“A key reason for Latin and Italian not having the same name is the spread of Latin beyond Italy, living rise to further complexes such as French and Spanish. It can, howewer, be argued that Italian bears a greater resemblance to Latin than Modern Greek does to Classical Greek and than contemporary English does to Old English/Anglo-Saxon” (Tom McArthur, “The English Languages”, 1998, Cambridge Univesity Press, p. 88)
“If we take into account both inherited and borrowed Latin vocabulary, THE MOST “ROMANCE” OF THE LANGUAGES IS ITALIAN, AND THE LEAST, RUMANIAN” (Rebecca Posner, “The Romance Languages”, 1996, Cambridge University Press, p. 94)
“Italian is considered by many to be the most beautiful of the world’s languages. As the transmitter of the great culture of the Renaissance, its influence on the other languages of Western Europe has been profound. ITALIAN is one of the Romance languages, and HAS REMAINED CLOSER TO THE ORIGINAL LATIN THAN ANY OF THE OTHERS” (Kenneth Katzner, “The Languages of the World”, p. 66)
“ON LEXICAL AN SYNTACTIC GROUNDS, I regard standard ITALIAN as THE PRIME
CANDIDATE FOR THE STATUS OF ROMANCE ARCHETYPE, as a language which has most
in common with each of the others. In some ways IT IS SO CLOSE TO LATIN THAT IS HAS
EVEN BEEN MISTAKEN FOR A COLLOQUIAL VARIETY OF THE LATIN LITERARY
LANGUAGE. ROUND THE “INNER CORE” REPRESENTED BY standard ITALIAN, THE OTHER LANGUAGES CLUSTER WITH GREATER OR LESS COHESION”. (Rebecca Posner, “The Romance Languages”, 1996, Cambridge University Press, pp.37-38)
“We can distinguish between a Proto-Romanian period (seventh-ninth centuries), preceding the disintegration into Daco-, Macedo-, Megleno-, and Istro-Romanian, and an Old Romanian period (ninth through early sixteenth centuries), the latter extending from the breakup of the Romanian linguistic unity to the earliest written attestation of Daco-Romanian and MARKED BY MASSIVE SLAVIC LINGUISTIC INTERFERENCE, which has left Romanian a Romance language heavily overlaid with SLAVIC elements (IN ALL PARTS OF ITS LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE). From a typological point of view, ROMANIAN IS CHARACTERIZED BY MANY BALKANISM, MAKING IT A PRIME MEMBER, along with Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Albanian (and only peripherally Serbo-Croatian and Modern Greek), OF THE BALKAN LANGUAGE LEAGUE” (Balazs Nagy, Nagy, János M. Bak, Marcell Sebők, Central European University Press, 1999)
"Specific text examples illustrate the development from Vulgar Latin to Italian on the lexical, morphological and syntactic levels. A comparison with French and Spanish, through the use of parallele texts, reveals the varying degrees of distance to Latin of Romance languages today, with French the fursthest away, Italian the closest and Spanish in a position midway between them" (Di Gunilla M. Anderman, Margaret Rogers, Peter Newmark "Word, Text, Translation")
"OF ALL THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGES of modern Europe, ITALIAN, for obvious reasons, was THE CLOSEST TO LATIN AS SPOKEN AND WRITTEN BY THE ROMANS: awareness of this simple fact led Italian scholars, from the thirteenth century onwards, into self-conscious efforts to purify their own language as a vehicle for composition and criticism by retrospective analysis of models surviving from classical antiquity" (Glynne Wickham, "The Medieval Theatre", Cambridge University Press)
"As for the modern standards, it is generally agreed that ITALIAN STAND CLOSEST TO THE ORIGINAL LATIN AND IS THE MOST CENTRAL, that is, most easily intelligibile to other Romanic speakers" (Robert Clifford
Ostergren, John G. Rice, "The Europeans")
"...But Latin was gradually displaced as the language of intellectual life for some countries in the course of the seventeenth century. Italians (e.g. Galileo) had for many years been ready to tackle the most important issues in their vernacular, but this readiness came in large part from their awareness that ITALIAN WAS THE CLOSEST LIVING LANGUAGE TO LATIN" (D. Garber, M. Ayers, "The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy", Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Romanian the closest to Latin???? Who did post that nonsense?
I've nothing against Rumanians and Rumanian language. This is just a reply to some guys which is filling several forums with lies about their own language and the other members of the Romance family.
It's not a good thing to spread ignorance. Let's start to reply.
Vincit omnia veritas
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCHOLARS, ITALIAN IS THE CLOSEST LANGUAGE TO LATIN
1. IF WE LOOK TO THE DECLENSION ONLY, THEN RUSSIAN IS THE CLOSEST LANGUAGE TO LATIN!
The Rumanian declension has NOTHING TO DO with the Latin one!
The Rumanian declension is just a BALKAN declension we can find in other Balkan languages related with Rumanian from a typologichal point of view and completely separated from the Romance family: see the ALBANIAN language that shares with Rumanian also the enclitic definite articles, the neuter gender and several words.
Is Albanian close to Latin? Of course it isn't!
Rumanian declension is due the Balkan background of Romania: nothing to do with the much more complex and refined Latin declensions.
For example, a feature of the Balkan Linguistic Union (Balkan sprachbund) is the syncretism of genitive and dative case.
In fact we find this characteristical declension with the syncretism of genitive and dative case in Albanian, Bulgarian, Slavic Macedonian, Modern Greek and, of course, in Rumanian
English : I gave the book to Maria; It is Maria’s book
Albanian: dat. Ja dhashë librin Marisë; gen. Është libri i Marisë-----------------------
Bulgarian: dat. dadoh knigata na marija; gen. knigata e na Marija-------------------
Slavic Macedonian: dat. ì ja dadov knigata na Marija; gen. knigata e na Marija---
Rumanian: dat. I-am dat cartea Mariei; gen. Este cartea Mariei-----------------------
In this Balkan declension, also the nominative and the accusative case have the same ending as well as the genitive and the dative case (the vocative is rare): practically Rumanian has just a pair of declension ending, that’s all.
Instead the Russian, the Serbo-croat declensions are much more complex and articulated. Much closer to the Latin declension (typologically).
Does it mean German, Russian and Serbo-croat are closer to Latin then the Romance Languages? Of course it doesn’t. They are not even Romance languages!
What is that makes Rumanian and not Russian a Romance language?!
It is the LEXICON!
So it’s ridicolous and so ingenous to think the Rumanian language stands closer to Latin then the other Romance languages just because it has that simple and rough Balkan declension!!
A language is made up of several lexilogical, morphological, phonological, grammatical, synctatical, semantic elements….
When we consider the various Romance Languages as whole, from every point of view, it becomes clear that ITALIAN IS THE CLOSEST LANGUAGE TO LATIN.
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCHOLARS, ITALIAN IS THE CLOSEST LANGUAGE TO LATIN
2. RUMANIAN AND CLASSIC LATIN?????
It's funny to read a statement like this "Italian is the closest language to VULGAR latin, Rumanian the closest to CLASSIC Latin".
What?????????????? Just give me one quote from a scholar which expresses such a ridicolous opinion!
In accordance with the Rumanian official history, the origins of the Rumanian Language date back to the Roman colonization of Dacia. Well, Dacia was conquered in the second century A.D., and NONE SPOKE THE CLASSIC LATIN OF CICERO THEN, especially the Romans who colonized Dacia, who were just peasants and soldiers from the whole Roman World ("ex toto orbe romano")!!
The CLASSIC LATIN was the WRITTEN LITERARY Latin used by the most educated class and it lasted from the 1st century BC to the 2nd century AD.
Its usage was declining when the Romans made Dacia into a Roman province and it is obvious that the colonists of Dacia (peasants and soldiers from different areas of the Empire) belonged to the “VULGUS”, the COMMON PEOPLE OF THE EMPIRE: SO THEY SPOKE ONLY VULGAR LATIN.
Dacia was not even a deeply Romanized Province: it was in fact an IMPERIAL province, and THE ROMANS ABANDONED DACIA AFTER 165 YEARS ONLY!
NONE DID NEVER SPEAK CLASSIC LATIN IN THE TERRITORIES OF THE PRESENT DAY ROMANIA!
So it's obvious that Rumanian can't be the closest language to a language that noone did ever speak among the supposed "ancestors" of the romanian people!
And when someone says something like "Classic Latin", I think especially of Cicero, Virgil, Horace (the Golden Age Latin):
Cicero was from central Italy, Virgil from northern Italy and Horace from southern Italy.
Did ever exist a Latin poet or writer from Dacia?! NOWAY!
If someone wants to use the adjective VULGAR (from the latin VULGUS, common people, people), then the Rumanian language is the most vulgar of the Romance languages: in fact it is the only Romance language without an important literary tradition. In the old territories of the Present-Day Rumania was spoken by the common people only (the nobles spoke and wrote Slavic, Hungarian, Greek).
Even “Rumanian” is a derivative of “Rumân” that originally was a synonym with “dependent peasant”, while the Slavs called the Rumanian folk “Vlach” that was a synonym with “shepherd”. Rumanian was the language of the lowest class. Instead since the Renaissance Humanism, Italian was an elitist language and after Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio (“Le tre corone”), the Italian literature became a Classic: the first Classic literature written in a vernacular language!
So, within the Romance languages, Rumanian is “Vulgar”, Italian (as well as French) is “Classic”.
Did ever exist a Dacian Virgil? No way!
Did ever exist a Rumanian Dante? NO WAY!
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCHOLARS, ITALIAN IS THE CLOSEST LANGUAGE TO LATIN (every kind of Latin)
3. RUMANIAN AND ITALIAN: ON THE ENDING OF THE NOUNS
I've even read "Rumanian kept the end in -U of the Classic Latin, Italian turned it into –O” ( In Italian “-O” AND “-E” are the possible endings of the singular masculine nouns).
OMG! Cans someone show just one Latin noun ending in –U, not a neuter from the 4th declension (the poorest Latin declension)?
There are many masculine nouns ending in -US (nominative, second declension). But -US is not -U!
How many Rumanian nouns end in –us? None.
Is the author of a sentence like that able to tell us that these words ending in -O are not Classic Latin?
---------------------HOMO (Italian= Uomo, Romanian= bărbat), man
---------------------INVENTIO (Italian= Invenzione, inventiva). "Inventio" is one of the principles of the rhetoric
I am considering only the Nominative case now.
If we look to the other cases, we notice that the ablative and the dative cases of the second declension end exactly in -O
-------------------------Lupus, -i, -O (dat.), -um, -e, -O (abl.)---------------------------
So, we see the 6 cases of the second declension: two cases end EXACTLY in -O, one end in -uS and an other end in –uM; noone ends in –u. The only Latin cases ending in “-U” are in the fourth declension, a very poor declension.
And what about the thousands of Rumanian words ending in letters that the Latins did never place at the end of a word?!
See “luP” and its Nom./Gen.: LupuL
Latin words ending in P? Latin words ending in L? NOWAY!
Let’s see the REAL ENDINGS of the Rumanian nouns!-----------------------------
Rumanian Musculine gender, various endings:
-T (student, “student”),
-IST (ziarist, “journalist”),
-IAN (tehnician, “technicist”),
-E (peşte, “fish”),
-U ( -it’s very rare- erou “hero”),
-I (-rare- unchi, “uncle”)
-L (cal, “horse”), and others consonants…. I don’t see any –US; I don’t see any –UM… Just I see a rare –u….
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCHOLARS, ITALIAN IS THE CLOSEST LANGUAGE TO LATIN
4. THE SO CALLED RUMANIAN “NEUTER” IS NOT A NEUTER AND IT IS IRRELATED WITH LATIN!
A)Actually the so called “Rumanian neuter” is NOT even a neuter but just a group of AMBIGENOUS NOUNS.
There is no Rumanian neuter but just a LARGE group of ambigenous nouns that are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural: differently from Latin, they have not a characteristic neuter ending but just a masculine ending in the singular and a feminine ending in the plural.
On the other hand, in ITALIAN there is a little group of ambigenous nouns that are NOT neuter but that are morphological derivatives of the Latin neuter: they have perfectly kept the ending “-A” of the Latin second-declension neuter nominative-accusative plural, for example:
It.:Il braccio (“the arm”)/le braccia(“the arms”); (n. lat. BRACCHIUM/ BRACCHIA)
It.: Il labbro (“the lip”)/ le labbra ( “the lips”); (n. lat. LABRUM/ LABRA)
It: l’osso (“the bone”)/ le ossa (“the bones”); (n. lat. OSSUM/ OSSA), etc.
The Rumanian ambigenous nouns are really a lot (some of 25-30 per cent of nouns fall into this class) and they appear to be productive, having spread to words of non-Romance origin, but it’s important to rememember they are just nouns that are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural: they are NOT neuter.
In fact THE LATIN NEUTER NOUNS NORMALLY HAVE BECOME FEMININE IN RUMANIAN.
The rumanian ambigenous nouns (wrongly called “neuter”) can be view as a strange sub-class of the “feminine” (something that did never exist in Latin): in fact it seems that Rumanian ambigenous nouns are usually inanimate whereas the masculine nouns are predominantly animate, but the feminine class is by far the largest one and contains mostly inanimate nouns; so it can be considered as the TRUE unmarked gender class.
Quotes:
The Rumanian “so called neuter form does not constitute a separate class and does not continue the Latin system” (Rebecca Posner, “The Romance Languages”, 1996, Cambridge University Press p.70)
“Also doubtless a result of Slavic contact is the existence of a so-called neuter gender in Rumanian” (Graham Mallinson, “Rumanian”, in “The Romance Languages”, p. 400)
B) CONTRARLY TO LATIN, ITALIAN AND SPANISH, IN RUMANIAN THE GENDER IS NOT DIRECTLY RELATED TO SEX REFERENCE!
Rumanian makes little use of noun-form class to differentiate the sex of animates.
The Rumanian gender is completely different from the Latin, Italian and Spanish ones! A gender that is not directly related to sex reference works in a very contradictory way and of course it seriously contradicts the Latin, Italian and Spanish use of noun-form class.
5. PHONOLOGY AND LEXICON!!
A) Talking about phonetic and vocabulary, there is not any Romance Language so distant from Latin as Rumanian, that contains a lot of slavicism and various balkanism, plus several Slavic words, Greek words, some word of Turkish origin, and other words of various Balkan origins (many of these are shared with Albanian).
Quotes:
_ “Much more substantial than the Germanic adstrate in the Western Romance Languages is the Slavic adstrate in Balkan Romance” (Graham Mallinson, “Rumanian”, in “The Romance Languages”, p. 413)
_“The Slavic words incontestably form the second constitutive element of the Romanian language. Grammatical structures and phonetics have also been touched by Slavic influence. There are also a number of Slavic prefixes and suffixes which are used to form families of words and which give a more general Slavic colouring to the Romanian language” (Lucian Boia, “Romania. Borderland of Europe”, Reaktion books, p. 55)
The Rumanians are the only Romance speakers which use Slavic words to express their feelings.
Is this word Old Latin, Classic Latin, Late Latin, Vulgar Latin or what else:
“dragoste”, Love?
In all the Romance languages, except Rumanian, the word “Love” derives from the Latin “AMOR”
Lat.: Amor
Italian: Amore (Lat. Accusative “Amore(m)”)
Spanish: Amor
French: Amour
Rumanian: Dragoste (what is this??)
In all the Romance languages, the verb “to love” is a Latin derivative. With the exception of Rumanian…
Latin: Amare
Italian: Amare
Spanish: Amar
French: Aimer
Rumanian: A Iubi (Slavic derivative)
According to the linguist Alexandru Niculescu "Rumanian is the only Romance language that has failed to preserve amor, carus, amare, sponsa, etc., replacing them by [the Slavic words] dragoste (love), drag (dear), a iubi (to love), nevastă (wife), logodnă (betrothal), a logodi (to betrothe)..".
I did never see these graphemes in the standard Latin alphabet: Nonetheless they are in the standard Rumanian alphabet:
Ă
Â
Î
Ş
Ţ
W
Departing from the Latin six-vowel pattern, modern standard Rumanian has developed two central vowels not found in other standard Romance language stressed vowel system: Ă (the shwa) and Î (the close central arounded vowel: it is pronunced like the “e” of “roses” in some english dialects).
These two central vowels are one of the several Slavic borrowings that affected the phonology of several Rumanian words of Latin origin and that make the Rumanian pronunciation very Eastern and distant fom the Latin one. See a comparison with Latin and Italian, the closest language to Latin.
LATIN: Campum (“field”); ITALIAN: Campo. RUMANIAN: Cîmp
LATIN: Canto (“I sing”); ITALIAN: Canto. RUMANIAN: Cînt
LATIN: Lanam (“wool”); ITALIAN: Lana. RUMANIAN: Lînă
LATIN: Venam (“vein”); ITALIAN: Vena. RUMANIAN: Vînă
LATIN: Ventum (“wind”); ITALIAN: Vento. RUMANIAN: Vînt, Etc……..
Even without considering the vowel borrowed from the Slavic languages, Rumanian OFTEN replaces the original vowels of its Latin derivatives with other vowels.
LATIN: Mentem (“mind”); ITALIAN: Mente. RUMANIAN: Minte
LATIN: Animam(“soul”); ITALIAN: Anima (soul). RUMANIAN: Inima (heart)
LATIN: Gentem (“people”); ITALIAN: Gente. Rumanian: Gint
Etc………………….….
Some WORDS OF BALKAN ORIGIN Rumanian shares with Albanian:
Albanian: avull (“steam”); Rumanian: abure. ITALIAN: Vapore <Lat. Vaporem.
Albanian: mës (“colt”); Rumanian: mîs. ITALIAN: Puledro <Lat. Pullitrum
Albanian: vatrë (“hearth”); Rumanian: vatră. ITALIAN: Focolare <Lat. Foculare < Focus “fire”
Albanian: shkrump (“ash”); Rumanian: scrum. ITALIAN: Cenere < Lat. Cinerem
B) Rumanian Cardinal numbers eleven-nineteen are modelled on a Slavic pattern (“one on ten”, “two on ten”, “three on ten”, ecc.) though using Romance morphemes.
unsprezece “eleven” (“spre” = “on”). Italian: undici < Latin: undecim
douăsprezece “twelve”. Italian: dodici < Latin: duodecim
treisprezece “thirteen”. Italian: tredici < Latin: tredecim
paisprezece “fourteen”. Italian: quattordici < Latin: quattuordecim
cincisprezece “fifteen”. Italian: quindici < Latin: quindecim
şaisprezece “sixteen”. Italian: sedici < Latin: sedecim
şaptasprezece “seventeen”. Italian: diciassette < Latin: decem septem
optsprezece “eighteen”. Italian: diciotto < Latin: decem octo < duodeviginti…
nouăsprezece “nineteen”
Rumanian multiples of ten are represented by “two tens”, “three tens” etc., again a Slavic calque:
douăzeci “twenty”
treizeci “thirty”
patruzeci “forty”
cinzeci “fifty”
şaizeci “sixty”
şaptezeci “seventy”
optzeci “eighty”
nouăzeci “ninety”
Finally, “one hundred” is Slavic too: sută (< suto). In Latin it is CENTUM (> Italian: “cento”).
C) Contrary to Latin and other Romance Languages (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese…), Rumanian does not use any syntetic form to express the absolute superlative.
In order to form the absolute superlative, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese can modify the adjective by taking away the final vowel and adding “-issimo/a”, “-issimi/e” (Italian), “-ìsimo/a”, “-ìsimos/as”(Spanish)…, derivatives of the Latin “issimus/a/um/i/ae/a”
--Latin: Velocissimus/a (“very fast”) > Italian: Velocissimo/a. ------Latin: Canis velocissimus non est (“The dog is not very fast”) > Italian: Il cane non è velocissimo.
Instead Rumanian superlative absolute is only periphrastic (foarte/tare + adjective): ----“Am citit o carte foarte proastă” (“I read a very bad book”). The same sentence in Latin could be “Foedissimum librum legi”.
Italian and Portuguese even keep an other Latin syntetic method to make the absolute superlative of adjectives ending in “-re”(deriviting from Latin words ending in -er), that is the suffixes -errimo (singular masculine), -errima (singular feminine), -érrimos/errimi (plural masculine), or -érrimas/errime (plural feminine):
--Latin: Acer > abs. superl. Acerrimus; Italian: Acre > abs. superl. Acerrimo --Latin: Celeber > abs. superl. Celeberrimus; Italian: Celebre > abs. superl. Celeberrimo, etc……
D) Since this little group of Rumanians trying spamming their preposterous ideas about the Romance languages do not know Latin and the various Romance Languages, they state a lot of things which are pure nonsense (as I showed till now): among them, they write a list of words or morphological phenomena and assert these exist only in Rumanian, while they exist in other Romance languages, where they are even more common… At the moment I remember they say only Rumanian has kept the diphtong “AU”. What?? Probably they do not know any Italian word.
Latin: CAUSA > Italian: CAUSA. Latin: LAUTUM > Italian: LAUTO;
Latin: GAUDIUM > Italian: GAUDIO. Latin: PAUSA > Italian: PAUSA;
Latin: CAUTUM > Italian: CAUTO. Latin: LAURUM > Italian: LAURO.
Latin: AURA > Italian: AURA. Latin: CLAUSULAM > Italian: CLAUSOLA,
Etc…….
E) LATIN AND ITALIAN CONSONANT LENGHT------------------------------
While all the Romance languages lost the Latin vowel lenght system, ITALIAN, having the most conservative Romance phonology (together with Sardinian) and vocabulary, is the ONLY national Romance language that has kept the Latin distinctive CONSONANT GEMINATION and CONSONANT LENGHT, which depend on each other.
The Italians are the ONLY Neo-Latin speakers who keep this sense of the consonant lenght, lost in all the other National Romance languages.
And in ITALIAN as well as in LATIN, the consonant lenght is DISTINCTIVE from a semantic point of view.
--LATIN: feRum (“wild”), feRRum (“iron”) > ITALIAN: fieRo (“wild” or “proud”), feRRo (“iron”).
--LATIN: aNum (“anus”), aNNum (“year”) > ITALIAN: aNo (“anus”), aNNo (“year”)
--LATIN: eRat (“he was”), eRRat (“he wanders”) > ITALIAN: eRa (“he was”), eRRa (“he wanders”)
--LATIN: moLem (“mass”), moLLem (“soft”) > ITALIAN: moLe (“mass”); moLLe (“soft”)
LATIN: coLare (“to filter”), coLLare (“collar”) > ITALIAN: coLare (“to filter”); coLLare (“collar”), Etc………………………
An other quote:
"A Romanian who hears Italian spoken can understand quite a lot (those Roman ancestors count something, after all!); an Italian will understand much less Romanian, confused by the Slavic and oriental words and by the pronunciation. In any case, an Italian will never speak Romanian perfectly. On the other hand, many Bulgarians learn Romanian very well and speak it without accent. Are the Romanians closer to the Italians or to the Bulgarians? Who can say?” (Lucian Boia, “Romania. Borderland of Europe”, p. 58)
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCHOLARS, ITALIAN IS THE CLOSEST LANGUAGE TO LATIN
6. VERBAL SYSTEM!!
Quotes:
--“Verb morphology is one of the most diagnostic features for recognizing a Romance language” (Rebecca Posner, “The Romance Languages”, 1996, Cambridge University Press,p. 39)
--“In its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin tense system in extreme ways” (Yves D’hulst, Martine Coene, Larisa Avram, “Syncretic and analytic tenses in Romanian”, in “Balkan Syntax ans Semantics”, pag. 366)
A) In comparison with Latin and the other Romance languages, the Rumanian verbal system IS LACKING in some TENSES!
DIFFERENTLY FROM LATIN, Italian and the other western Romance languages, RUMANIAN SUBJUNCTIVE IS WITHOUT:
1_The Imperfect
2_The Pluperfect (both VERY important for the Latin syntax!)
Rumanian subjunctive has only a present and a perfect tense.
Besides, the rumanian perfect subjunctive is not even conjugated (differently from the Latin one):
Rum.: Eu fi cîntat, Tu fi cîntat, El fi cîntat, Noi fi cîntat, Voi fi cîntat, Ei fi cîntat (where’s the conjugation?)
Of course Italian and the other Romance languages as well as Latin have a conjugated perfect subjunctive, a conjugated pluperfect subjunctive and a conjugated imperfect subjunctive.
Ital.: Io cantassi, Tu cantassi, Egli cantasse, Noi cantassimo, Voi cantaste…
Fr.: Que je chantasse, Que tu chantasses, Qu'il chantât, Que nous chantassions, Que vous chantassiez…
Rumanian: ???, ???, ???, ???, ???, ???
Ital.: Io avessi cantato, tu avessi cantato, egli avesse cantato, noi avessimo cantato, voi aveste cantato...
Fr.: Que j'eusse chanté, Que tu eusses chanté, Qu'il eût chanté, Que nous eussions chanté
Rum: ???, ???, ???, ???, ???, ???
B) Differently from Latin and the other Romance languages, RUMANIAN IS WITHOUT THE PRESENT PARTICIPLE:
Latin: amare > amante(m); Italian: amare > amante. Rumanian: ???
Latin: turbare > turbante(m); Italian: turbare > turbante. Rum.
??
Latin: vincere > vincente(m); Italian: vincere > vincente. Rumanian: ???
Italian has even kept something from the Latin future participle:
Latin: nasciturum/a/i/ae (the one who will be born); Italian: nascituro/a/i/e
Latin moriturum/a/i/ae (the one who will die); Italian: morituro/a/i/e
C) The strange rumanian guys who state Rumanian is the closest language to “classic Latin” (???), are proud to say that Rumanian has 4 conjugations as well as Latin; while the other Romance Languages have 3 conjugations…
But a further fact it that all the Romance languages lost the Latin distinction between short and long vowels. Since the distinction between the long and the short vowels was lost, it is useless and meaningless to keep 4 conjunctions because the second and the third conjugations differed from each other only due the quantity of the wovel “E” : 2nd coniug. “-ēre”, 3th coniug. “-ere”.
The comparison between the ending of the Italian infinitives and the ending of the Latin ones shows perfectly this Romance situation
--Latin: -are; Italian: -are
--Latin: -ēre (2nd coniug.) and -ere (3th coniug.); Italian: "-ere"
--Latin: -ire; Italian -ire
D) Differently from the other Romance Languages, Rumanian infinitive has completely lost the Latin termination –RE, and it is marked by the particle “a”. It appears morphologically very strange within the Romance languages. (Although a so-called “long infinitive” has been kept in Rumanian, it is NOT a verbal form).
---Latin: amare (to love); Italian: amare. Rumanian: a iubi
---Latin: esse > essere (to be); Italian: essere. Rum.: a fi
---Latin: dormire (to sleep); Italian: dormire. Rum.: a dormi, Etc.
E) Rumanian is the only Romance language that, differenlty from Latin, has not a syntetic future, but a periphrastic future construction using the verb meaning “want” as auxiliar: once more this feature in one of the various Balkanisms Rumanian share with the other members of the Balkan Linguistic Union.
--Rumanian future tense, periphrastic (a merge, “to go”):
voi merge, vei merge, va merge, vom merge, veţi merge, vor merge.
--Italian future tense, syntetic (andare, “to go”):
andrò, andrai, andrà, andremo, andrete, andranno.
F) Rumanian has several homonyms and homographs within its paradigms. E. g. differently from Latin and other Romance languages, the standard Rumanian does not distinguish more than five personal endings in the present indicative:
In the Rumanian a-conjugation, person 3 is identical with person 6. Instead Italian distinguishes 6 personal endings, as well as Latin.
--Latin: Cantat (he sings), Cantant (they sing)
--Italian: Canta (he sings), Cantano (they sing)
--Rumanian: Cîntă = “he sings”, “they sing”
Whereas in the other Rumanian conjugations, person 1 is the same as person 6
--Latin: Teneo (I hold), Tenent (they hold)
--Italian: Tengo (I hold), Tengono (they hold)
--Rumanian: Tin = “I hold”, “they hold”
7. SYNTAX!!!
A) A Quote :
“As opposed to most Western Romance Languages, Romanian has an extremely reduced deictic tense system in which a single past morpheme can express both the relation between Event Time and Reference Time and between Reference Time and Speech Time […]
Classical and Vulgar Latin had two distinct morphems to express past in T1 and past in T2: /ba/ for past of R with respect to S and /v/ for past of E with respect to R. Already in early Vulgar Latin, intervocalic [b] and [v] frequently got mixed up and both have been erased in their evolution towards Romanian. As a consequence of this evolution, past in T1 and past in T2 could not longer be distinguished from each other […] CONRARY TO LATIN OR THE OTHER ROMANCE LANGUAGES, ROMANIAN ceased to have morphems directly expressing “past of R with respect to S” or “past of E with respect to R” but ended up with having one single morpheme expressing mere “past” […] Romanian has no distinct past morphemes for T1 and T2 as in Latin or the other Romance languages, but it has instead two “synonymous” past morphemes wich can both be used indifferently in T1 and T2. In other words, in its evolution, ROMANIAN SIMPLIFIED THE ORIGINAL LATIN TENSE SYSTEM IN EXTREME WAYS: taking into account the loss of future in T1 and T2, and the equation of past in T1 and T2 it ended up with only one morpheme (but two allomorphs) which express just this single relationship, namely “past”.” (Yves D’hulst, Martine Coene, Larisa Avram, “Syncretic and analytic tenses in Romanian”, in “Balkan Syntax ans Semantics”, p. 355 and 365-6)
Rumanian is the only Romance language that completely lost the Latin CONSECUTIO TEMPORUM!
The “Consecutio Temporum” is one of the most characteristic element within the Latin Syntax (the ones who really studied Latin know it very well). So that it is impossibile to reproduce the refined Syntax of the greatest Latin authors in a language that has not Consecutio Temporum.
And did I even hear a pair of rumanian guys saying “Romanian is close to classic Latin”??!
Is this a jock or what? Did you ever read Cicero or Quintilianus and look to your syntax before stating such a ridicolous thing?!! Have you any idea of the importance of the Syntax within the classic Latin prose?
Are you able to understand that the Rumanian syntax is the least Latin of the Romance syntaxes? The same for the Rumanian verbal system.
Are you able to understand that Rumanian phonetics sounds so eastern that should be ridicolous to think of a man reading a Latin poetry with all the Slavic inflexions even the Latin derivatives of Rumanian language have?
B) In comparison with Latin and the other Romance languages, Rumanian is lacking in syntactic constructions with the infinitive mode.
This reduction of the infinitive within the syntactic construction and its large substitution by final, consecutive and declarative subordinate structures is an other typical characteristic of the Balkan Linguistic Union.
Differently from Rumanian, Latin and all the other Romance languages give a big syntactic importance to the infinitive mood.