Slavic influence on Romanian

Geographical distribution of the four Balkan Romance variants in the early-20th-century

Spread of Proto-Slavonic in the Early Middle Ages

Romanian (or Daco-Romanian), Aromanian (or Macedo-Romanian), Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian form the Balkan Romance branch of the Romance languages.[1] The four languages are descended from a common ancestor developed from the Vulgar Latin spoken in southeastern Europe during Classical Antiquity. The territory where the language formed was a large one, consisting of both the north and the south of the Danube (encompassing the regions of Dacia, Moesia, and possibly Illyria), more precisely to the north of the Jiriček Line [2][3] Proto-Slavic—the root from which the modern Slavic languages developed—emerged during the first half of the 2nd millennium BC.[4] The Early Slavs lived in the plains north of the Carpathian Mountains or along the middle course of the Dnieper River.[4] Their expansion accelerated after the fall of the Hunnic Empire in the middle of the 5th century AD.[5] Significant Slavic-speaking groups moved across the Lower Danube and settled in the Balkan Peninsula.[5] By the end of the 7th century, Slavic became the dominant language throughout most of the Balkans.[5] Studies of the South Slavic languages revealed that Bulgarian and Serbian developed for centuries in two distant territories, separated by significant non-Slavic groups.[6]

It is unclear when contact began among the Early Slavs and speakers of Common Romanian.[7] According to one scholarly theory, the Romance-speaking communities had already come into contact with the Slavs in the 5th or 6th centuries.[7][8] To explain the lack of early Slav loanwords in Romanian, linguist Kim Schulte claims that the "contact situation can be assumed to have been one of cohabitation and regular interaction between Romanians and Slavs, without a great degree of cultural dominance of either of the two".[8] In contrast, linguist Gottfried Schramm proposes that the Romanians' ancestors lived in the mountains, surrounded by Albanian-speaking communities and thus separated from the Slavs of the lowlands until the 10th century.[9] Otherwise, he continues, the fact that Slavic loanwords appeared in Albanian earlier than in Romanian could hardly be explained.[10]

Contacts with Slavic-speaking groups intensified before the disintegration of Common Romanian and about 80 Slavic loanwords are still present in all four Balkan Romance variants.[8][11][12] The high amount of Slavic loanwords and the shared morphological and syntactical elements of Romanian and Bulgarian show that modern Romanian developed from the tongue of a mixed, bilingual population and through frequent intermarriages.[8][13] According to another scholarly approach, these elements do not reveal a widespread bilingualism or "racial intermixture", being the consequence of "cultural intercourse" deriving from the bilingualism of the literary class.[14]

Romanians adopted Old Church Slavonic as the language of liturgy, which gave it the "status of a cultural superstate language, particularly in semantic fields related to religious beliefs and practices".[15] Greek Catholic (or Uniate) priests were the first Romanian intellectuals to make efforts to demonstrate the Latin origin of Romanian in Transylvania during the 18th century.[16] They developed a Latin-based alphabet to replace the Cyrillic writing system and promoted the use of Latin terms in place of words of Slavic origin.[16] Wallachian writers started to advance the adoption of loanwords from Romance languages (especially from French and Italian) in the 19th century.[17]

Loanwords from other languages were rarely subject to fundamental phonological changes, most likely due to their steady influx contributing to the "relatively large phonological inventory" (Kim Schulte) of Romanian.[44] Slavic languages had more than 30 two- or three-member consonant clusters .[45] These clusters were alien to Common Romanian, but many of them appeared in Romanian through borrowing of Slavic terms.[45] Early Slavic loanwords contain two-member consonant sequences.[45] Most Slavic consonant clusters with a first fricative were fully adopted: vlădică ("bishop" from vladika), slugă ("servant" from sluga), zmeu ("dragon" from zmey).[46] The cluster "șt" can be detected in both Slavic loanwords and terms inherited from Latin.[47] The phonetical changes which resulted in this consonant sequence may have started before the first contacts with the Slavic peoples, but early contacts with South Slavic peoples clearly influenced its present form.[48] The word-initial "zdr"-cluster appears both in Slavic loanwords, like zdravăn ("strong") and a zdrobi ("to crush"), and in words of unknown origin, like a zdruncina ("to shake") and a zdrăngăni ("to tinkle").[49]

Most linguists attribute the pre-ioticization of some Romanian words—the appearance of the semi-vowel "j" before a world-initial "e"—to contacts with speakers of Proto-Slavic.[50] Pre-ioticization can only be detected in eight forms of the verb a fi ("to be") and in four personal pronouns, but three archaic demonstratives also displayed this phonetic change.[47] Linguist Grigore Nandriș argues that pre-ioticization can hardly be attributed to Slavic influence, because the Latin e vowel had transformed into a diphthong long before the first Slavic loanwords appeared in Common Romanian.[51] Palatalization of consonants before the vowel "i" is also attributed to Slavic influence by a number of scholars, but others maintain that it developed internally.[52][53] The palatalization of the last consonant of masculine nouns and of verbs before "i" ending is a prominent example of this development: for instance, the last consonant of the Romanian word for coin (ban) changes from "n" to "ɲ" in plural (bani).[52][35]

The majority of specialists agree that the consonant "h" was alien to Common Romanian, but Slavicisms — such as duh ("spirit") from *duxŭ, and hrean ("horseradish") from *xrĕnŭ—enabled its appearance in Romanian.[35][54][55] In contrast to this view, Nandriș writes that certain Arumanian and dialectical Daco-Romanian terms show that the consonant "f" developed into "h" before the disintegration of Common Romanian (for instance, the Aromanian and dialectical Daco-Romanian word for iron, h'er descends from ferrum).[51] Linguist Graham Mallinson emphasizes that the consonant occurs in Romanian in positions alien to Latin.[55] Linguist Peter R. Petrucci proposes that Romanian loanwords containing "f" in place of the Proto-Slavic "x" were modelled on Macedonian patterns, because Proto-Slavic "x" developed into "v" in Macedonian in word-final position and after "u".[56] According to Mallinson, "x" changed to "v" at a relatively late period of the development of Daco-Romanian, because Istro-Romanian retained the original "x" consonant.[55] Petrucci proposes that the change of word-initial "v" to "h" in the Moldovan dialect of Daco-Romanian is to be attributed to Ukrainian influence either through language shift from Ukrainian or through the bilingualism of masses of Moldovans.[56]

One of the most interesting components of the Romanian phonological inventory is the vowel /ɨ/, which is the most recent addition to its inventory.[57] Most linguists support that /ɨ/ first arose as an allophone of /ə/ in Romanian native vocabulary [58][59][60][61] and not due Slavic influence as Petrucci argues that /ɨ/ cannot have come from Slavic *y as there is a lack of direct correspondence between Slavic loanwords and /ɨ/.[62] Petrucci emphasizes that three of the earliest Slavic loanwords which now contain "î" could have originally contained /i/ in Romanian, because the vowel shift from /i/ to /ɨ/ is attested in similar position in some inherited words.[63]

Romanian is the sole major Romance language still using the vocative case when addressing a person: domnule ("sir!"), Radule ("Radu!"), soro ("sister!"), Ano ("Anne!").[31][64] Unlike Latin, which used a distinct vocative ending only in the singular of most nouns in only one of its five declensions, Romanian has three distinct vocative forms.[65] The -e ending of masculine nouns in vocative corresponds to the specific Latin vocative suffix (if one ignores the -ul- article infix, obligatory in Romanian vocative), but neither the -o ending of feminine nouns, nor the -lor ending of plural can be detected in Latin.[65] Since the vocative also exists in Slavic languages, linguists agree that contacts with Slavic-speaking groups enabled its preservation in Romanian, with some even suggesting that the vocative case (re-)appeared in Romanian as a consequence of a language shift from Slavic.[31][66][67] Even if Common Romanian retained at least the traces of the vocative case, the vocative suffix of feminine nouns can most probably be attributed to the parlance of an originally Slavic-speaking group.[68][69]

The appearance of two forms of the infinitive, a short and a long form, is one of the distinctive features of Daco-Romanian and Istro-Romanian in comparison with other Romance languages.[70] The shortening of the infinitive can be observed in the development of Tuscan, but also Bulgarian and Macedonian: for example, Old Church Slavonic viděti ("to see") shortened into vidět in Middle Bulgarian which became vidě in Bulgarian.[71] Linguists Jacques Byck and Ion Diaconescu maintain that the infinitive shortened without external influence during the development of Romanian.[72] Alexandru Graur, Ivan Gălăbov and Alexandru Rosetti argue that South Slavic influence gave rise to this specific morphological change.[73] Petrucci offers an interim explanation, saying that the infinitive was shortened at an early stage of the development of Romanian, but a language shift from South Slavic is responsible for the development of the two forms of infinitive.[74]

Romanian has a neuter (or ambigeneric) gender, with neuter singular adjectives and articles corresponding to their masculine forms, and with neuter plural adjectives and articles matching their feminine variants.[75] Since other Romance languages have not preserved the Latin neuter gender in nominal stems, Rosetti, Graur, Nandriș, Mallinson and other linguists propose that the existence of the neuter in Romanian should most probably be attributed to Slavic influence.[76][75][77] In contrast with them, Petrucci maintains that the Romanian tripartite gender system cannot be assigned to contact with the tripartite gender system of South Slavic because of the lack of credible evidence.[78] Petrucci and other linguists studying the grammatical gender in Romanian in recent years generally agree that it is the result of an internal historical development.[79][80]

A couple of words inherited from Latin used in active voice in other Romance languages became reflexive in Romanian under a Slavic influence. For example, bojati sę became a se teme ("to fear") and roditi sę became a se naște ("to be born").[81]