Why Romanian Isn't Like Other Languages

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Published 2024-04-19
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Ever wondered why a Latin-based language is over in the eastern bloc? How did it survive centuries of Slavic migrations and pressures from powers like Russia, the Ottomans, and Austria? Well even if you haven't wondered this already, the story of Romanian is a fascinating one!

0:00 Introduction
0:44 Latin Origins of Romanian
4:14 How the Fall of Rome Affected Dacia
6:06 The 6th Century Slavic Migrations
8:24 The Development of Modern Romanian
10:04 End

All Comments (21)
  • @CristyG3
    Decebalus didnt surrender, he actually lost the battle with the romans and ran into the mountains where he took his own life (better dead than a slave of the romans)
  • @sam.058
    i’m a simple woman. i see a linguistics video, and i click on it
  • @aLadNamedNathan
    This video claims that Hungarian's closest linguistic relatives are Finnish and Estonian. While all three languages are indeed related, Hungarian is a very distant relation to the other two. In fact, the family tree of Uralic at 7:00 shows that Hungarian's two closest relatives are Khanty and Mansi.
  • @igorlopes7589
    "The only romance language east of Italy" Cries in Aromanian, Megleno-romanian and Istro-romanian
  • @stanm1977
    I am Romanian and I have an Italian colleague. When we discuss about the languages, there are many common features between his language (Sardinia) and Romanian. I mean things that similar between Sardinian dialect (or whatever I can call it) and Romanian, bypassing the today's Italian language that has other forms. For example the word „cat” : Pisică (Romanian), Gatto (Italian) and Pisittu (Sardinia). I find this very odd, to be honest.
  • @talideon
    The similarly named Aromanian is a distinct, albeit related, language. Sure, it only has just over 200,000 speakers, but it does count as another!
  • @decem_sagittae
    The closest relatives of Hungarian are Khanty and Mansi
  • There is NO "re-latinization"! First of all you can't "re-latinize" what is already latin. The proportion of latin to slavic words are same before and after the so-called "re-latinization".
  • @UlpianHeritor
    This is a great video. No need to mention the outlandish theories though. People who believe in the absurd idea that Latin came from Dacian are an embarrassment to us, Romanians. They are a vocal minority on the internet that shouldn't be given any publicity or credibility. They aren't representative of what Romanians believe.
  • @florin22
    I must say that the video is great. I would only like to make a few mentions, as someone who speaks Romanian since the day he was born, about some of the words in the list from 08:05: „plod“ means „little child". „trebuie” means "must”. („necessary” is translated as „necesar“). „slavă“ („glory“) is considered archaic and, for more than 100 years is slowly replaced in daily use with the word „glorie” „nădejde” („hope”) is also an archaic word. In daily speech one would rather use the word „speranță” (pronounced sperantza). “silă” means „nausea“, „loathing” or „🤢🤮“ „ceas” means „watch”. And in some particular situations can be used meaning „hour“ or „time”.( Ex. „Cât este ceasul? “ „What time (hour) is it?” „lotcă” means indeed boat, and it is again an archaic, and also a regional word mainly used in Dobrogea ( pronounced similar to Dobrodjea with „J" as in „John"). Yet, the word that is most often used for „boat" is „barcă” Otherwise, even if I may not agree with every detail in this video, I believe it is both entertaining and informative. I actually like i
  • @topesimoes
    Nice video. Olá pessoal, greetings from Portugal 🇵🇹
  • Thank you for the video! To make things clear, we have entire texts written in Romanian starting with 1521, Neacsu's letter to the mayor of Brasov, about an impending Ottoman invasion. So, not just isolated words or sentences, entire texts and entire books, including the complete translation of the Bible into Romanian, which was finished in 1688. This was long before the decision to model Romanian lands after the Western model (especially France) in the nineteenth century. You can analyze the texts, I dare you to compare them with Slavic texts. Usually, foreigners who aren't linguists will dump any Romanian word they don't recognize into the Slavic bucket, even when the word is of Dacian, Latin, Greek, Turkish or even German origin. But it is true that we borrowed some words from French in the nineteenth century, even some from Italian, and in general the modern words for new concepts are based on Latin, and to a lesser extent on Ancient Greek. Why would we have done otherwise, if our grammar was already Latin and most of the words of Latin origin? Politics aside, why would we have formed the words for modern concepts based on Slavic or Germanic or Finno-Ugric lsnguages, or why borrow from those languages? You couldn't give a single objective linguistic argument for that.
  • @Stefano_8732
    This was actually the best video i found summarizing how the Romanian language exist. Thank you so much. Love from California. I’m actually Romanian myself but immigrated into the states at a very young age with my family.
  • @Andrei-gx3po
    This was great! More videos on România, please! :)
  • @AmbuhsinghUK
    Reporter: Where is Ukraine? American: [points Australia] Over here 🗿