Talk:Romanian language

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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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

Template:Ro icon [1] Nergaal (talk) 00:48, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Hmm. Any relation to Sbrinz, a Swiss cheese claimed to be the oldest European cheese? -- megA (talk) 19:34, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

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)

It is a contradiction with what is written few lines below, where you read that 75-80% of words can be traced to Latin and also it is provided an explanation. Bogdanno (talk) 21:15, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

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.

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)

Commas or cedillas? Weird contradiction ...

There are two letters with a comma below, Ș and Ț, which represent the sounds /ʃ/ and /ʦ/. However, the allographs with a cedilla instead of a comma, Ş and Ţ, became widespread when pre-Unicode and early Unicode character sets did not include the standard form. This is what the article reads, but shouldn't we use commas then with the language examples directly below?! Or is this just a nice gesture for IE6 users (who obviously cannot see the consonants with commas) ;) -andy 92.228.84.169 (talk) 13:48, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, we should use commas instead of cedillas. And yes, the reason we don't is that many readers would see squares instead of those letters. Also, most editors have the cedilla versions on their keyboards. I expect it will be at least a few years until we can switch to the correct diacritics. When we do, we will have bots scan all articles and do it automatically. While this is a rather small problem for en.wp, it's much more important at ro.wp, where every article, except maybe the smallest stubs, have to be edited; besides, the functionality of links, templates, parameters, etc. depends on using the right version of the characters. If you read Romanian, here's where we've been talking about it: ro:Discuţie Wikipedia:Corectarea diacriticelor (note that even the namespace contains a Ţ...). — AdiJapan ☎ 18:32, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Punctuation and capitalisation

In titles, only the first letter of the first word is capitalized, the rest of the title using sentence capitalization (with all its rules: proper names are capitalized as usual, etc.). Names of months and days are not capitalized (ianuarie "January", joi "Thursday"). Adjectives derived from proper names are not capitalized (Germania "Germany", but german "German").

I fail to see how these rules can be considered particular to Romanian, as capitalisation of anything but proper names is only used (correctly) in German and English of all major languages using the Latin alphabet, as far as I know. Devanatha (talk) 10:22, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

A small change...

I only want to say that it should be "Lei chiude~~" instead of "Ella chiude" in Italian.

Thanks~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.230.25.224 (talk) 02:25, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

It has already been re-corrected, but for the record: "ella" is literary Italian and is correct (but often considered dated in colloquial use), whereas "lei" means "It's her who (closes the window)" and is used colloquially for "ella". -- megA (talk) 19:24, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

French, Italian and other international words

To quote: "In the 20th century, an increasing number of English words have been borrowed (such as: gem < jam; interviu < interview; meci < match; manager < manager; fotbal < football; sandviş < sandwich; bişniţă < business; ciungă < chewing gum)." I'm not sure ciunga and bişniţă should be there as they haven't been really borrowed, more like they are miss-pronounced in some circles.

Not really borrowed? I'm not sure how else you could call the process of taking words from one language and using them in another. And rest assured, all Romanian words of foreign origin are "mispronounced", including the other words you quoted above. — AdiJapan 13:03, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Oraş comes from Greek or Slavic (Baros) and not from Hungarian --82.171.95.220 (talk) 08:29, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

You have a source for that? The Romanian dictionaries agree on the Hungarian origin. — AdiJapan 13:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Legal status in Vojvodina — which language for city names?

In the section on "Legal status in Vojvodina", there is a list of cities where Romanian is officially used. This list currently shows each city's Romanian name, followed in parentheses by the Serbian name (in Latin script). I'm wondering whether, perhaps, it should be the other way around — Serbian name first, followed by the Romanian name in parens — given the fact that we are talking about places in Serbia, where the primary official language (and thus, presumably, the primary official name of each city) is Serbian. I also note that the individual cities' Wikipedia articles are filed under the Serbian names, with the Romanian names being defined as redirects. What do people think about the idea of putting the Serbian city names first (followed by parenthesized Romanian names)? Richwales (talk) 20:22, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Talk page of the now merged into here article Daco-Romanian

This stub adds no useful information to that in the article on the Romanian language. Romanian language can mean one of two things:

• the Daco-Romanian dialect spoken in Romania and some other countries, and

• the group of all four Eastern Romance languages.

As Romanian language gives information particularly on the Daco-Romanian dialect, I don't see any point in having this stub here. Unless there is no opposition, I will turn the stub back to a redirect. --AdiJapan 06:55, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

It's supposed to be a "NPOV-ing" page for Romanian and Moldovan "languages", but I don't think it is needed as it's a consensus in linguistics that Romanian = Moldovan, so I agree with that. bogdan 09:55, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Usage of Daco-Romanian

Linguists use the name "Daco-Romanian" to disambiguate "Romanian" when are also discussed other Eastern Romance dialects/languages south of the Danube (Macedo-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian). It is always a perfect synonym for "Romanian". bogdan 17:14, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Agree.--Bonaparte 17:42, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

No it is not. 30 years ago there was Moldovan language, regardless artificial or not. If there is a term, there is an article that explains its usage. It is a common way in wikipedia to create smaller articles from large ones, not to merge everythin into a single big one. mikka (t) 18:58, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Is more than a synonim. Is identical.--Bonaparte 19:07, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

No its is not. mikka (t) 19:08, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I would like some references. bogdan 19:09, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Please take a look into the history section of Moldovan language. Please don't forget that with langauges what is true today, could have been different yesterday. mikka (t) 19:11, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Mikka you have to prove that Daco-romanian is not romanian!--Bonaparte 19:09, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

No, it is you have to prove that Moldovan language never existed. So far you failed. mikka (t) 19:12, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Every linguist I ever read put an equal sign between Romanian and Daco-Romanian. Daco-Romanian is simply another name for Romanian and that's it. bogdan 19:18, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

No we won! You failed.--Bonaparte 19:13, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Bonaparte, please stay out of this, you're not helping. bogdan 19:18, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Even if the usage is identical (here I am inclined to agree, since "moldovan language" linguistically is a variety of Romanian), still, this article makes sense in that it may contain explanation why and when the term was introduced. Deleting an existing article into a redirect is a political move that has nothing with encyclopedia purposes of providing information. mikka (t) 19:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I still haven't seen your references. bogdan 19:24, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I still haven't seen what is false in the artile. I only see that the article is a still stub: it does not explain who introduced this term and why. I amd very puzzled why you think that this information is so uninteresting that it may be completely dismissed. I also basically agreed that they are identical linguistically. But for political purposes there historically existed officially separate ro: and mo: languages. And my reference is Moldovan language. mikka (t) 19:30, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

There are few things wrong like The latter term was introduced in the Soviet Union based on regional varieties local to the territory of the Soviet Union., but this is not the problem.

I see no point in having this article, it's a duplicate of Romanian language. bogdan 19:38, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I will agree for a redirect only if the term is explained in full in Romanian language: why the term was introduced etc. Only then this will justify the redirect. Otherwise it is just a political action. mikka (t) 19:49, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

OK. The article should contain a "Classification and related languages" section that should discuss this. bogdan 20:10, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Article deletion

Deletion of articles without votes of deletion is not allowed in wikipedia. We have smaller articles and on a more trivial issues than this one, like, bung and stopper. mikka (t) 19:08, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

another proof of BIAS edits

Again you make bias edits Mikka, this is another proof of your bias edits.--Bonaparte 19:26, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I am not making any edits. I am restoring your deletion of information. mikka (t) 19:31, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

page protection

G'day guys,

I note that this page was protected, "to deal with vandalism". The thing that every edit warrior forgets is that his opponent is not a vandal, but another good faith editor who happens to feel just as passionately as he does. Edit warring is not vandalism, it's edit warring. And it takes two to war. I see no vandalism here.

Mikkalai, I'm very concerned about the way you protected this page. You have clearly been very deeply involved in this article, and we are not meant to protect in such circumstances except in cases of simple vandalism. Of course, if the nascent edit war continues, the page may need to be protected again anyway ... but it won't have anything to do with vandalism, and both you and User:Bonaparte will end up blocked. Have a nice day. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 19:48, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I am very deeply involved with Bonaparte, who deletes information. Anyway, thanks for reminding me the policy. mikka (t) 19:52, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Clarification

First of all, Daco-Romanian IS NOT A LANGUAGE, it could be a term similar to other romance languages to clasify a group of languages shuch as Gallo-Romance languages or Ibero-Romance languages. So, the correct term I think it should be Daco-Romance. In the case of Romanian it is rarely used because technicaly THERE IS NO GROUP TO CLASIFY because it is only one language of Roman and Dacian descent and that is Romanian.

Actually, there are more languages "Roman and Dacian": Daco-Romanian, Macedo-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian. It's just that for each, the name is derived from the region where they live (Dacia, Macedonia, Meglena and Istria). In a linguistic treatise which discusses all four, simply "Romanian" would be ambiguous. bogdan 20:50, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Now you could all start again for the n-th time and argue that there is also Moldovian, but that is a political separation and not a linguistic one to which the term Daco-Romance could be used. One could use it to maintain a symentry betwen the clasification of western romance languages and eastern romance languages. About languages spoken South of the Danube, I doubt they sould be categorised in the same Daco-Romance category. --Orioane 20:23, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

First of all, this "clarification" only deserves a separate article, since this is exactly what encyclopedia is about:clarification of things, rather than sweeping them under the carpet according to certain political agendas. And I am not "starting again"; I never denied that mo: was a political schtick. Please see my only contribution to the topic, Moldovan language#Romanizators and Originalists. mikka (t) 20:32, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about being a little bit aggresive, it runs in the family. :D. I try to express myself better thist time after a little brainstorming. So here it is: My opinion is, that the term Daco-Romanian is wrong. It is never used in Romanian, and I think it originated from a wrong translation of a protolanguage from which Romanian originated, called in Romania Daco-Romană to simbolise the simbiose of the Latin spoke by roman colonists with elements from the Dacian language. A better translation would be Daco-Roman. So MY opinion is that this article should be renamed to Daco-Roman to emphasize this fact, and another article Daco-Romance languages may be created. Hope to be more clear now, if not, that is why the Talk Pages are. --Orioane 20:49, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

• All the more the article should sit here, to explain what's this word about. When you replace it by a redirect with nothing else written, you assume that the word is OK. mikka (t) 04:13, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
• Actually, Elementa linguæ daco-romanae sive valachicae was published in 1802 and Samuel Micu used this word even earlier, in 1780s. mikka (t) 04:25, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the Soviets actually used this term, "Daco-Romanian". From what I recall, they put Moldovan in Eastern Romance languages, with Romanian. bogdan 20:50, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

While we are at this, the issue here and at Romanian language is certainly a mess. The latter one says that Istro-Romanian etc. are dialects of Romanian (in sect. "Classification and related languages"). So what? Istro-Romanian is a dialect of Daco-Romanian (which is you say =Romanian)? mikka (t) 04:09, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I changed it back. They are sometimes named dialects, especially in 19th and early 20th century works. Nowadays, usually they are named "languages". (You know, many of today's "languages" of Italy were also "dialects" back then) bogdan 05:11, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Also, what about "limba romana comuna" (protoromanian)? It looks like political bickering is much more fun for some people tahn to describe their own language. mikka (t) 04:32, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

See Proto-Romanian language. bogdan 05:11, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, midnight; bad for brain. Need a break. mikka (t) 05:45, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

How's this:

• Daco-Romanian is a term used for the Romanian language spoken to the North of the Danube, the region that contains the former Roman province of Dacia, to make a distinction between the Eastern Romance group of languages spoken North of the Danube and those spoken in the Balkans when the term Romanian is used to classify the entire group of languages.

If you (Mikka and Bogdan) agree with it we should add it to the page.

--Orioane 08:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

All Moldovan topics aside here, there is the fact that "used for the Romanian language north of the danube" implies quite strongly that to the SOUTH of the danube, Romanians are speaking the same language, which is no longer the opinion of most experts. --Node 01:47, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

You did not read carefully to the end. The sentence ends "...when 'Romanian' is used to classify the entire group...", so there is no contradiction to your "most experts". mikka (t) 04:03, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I have no objections. bogdan 09:54, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

My only objection was against vigorous deletion of this page without giving any explanations what the heck it means. mikka (t) 09:56, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Still, is anyone willing to describe the usage of this term in 18-19th centuries? mikka (t) 04:04, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, the story goes like this. With Romanian nationalism also appeared a pan-romanian movement. The Romanian state (before 1918, and after) helped Romanians abroad, and the word "Romanian" was considered in a broad sense. Not only those speaking Romanian proper, but also Aromanians (also called Macedo-Romanians), Megleno-Romanians, and Istro-Romanians. At the same time, linguists chose to consider that the Romanian language includes Macedo-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian as dialects (they are quite close, even if not really mutually intelligible). Therefore, they needed a name for proper Romanian, and chose the name "Daco-Romanian". That's all. The name "Daco-Romanian" is today's "Romanian". Some notes: Many of the Macedo-Romanians (Aromanians) immigrated to Romania, and many were settled in Dobrogea and the Cadrilater (there may also have been population exchanges, but I am not sure). If I'm not very mistaken, Toma Caragiu and Hagi the football player are of Aromanian descent. Also, you must know that the Romanian state keeps even today some ties with these "Greater Romanian" communities. User:Dpotop

Daco-romanian as group

Please comment on the correctness of the following phrase:

In formal classifications (disputed) that list Romanian and Moldovan as separate languages, "Daco-Romanian" is used as a supergroup for the two.

I am pretty much sure that Soviets didn't classify so, but I've seen something like this on web. To what extent it is correct? 00:58, 3 December 2005 (UTC) signed by User:Mikkalai

Can you, please, give me the source? I'd really like to read it. Then only I can comment (until now, I never saw such a classification). User:Dpotop

Note I am not saying it is correct or notably accepted. Well, first of all I was wrong about Soviets.

C. Tagliviani, Le origini delle lingue neolatine. Bologna, 1952. (?) М.С.Гурычева, Сравнительно-сопоставительная грамматика романских языков. Итало-романская подгруппа. М., Наука, 1966 These two girls proposed called "substrate-based" classification, and I don't know who of them said that Daco-romaninan: Romanian, Moldavian & extinct Dalmatian language.

In Russian: http://etheo.h10.ru/roma01.htm Looks nonstandard to me.

Indirect: http://www.farsarotul.org/nl25_5.htm says "he also published on practically all the languages of the Balkans, especially Albanian (including both Shqip and Arvanitika), Daco-Romanian (including Moldavian)" implying Mold as a sep lang.

It is quite possible that this theory is thoroughly obsolete, so that there are no traces on web. I don't see big contradiction: If Soviets created a new language, it would be only natural for them to devise a supergroup, which looks totally plausible bearing in mind insignificant difference between mo: & ru: mikka (t) 11:50, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I read the two links (the first one using the automatic translator of Altavista). The second only says "Romanian (including Moldovan)". This expression can also be interpreted as "including Moldovan readers as Romanian". More interesting is the first link, which first states the same "Moldovan is Romanian", but then composes Istro-Romanian with Romanian to form the "Daco-Romanian group". This is not without justification, given that Istro-Romanian is the closest to Romanian of the other three Eastern Romance languages/dialects. However, I feel uncomfortable accepting this in the "Daco-Romanian" article, as it seems to be a "research-related" use of the word (and again, there is no mention of the "Moldovan language" as a separate language in any of the two links). I do not have acces to the printed references. Therefore, my oppinion is to preserve the status que for the article. User:Dpotop

Also my opinion is to preserve the status quo of this article. Bonaparte talk & contribs 15:27, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Separate article?

I said (at the top of this talk page) that this article doesn't give any useful info in addition to the article Romanian language. Now, after many enriching edits, it does. However, in my opinion it still doesn't deserve a separate article. I believe that the generally accepted way of doing things on Wikipedia is that articles should define concepts rather than terms. If this is right, then read again:

Daco-Romanian [...] is the term used to identify the Romanian language in contexts where distinction needs to be made between the various [...] languages or dialects [...].

So the article is about a term, and admits that the concept considered is the Romanian language. I would say it is obvious that it belongs there. --AdiJapan 13:50, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

We have enormous number of articles about "terms", starting with really huge one "fuck", which is about a yet another term for sexual intercourse. The article in question clearly shows that the usage of the term does not always coincide with "Romanian language". Also, the article conains elements of the history of the term, with potential for expansion ( e.g., this talk page hints at it possible usage in Soviet linguistics; Not to say I see a ridiculous lack of interest in Romanian wikipedians here in Romanian linguistics: it took an "irridentist chauvinist communist anti-Romanian anti-Semitism vandal" to dig out the Micu reference). mikka (t) 18:03, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

It is in wikipedia policies to delegate topics out of bug articles into smaller ones, not vice versa. For example, we have separate Romanian grammar, Romanian phonology, etc. mikka (t) 18:03, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I got your point. Cool, we can keep it here. (And by the way, you know how to pick your examples...) --AdiJapan 19:51, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Mikka. This article should exist. Dpotop 20:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Contacts with other languages / Slavic languages

The section on Slavic languages is probably too big and should be summarised here and moved to its own article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Midnight Madness (talk • contribs) 21:17, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Five cases in Romanian?

The articles said: "Romanian has preserved declension, but whereas Latin had six cases, Romanian has five: the nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, and dative,", I deletted that because is iincorrect and is contradictory with what is stated a few lines below: "Romanian nouns are inflected by gender (feminine, masculine and neuter), number (singular and plural) and case (nominative/accusative, dative/genitive and vocative)." So, Romanian is considered to have 3 case forms, not 5.--DaniloVilicic (talk) 05:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)