propaganda most offensive to Rumanian nationalism. An irade of the sultan Abdul Hamid had in 1906 recognized the existence of the Kutzo-Vlachs as a religious body (millet), forming an integral part of the Rumanian Church. This decision was regarded by the Greeks as a blow to their own interests, and Greek revolutionary bands were accused of persecuting the Kutzo-Vlachs. (See also Macedonia.) Even before 1906 there was keen rivalry between Greece and Rumania, and the "Macedonian question" was the underlying cause of the disputes which, arising ostensibly from quite trivial causes, led temporarily to the rupture of diplomatic relations between Gieece and Rumania in 1905, 1906 and 1910.
Bibliography.—No scientific history of Rumania was published up to the 20th century, but the task of collecting and editing original documents was partially carried out by the Rumanian Academy and by private students, especially after 1880. The so-called Chronicle of Hurul is a modern forgery, and up to the 14th century the only valid authorities are Slavonic, Hungarian and Byzantine chroniclers. Thenceforward a great mass of material is available. It is partly incorporated in the yearly Annalele of the Academy, 2nd series, from 1880; and in the 30 volumes of E. de Hurmuzaki's Documente privitore relative la istoria Românilor (Bucharest, 1876, &c.). Other important original documents, or works containing such documents, are Verantius's 16th-century De situ Transylvaniae, Moldaviae, et Transalpinae, in Kovachich's Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum minores (Budapest, 1798); G. Urechia's late 16th-century Chronique de Moldavie, ed. J. Picot (Paris, 1878); Rumanian text in Old Slavonic characters, with French translation and notes of great value; the 17th-century Opere Complete of Miron Costiu, ed. V. A. Urechia (Bucharest, 1886); A. M. del Chiaro, Istoria delle moderne rivoluzioni della Valachia con la descrizione del paese (Venice, 1878); the early 18th-century Operele principeluǐ D. Cantemirǔ, issued by the Academy (Bucharest, 1872, &c.); N. Iorga, Acte şi fragmente cu privire la istoria Românilor (Bucharest, 1895–97); M. Kogalniceanu, Cronicele Româniǐ (Bucharest, 1872–74); J. L. Carra, Histoire de Moldavie et de Valachie, avec une dissertation sur l'état actuel de ces deux Provinces (Jassy, 1777); A. M. Blanc de Lanautte, Mémoire sur l'état ancien et actuel de la Moldavie, présenté à S.A.S. le prince A. Ypsilanti en 1787 (Bucharest, 1902); D. A. Sturdza, Acte şi documente relative la istoria renascereǐ Româniǐ (Bucharest, 1900, &c.); ibid., Scrierile şi cuvîntarile luǐ I. C. Bratianu (Bucharest, 1903, &c.). On the Phanariote period see P. Eliade, De l'influence française sur l'esprit public en Roumanie. Les origines. Étude sur l'état de la société roumaine à l'époque des règnes phanariotes (Paris, 1898). For a general history of Rumania, see V. A. Urechia, Istoria Românilor (Bucharest, 1891, &c., 8 vols.); A. D. Xenopol, Istoria Românilor din Dacia Traianǎ (Jassy, 1888–93, 6 vols.—abridged French edition entitled Histoire des Roumains, 2 vols., Paris, 1896); and P. Negulescu, Histoire du droit et des institutions de la Roumanie (Paris, 1898, &c.). Sketches of Rumanian history are given in A. Sturdza, La terre et les races roumaines (Paris, 1905); and W. Miller, The Balkans (London, 1896). For a comprehensive bibliography of Rumanian history, see N. Iorga's introduction to vol. x. of the Hurmuzaki collection; vol. xxii. of the Annalele; Bibliografia Românéscǎ veche 1508–1830, by C. Bianu and H. Hodos (Bucharest, 1903, &c.); and D. Onciul, Originile principatelor române (Bucharest, 1898). (H. Tr.; X.)
Language
Rumanian[1] is, geographically, an isolated eastern member of the group of Romance languages (q.v.), being severed from all the rest by countries in which the predominant speech is Slavonic or Magyar. It represents the original rustic Latin of the Roman provincials in Moesia and Dacia, as modified by centuries of alien rule. Structurally, its Latin characteristics have been well preserved; but its vocabulary has undergone great changes, becoming so far Slavonized that the ratio of words of Slavonic origin to words of Latin origin is approximately as three to two; large numbers of loan-words have also been added from Turkish, Greek, Magyar and other sources. It is noteworthy, however, that where Latin words have survived they are sometimes purer than in the Romance languages of the West (e.g. Lat. domina is better represented by Rum. domnǎ, "lady," than by Ital. donna, Span. doña, Port. dona, Fr. dame). Some words indeed[2]—such as laudare, to praise, ducere, to lead—retain unaltered the forms under which they were used by Virgil and Cicero. A feature of the language which distinguishes it from all other members of the group, and appears to be of even higher antiquity than the word-forms above mentioned, is the retention of a suffix article—e.g. frate, brother, fratele, the brother; zi, day, ziua, the day. This usage seems to have survived from the pre-Roman period. A similar suffix article is retained in Albanian, which almost certainly represents the original language of the Thraco-Illyrian tribes (see Albania); and these tribes belonged to the same ethnical and linguistic group as the Daco-Moesians represented by the Vlachs.
Rumanian orthography remained in a transitional state throughout the 19th century. The Latin alphabet is used, with special signs to represent sounds borrowed from Slavonic, &c. All the unaccented vowels except e are pronounced as in Italian; e has the same phonetic value as in Old Slavonic (= French é) and is often similarly preiotized (= ye in yet), notably at the beginning of all words except neologisms. The accented vowels é and ó are pronounced as ea and oa (pétra, rock, = peatra; mórte, death, = moarte); they are written in full, as diphthongs, at the end of a word and sometimes in other positions. The sound of the Slavonic Ы (a guttural y) is represented by ǎ, ě or ǒ, though these letters occur as frequently in words of Latin origin (e.g. cînd = quando) as in those derived from Slavonic; Ѫ is represented by â or î, having the nasal sound of un in French; ǐ and ǔ at the end of a word are mute or short. Of the consonants, c followed by e or i = ch (as in church), otherwise k; ḑ or ḍ resembles the English j; g is hard before e and i, otherwise soft; h is guttural, as ch in loch, j is pronounced as in French; r as in Russian; ş or ṣ (Slav. Ш) as sh; ţ or ṭ (Slav. П) as ts or tz; w is wanting. The remaining consonants have the same phonetic values as in English.
Rumanian is highly inflected. It possesses two regular substantive declensions and six cases, the vocative being in common use. The large class of heterogeneous nouns which are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural constitute what is sometimes called the neuter declension. There are three regular conjugations, distinguished (as in Latin) according to the termination of the present infinitive in a, e or i; e.g. (1) a ara or arare, to plough, (2) a crede or credere, to believe, (3) a dormi or dormire, to sleep. Verbs ending in î, however, are sometimes classed as a fourth conjugation. The second form of the present infinitive (arare, credere, dormire) is used as a noun. The so-called "simple perfect" (perfectul simplu) has often the force of an aorist. Compound tenses are formed by the addition of certain particles and of the auxiliary verbs—a ave, to have, a fi, to be, and a voi, to will. For the passive voice, a fi is used, with the past participle of the required verb. All tenses of reflexive verbs except the imperative and present participle are formed by prefixing the pronoun which indicates the object to the verb, in the dative or genitive case (abbreviated) as the verb may require; but in the reflexive imperative and present participle the verb precedes the pronoun; e.g. a propune, to propose, a şî propune, to propose to oneself, but propune ţǐ, propose to yourself.
The accentuation of Rumanian, though complex, is governed by certain broad principles, except in the case of neologisms, many of which have been borrowed from French and Italian without change of accent. Nouns retain the accent of the nominative singular in all cases and in both numbers (e.g. copīlā, girl, vocative plur. copīlelor), except when a diminutive or augmentative suffix is added; the accent then shifts to the suffix. The language is very rich in diminutive and augmentative forms; e.g. the name Ión or Ioan (John), has the diminutives Ionicǎ, Ioniţa, Ionaşcǔ, Ianache, Ienǎchel, &c. In verbs—apart from a few exceptional tenses—the accent falls on the first syllable of the inflectional suffix, e.g. eǔ dorm, I sleep, but eǔ dormīssem, I had slept. For the sake of euphony, a vowel is frequently interpolated between two consonants; e.g. in masculine nouns terminating in a consonant, an interpolated u precedes l to form the suffix article (om, man, om-u-l, the man).
Bibliography. (1) Dictionaries: A. de Cihac, Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-roumaine (2 vols., Frankfort, 1870–79), valuable for non-Latin elements; B. P. Hǎşdeǔ, Etymologicum magnum Romaniae (Bucharest, Academia Românǎ, 1887, &c.); F. Damé, Dictionnaire roumain-français (Paris, 1896); S. Puşcariu, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache (Heidelberg, 1905, &c.); I. A. Candréa-Hecht and O. Densusianu, Dicţionar general al limbeǐ române (Bucharest, 1909, &c.); I. Dalametra, Dicţionar Macedoromân (Bucharest, Academia Românǎ, 1006). (2) Grammars, &c.: T. Cipariu, Gramatec'a limbeǐ române (Bucharest, 1870–77); I. Nǎdejde, Gramateca limbeǐ române (Bucharest, 1884), id., Istoria limbeǐ şi literatureǐ române (Jassy, 1886); B. P. Hǎşdeǔ, Cuvente- ↑ i.e. the so-called Daco-Rumanian, spoken by the vast majority of Rumans over the whole of Rumania, in Transylvania, Bukovina, the Banat, Bessarabia, and some districts of Servia and Bulgaria bordering on the Danube. The two most important dialects are the Istro-Rumanian, spoken in part of Istria but rapidly becoming extinct, and the Macedo-Rumanian, spoken by the Kutzo-Vlachs (see Vlachs). The Istro-Rumanian forms, as it were, a link now completely severed between the Romance of the Balkans and the Romance of the West. In the Macedo-Rumanian there are no Magyar loan-words, but there is a large Albanian element, and Greek loan-words are more numerous than Slavonic.
- ↑ Apart from certain instances in which the Latin form has been artificially restored in comparatively modern times. (See under Literature.)
