian peasantry. These historians grouped into a homogeneous mass the Dad= colonists and other and con sidered them as one until the invasion of the Hungarians annihilated their institutions and laws. Not only did the Rumanian historians maintain this view, but even European scholars such as Gibbon, Thierr3e Monunsen and Ranke, also exploited these ideas. Over against this array of scientists there• is another group of philologists who stood for a different concep tion of the origin and development of the Ru maniaq language. They assail the assertion of tie unbroken continuity of the Rumanian lan guage as exagg.erated. The men who form this 17% are: Sulzer, Kopitar, Goos, Paul.Hunfalvy and Tomaschek. These skeptics base their position upon the evidence offered by die. structure of the language and consider. Old Illyricum (the western part of the Balkan peninsula) as the cradle of the Rumanian language. They assume that Ru manian• sps'ead from the Adriatic to the north east about the time of the Middle Ages, and that through reaching Slavic culture it became enriched and strengthened It seems reasonable to suppose that the language which was founded by the early colonists was in form and content Roman and that on account of modifi cntion by the tongues of the early inhabitants of the colonized region, it gradually became the true Rumanian language. The Latiniza non of the Albanian tongue is due to the Roman occupation. And both of these, the Rumanian and the Albanian, possess no greater num ber of *ords from the Age of Augustus than do the Latin languages of the West, but they manifest the Roman elements in a somewhat more ancient form than do Italian and French. The guttural sounds are never, at least in the root, rendered into palatals or sibilants, while the sibilant s has often retained in Rumanian, as in Spanish, its original tone even when placed between two vowels; Rumanian, cesar, Latin,.ccesar• Rumanian, rosei from rod; Latin, rodo, rosi. ft is noteworthy that where Latin words have survived they are sometimes purer than •in the Romance languages of the West; for instance, Latin domina is better represented by Rumanian doamnd (lady), than by Italian donna, Spanith-Portuguese, dana and French, dame. Some words such as laudare, to praise, ducere, to lead, credere, to believe, retain some forms unaltered under which they were used by Virgil and Cicero.
The Rumanian dialects have an article, just as Italian, it uomo, i uomi, but while in Italian it precedes the word, in Rumanian it is ap pended to the word, onui-1, oameni-i, a char acteristic which Albanian shares. The article is. the same but it is adapted to the spirit of the Rumanian and Albanian. Such is the case with certain numerical words. The numbers, 11, 12, etc., are expressed in Italian undid, dour) . . .while the Rumanians employ an assisting word (supra) ; ins-spre-sae, doi spre-seee, etc. The same construction is found in the Albanian, spre corresponding to mbe in the latter (nie-mbe-diete, dhi-mbe di its). Making ordinals with the help of articles is similar in Rumanian and Albanian; and the comparison of the adjective runs parallel in the two languages. Rumanian has no special infinitive, but it has to be constructed by a de scriptive form (to see, will thus be expressed by the combination of that I see); the same holds true of Albanian. The lack of infinitives is sometimes to be noted in Serbo-Croatian: fu jai jednu godinu da to slain+ (V. Karadiid, Pripov. 51). But both forms are to be found in Rumanian as well as Serbian. The influence of Serbian and other South Slavic tongues upon Rumanian became more pro nounced as Latin-Italian waned. When the Roman source evaporated, the impress of Slavic culture became marked. During the course of the 9th and 10th centuries Old Slavic was the church language of the Rumans. This explains how three-fifths of the words are Slavic, while only two-fifths are of Latin and other origin. The first archives, which mention the Rumans, date from 1210-30. Rumanian words are to be found in Slavic documents since 1436, the first being translations of pseudo-evangels (1550) and psalms (1577). During the 15th century the Rumans had welded themselves into a com pact nation, according to the opinion of Bon finius. The Church continued Slavic for a longer time, but after 1643 the Rumanian lan guage was employed instead of Slavic for the use of the Orthodox Church. The written word in Rumanian appeared first in Tran sylvania, as the Latin alphabet came gradually to replace the Cyrillic. Rumanian orthography remained in a transitional state throughout the 19th century, retaining until to-day the Latin alphabet with some special diacritical signs to represent sounds borrowed mostly from the Slavic.
Bibliography.— Cihac, 'Dictionnaire crety mologie dacoroumaine' (2 vols., Frankfort 1870 79) ; Dame, 'Dictionnaire roumain-francais' (Paris 1896); Densusian' u, 'Notes de lexicol ogie roumaine) (Romainia, Vol. 23, pp. 71-86, Paris 1904) ; Diculescu, limbii roman) (Academia Romana, ser. 2, vol. 29, pp. 513-675) Gartner, 'Darstellung der ru manischen Sprache' (Halle 1904); Gaster, 'Chrestomathie roumaine' (2 vols., Leipzig 1891) ; Hasdeu, 'Etymologicum magnum Ro mania' (Bucharest 1887); Miklosich, tDie Slavischen Elements im Rumunischen) (Kais. Akad. d. Wissenschaft, Denksch. Bd. 12, pp. 1-70, Wien 1862) ; ibid., zits Lautlehre der rumunischen Dialekte' (Kais, Akad. d. Wiss., Bd. 99, pp. 5-74; Bd. 100, pp. 229-304; Bd. 102, pp. 3174, Wien 1:.:1-83) ; Mircesco, 'Grammaire de la langue roumaine' (Paris 1863); Roesler, 'Die Griechischen and Turk ischen Bestandtheile im (Wien 1865); Sainenu, 'Les elements orientaux en rownain) (Romania, vol. 30, pp. 539-566, Paris 1901; id., ibid, vol. 31, pp. 82-99, pp. 557 589 ; Paris 1902) ; Sa farik, 'Slovanske Staroiitnosti) • Sulzer, 'Geschichte des Transalpinischen Damns) (Wien 1781); Tor ceanu, 'A Simplified Grammar of the Rou manian Language' (London 1883).