Concept
Re-latinization of Romanian
Overview
The re-latinization of Romanian (also known as re-romanization) was the reinforcement of the Romance features of the Romanian language that happened in the 18th and 19th centuries. Romanian adopted a Latin-based alphabet to replace the Cyrillic script and borrowed many words from French as well as from Latin and Italian, in order to acquire the lexical tools necessary for modernization. This deliberate process coined words for recently introduced objects or concepts (neologisms), added Latinate synonyms for some Slavic and other loanwords, and strengthened some Romance syntactic features. Some linguistic researchers emphasize that the use of this term is inappropriate as it conflates the larger process of modernization of the language with the more extreme, and in the end unsuccessful, current of eliminating non-Latin influences, and, secondly, the term's lack of precision is susceptible to lead to confusion as the Latin character of the Romanian language had already been noticed since at least the 15th century.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
This process of composition is sometimes found in its incipient stage—a stage in which the component words are temporarily united to signify some unnamed object, and do not (from lack of frequent use) permanently cohere. But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Re-latinization of Romanian is.
The whole of the eastern half of Germany, as far as the Elbe, Saale, and Bohemian Forest, has, it is well known, been reconquered during the last thousand years, from invaders of Slavonic origin. The greater part of these territories have been Germanized, to the perfect extinction of all Slavonic nationality and language, for several centuries past; and if we except a few totally isolated remnants, amounting in the…
Friedrich Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution
Close in meaning to Re-latinization of Romanian; the term itself is not named.
A._ Esq; R. S. S. to the Publisher, with a Paper of Mr. _S. Flowers_, containing the Exact Draughts of several unknown Characters, taken from the Ruins at _Persepolis_._
Royal Society, Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 3
Close in meaning to Re-latinization of Romanian; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- French language
- German language
- Grammatical gender
- Type–token distinction
- Latin
- Latin alphabet
- Iași
- Old English
- Phonology
- Writing system
- Prefix
- Romania
- Romanian language
- Age of Enlightenment
- Transylvania
- Loanword
- English language
- Medieval Latin
- Transylvanian School
- Ion Heliade Rădulescu
- August Treboniu Laurian
Place in the tradition
Part of Romanian philosophy.
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