Linguistic “archaeology”
This time the Syncro Translation Services translation team invites you on a journey into the fascinating world of similarities of meaning between Romanian words and their counterparts in other languages and dialects around the world. Here we hardly need translation: the connection, the discovery of meaning, happens instantly, leaving little room for ambiguity. So the professional translators of our translation bureau take a break and let us guess the meaning of the words ourselves.
Overall, the relationship between words themselves and their meaning is fascinating. Travelling back in time in our minds, we reach the wonderful world of linguistics and its archaic roots. Linguists from all over the world, deciphering meanings through in-depth study, have tried to explain why there are so many feelings and ideas that cannot be expressed in a single word.
Romanian and the Slavic languages
There is a strong symbiosis between Romanian and the Slavic languages. The Romanized Dacians took over words relating to fundamental areas of life. It is often said that this influence showed up especially in the lexicon. As a result, Romanian preserved words for actions and the names of actions, rural life and farm work, agricultural products and food, animal names, expressions relating to social life and public administration, and religion:
- Romanian silă – Slovene sila (force, aversion).
- Romanian șoaptă – Slovene šepet (whisper) – works in both languages with close forms and the same meaning. These words also have a verbal counterpart in the two languages: Romanian a șopti – Slovene šepetati.
- Romanian zăbavă – Slovene zabava – recorded with the same form but with different meanings in the two languages.
- Romanian nevastă – Slovene nevesta – recorded in the Slavic languages, from which Romanian borrowed it, with the meaning “married woman”; in Slovene the word has a distinct sense, “bride”.
- Romanian smântână – Slovene smetana (sour cream) – the word has a Bulgarian etymon, and its evolution is similar in the two languages, with a similar form. In both it is recorded with the literal meaning “fatty, white-yellowish food product that forms on the surface of unboiled milk”.
Romanian and Albanian
The links between Romanian and Albanian are numerous and have always been one of the main arguments of the immigrationist theory. First of all, of the 160 words considered Dacian in Romanian, 90 are also found in Albanian. Many of these are basic words of the two languages (brad “fir”, mânz “colt”, gât “neck”, buză “lip”, etc.) and obviously belong to an archaic stock.
Romanian and Friulian
Romanian and Friulian are two languages between which there are striking similarities. It is true that they are related languages, sharing the Latin linguistic layer. Friulian is considered by some linguists a mere Italian dialect, and by others a dialect from the mixed group of a Romance language conventionally called Rhaeto-Romance. The Friulian words brumajo (“December”), discanta, distrama, ferbint, galinar (“chicken thief”), imbina and imbranca find counterparts in the Romanian brumar (“November”), descântă (“to disenchant”), destramă (“to unravel”), fierbinte (“hot”), găinar, îmbină (“to join”) and îmbrânci (“to shove”).
Romanian and Polish
Romanian and Polish share more than 532 words that are similar or identical: abonament – abonament, adept – adept, album – album, amin – amin, balet – balet, balkon – balcon, cek – cec, cytat – citat, granica – graniță, etc.