Romania in The Early Middle Ages - Early History of The Romanians

Early History of The Romanians

The earliest records on Romanians were made in the 11th century, thus their ethnogenesis cannot be understood based exclusively on written sources. Romanians speak a language originating from the dialects of the Roman provinces north of the "Jireček Line". The study of the Romanian vocabulary suggests that the Romanians' ancestors were "reduced to a pastoral life in the mountains and to agricultural pursuits in the foothills of their pasture lands" (Grigore Nandris) following the collapse of the Roman rule.

A great number of Romanian words of uncertain origin are related to animal husbandry: baci ("chief shepherd"), balegă ("dung"), and brânză ("cheese"), for instance, belong to this group. Many words related to a more settled form of animal husbandry were borrowed from Slavic, including coteţ ("poultry house"), grajd ("stable"), and stână ("fenced pasture"). Romanian has preserved Latin terms for agriculture and the Latin names of certain crops, but a significant part of its agricultural lexis originates from a Slavic-speaking population. The first group includes a ara ("to plough"), a secera ("to reap"), grâu ("wheat"), in ("flax"), and furcă ("pitchfork"), while a croi ("to cut out"), a plivi ("to weed"), brazdă ("furrow"), cobilă ("plow line"), coasă ("scythe"), lopată ("shovel") and many others are Slavic loanwords.

The Romanian religious vocabulary is also divided, with a small number of basic terms preserved from Latin and a significant number of borrowings from Old Church Slavonic. Romanian did not preserve Latin words connected to urbanized society. Likewise, the term sat ("village") may have been borrowed from the Albanian language and not directly inherited. The Medieval Romanian word obşti ("village communities") came from Slavic, and the word hotar ("boundaries") is of Hungarian origin.

The "evolution of Vulgar Latin into Proto-Romanian" (Vlad Georgescu) is first demonstrated by the words "torna, torna, frater" ("turn around, turn around, brother") recorded in connection with a Roman military action in 587 or 588. The soldier shouting them "in his native tongue" spoke an Eastern Romance dialect of the Balkan Mountains.