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The history of the Romanian language began in the Roman provinces of Southeast Europe north of the so-called "Jireček Line", but the exact place where its formation started is still debated. Eastern Romance is now represented by four variants – Daco-Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian – which originated from a common Proto-Romanian language. These variants also had a common substratum. The latter's morphological and syntactic features seem to have been similar to those shared by the languages – including Albanian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian – which form the Balkan sprachbund. The adoption of a number of Proto-Slavic and Old Church Slavonic loanwords by all Eastern Romance variants shows that their disintegration did not commence before the 10th century.
Contents
Background
A number of Romance languages were once spoken in Southeastern Europe for centuries, but the Dalmatian branch of this Eastern Romance disappeared centuries ago. Although the surviving Eastern group of Balkan Romance has in the meantime split into four major variants, their common features suggest that all of them originated from the same idiom. Daco-Romanian, the largest among these variants, is spoken by more than 20 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova. Aromanian has about 350,000 speakers who mainly live in the mountainous zones of Albania, Greece and Macedonia. Some thousand people from the wider region of Thessaloniki speak the third variant which is known as Megleno-Romanian. The smallest Eastern Romance variant, Istro-Romanian is used by less than 1,500 speakers in Istria. All Eastern Romance variants share a number of peculiarities which differentiate them to such an extent from other Romance languages that Friedrich Diez – the first Romance philologist – even stated in 1836 that Romanian was "only a semi-Romance language". These peculiarities encompass, for instance, the common features of the Albanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and other languages which together form the "Balkan linguistic union".
Modern scholars still debate the venue of the Romanian language's formation. There are two main concurring theories, but further hypotheses also exist. The followers of the "theory of the Daco-Romanian continuity" propose that the Romanian language primarily developed from the Latin spoken in the province of Roman Dacia to the north of the Lower Danube. The opposite "immigrationist theory" suggests that Romanian developed in Moesia, Pannonia Inferior or other provinces to the south of the Danube. It is without doubt that a line – the so-called "Jireček Line" – can be drawn across the Balkan Peninsula which divided it into two parts in Roman times: north of this line, Latin was predominantly used, while to the south of it, Greek remained the main language of communication.
Internal history
This section presents the sound changes that happened from Latin to Romanian. The order in which the sound changes are listed here is not necessarily the order in which they actually happened in reality.
Vowels
In the Vulgar Latin period
Classical Latin had ten pure vowels (monophthongs), along with three diphthongs. By the 1st century AD, if not earlier, Latin diphthong ae became [ɛː], with the quality of short e but longer; and oe soon afterwards became [eː], merging with long ē. This left au. An early trend in the urban Latin of Rome, already during Cicero's time (c. 50 BC), merged it with ō, and a few common words reflect this in Romanian, e.g. coadă "tail" < cōda < Classical cauda; similarly ureche "ear" < ōricla < Classical auricula. But in general, the territories outside of Rome were unaffected by this change; /au/ remained everywhere for centuries afterward, and continues to this day in Romanian.
Long and short e,i,o,u differed in both quality and quantity, with the shorter versions lower and laxer (e.g. e [ɛ] vs. ē [eː]). Long and short a differed only in quantity. At a certain point, quantity ceased being phonemic, with all vowels long in stressed open syllables and short elsewhere. This automatically caused long and short a to merge, but the remaining vowels took two different paths:
Romanian and other Eastern Romance languages follow a mixed scheme, with the back vowels o,u following the Sardinian scheme but the front vowels e,i following the Western Romance scheme. This produces a 6-vowel system (contrast the Sardinian 5-vowel system and Western Romance 7-vowel system).
Back vowels:
Latin short u seems to have been lowered to o when stressed and before m or b in some words:
Also, Latin long ō was changed to u in a few words:
Front vowels:
Breaking of stressed open e
In Romanian, as in a number of other Romance languages, stressed /ɛ/ (including from original ae) broke (diphthongized) to */je/. This happened in all syllables, whether open or closed, similarly to Spanish, but unlike Italian or French, where this breaking only happened in open syllables (those followed by only a single consonant).
Frequently, the /j/ was later absorbed by a preceding consonant, by the operation of second palatalization.
The /e/ was later affected by other changes in certain circumstances, e.g. breaking to /ea/ or lowering to /a/:
Backing of e
The vowel e was changed to ă - and the diphthong ea was reduced to a - when preceded by a labial consonant and followed by a back vowel in the next syllable (i.e. it stayed e - and the diphthong changed back to e - when the following vowel was i or e):
This phonetic change is characteristic for Daco-Romanian. In Daco-Romanian, it didn't affect the varieties spoken in Țara Hațegului.
Breaking of e and o
The vowel o was broken (diphthongized) to oa before a non-high vowel:
The vowel e was broken to ea in similar circumstances when not changed to ă/a (see above). The e was often absorbed by a preceding palatal sound:
Vowel reduction
Unstressed a became ă (except when at the beginning of the word) and unstressed o was reduced to u. Then ă became e after palatal consonants. Unstressed o was kept in some words due to analogy.
Consonants
Labiovelars
In the Vulgar Latin period, the labiovelars ⟨qu gu⟩ /kʷ ɡʷ/ were reduced to simple velars /k ɡ/ before front vowels. These were subsequently palatalized to /tʃ dʒ/ by the second palatalization (see below):
The labiovelars originally remained before a, but were subsequently changed to labials /p b/, although in question words beginning with qu-, this was never changed to p- (presumably through analogy with words beginning que-, qui-, quo- in Latin):
Labialization of velars
Another important change is the labialization of velars before dentals, which includes the changes ct > pt, gn [ŋn] > mn, and x [ks] > ps. Later, ps assimilated to ss, then to s ~ ș in most words.
Final consonants
In both Romanian and Italian, virtually all final consonants were lost. As a consequence, there was a period in the history of Romanian in which all words ended with vowels. In addition, final -s produced a new final -i,‹See TfD› as in Lat. nos > Rom. noi 'we' and Lat. stas > Rom. stai 'you stand'.
Palatalization
In Vulgar Latin, short /e/ and /i/ followed by another vowel were changed to a glide /j/. Later, /j/ palatalized preceding coronal and velar consonants, changing its quality. For dentals, the outcome depended on whether word stress precedes or follows:
Notice that the twofold outcome for dentals is still productive in modern Romanian:
The above palatalizations occurred in all of the Romance languages, although with slightly differing outcomes in different languages. Labial consonants, however, were unaffected by the above palatalizations. Instead, at a later time, the /j/ underwent metathesis:
Palatalization of cl clusters
The Latin cluster cl was palatalized to /kʎ/:
L-rhotacism
At some point, Latin intervocalic l developed into r. From the evolution of certain words, it is clear that this happened after the above-mentioned palatalization, but before the simplification of double consonants (as ll did not rhotacize) and also before i-palatalization. Some examples:
Second palatalization
The dental consonants t, d, s, l were palatalized again by a following i or i̯ (from the combination i̯e/i̯a < ɛ < stressed e):
The velar consonants /k ɡ/ (from Latin labiovelars qu gu) were palatalized to /tʃ dʒ/ before front vowels:
Modern changes
These are changes that did not happen in all dialects of Romanian. Some belong to the standard language, while some do not.
Spirantization
In southern dialects, and in the standard language, dz is lost as a phoneme, becoming z in all environments:
The affricate /dʒ/ became j /ʒ/ only when hard (i.e. followed by a back vowel):
Lenition of resonants
Former palatal resonants /ʎ ɲ/ were both lenited (weakened) to /j/, which was subsequently lost next to /i/:
Former intervocalic /l/ from Latin -ll- was lost entirely before /a/ by first vocalizing to /w/:
Former intevocalic /l/ from Latin -ll- was preserved before other vowels:
Former intervocalic /v/ (from Latin -b-,-v-) was lost, perhaps first weakened to /w/:
N-epenthesis
Relatively recently, stressed u preceded by n lengthens and nasalizes, producing a following n (epenthesis).
J-epenthesis
In some words, the semivowel /j/ was inserted between â and soft n:
It also explains the plural mână - mâini ('hand, hands'). This is also specific to southern dialects and the standard language; in other regions one may hear câne etc.
It may be compensatory lengthening followed by dissimilation: pâne > pââne > pâine. It has spread from the Oltenian dialect to literary Romanian. It has alternatively been explained as palatalization followed by metathesis: câne > *câni̯e > câine. Oltenian has câine; all other dialects have câni̯e.
Hardening
Backing of vowels after ș, ț and dz is specific to northern dialects. Because those consonants can be followed only by back vowels, any front vowel is changed to a back one:
It is similar to vowel backing after hard consonants in Russian (see Russian phonology § Front vowels).