Talk:Common Romanian

Greek language loans in that period were probably via Vulgar Latin, since Latin had long been absorbing Greek words. I'm going to mention this, otherwise some may think that the Greek loans means there was close proximity or extended contact between Proto-Romanians and Greeks, which is not necessarily so.

An example: Romanian urmǎ ('trace") (also in Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian) and Italian orma ("trace") are both from Greek ormos, but both via Vulgar Latin. Alexander 007 05:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I am a bit puzzled by what the article states about the rise of Protoromanian. It looks there is a theory of the rise of this distinct language but the existing evidence seems to be almost completely lacking.

The sentence 'torna fratre', whatever its meaning, is simply Latin, or Vulgar Latin.Aldrasto (talk) 11:24, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In Chakavian Croatian many Dalmatian language words are saved. And in Chakavian subdialect in Istria (a few small old Romanian groups moved there) tornati is verb "to get back", "to return". Torna fratre means "come back brother". Both Dalmatian and proto-Romanian developed from the Vulgar Latin, as well as older Italic speeches, or finally any Romance language. Zenanarh (talk) 09:40, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The expression in question is not distinctive of Proto-Romanian as it could belong to any early neolatin languages. To establish a new language, here P.R., we must find its distictive features from common vulgar Latin. Here the misunderstanding happened because the expression was in itself ambiguous: tornare in cl. Lt. means move in a round, circular fashion; thence came as second meaning to turn round on one's heels; and lastly move bacwards. Here it was the confusion between the second and third meaning that caused the incident.Aldrasto (talk) 06:31, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In the Stratēgikon, it appears that the command tornā -- at least in the single (cavalry) context where it appears -- means neither "turn on one's heels" nor "move backwards", but rather "go about" -- i.e., change the direction of the entire cavalry unit, while in motion, so that they end up facing in the direction of their original rear. But in the common usage of 6th-century Late Latin, it seems likely that tornāre had already acquired most of the meanings now included in the English verb "turn". RandomCritic (talk) 18:00, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

What is this article about?
In the first half we learn about a hypothetical language from 7th century onwards. In the second, longer half, we read the interpretation of a language sample from the 6th century.

In the first half we encounter various names for this language. In the second half we find out it's just Romanian. Daizus (talk) 14:23, 18 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Read the final paragraph of the first half. It says that Romanian as a definable entity (i. e., a specific Romance dialect with distinct characteristics) existed before the 7th century, possibly as early as the 2nd century. In the strict sense, Proto-Romanian is the parent language – the immediate ancestor – of all modern Romanian languages. If we reconstruct the common basis out of which all the modern Romanian languages developped and descended in a direct, linear fashion, we get a language that was spoken approximately in the period between the 7th and 9th centuries, when it began to split up (just as Latin, i. e. Proto-Romance, had started to split up around the start of the Common Era; Old and Archaic Latin some time before the start of the Common Era could be called "Pre-Proto-Romance" – "grandparent language" stages, so to say.) What came immediately before that period was already Romanian linguistically, but could be called "Pre-Proto-Romanian". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:52, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The lead goes like that "Proto-Romanian [...] is a hypothetical language considered to have been spoken by the ancestors of today's Romanians and related Balkan Latin peoples (Vlachs), between the 7th and the 9th centuries."
 * Now either the second half of the article is not on topic (as it is about a sample of the language in the 6th century), or it is about the topic (and must stay here), but then flatly contradicts the lead. This is not an article about Romanian, but about Proto-Romanian, that hypothetical language spoken from ca 600 to 900 AD (or so the lead says). Daizus (talk) 20:59, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * You're being deliberately obtuse now. First, presumably, Proto-Romanian cannot be dated so precisely (certainly not to the year or even decade). Second, if it started in 600 AD, then 587 AD is close enough. It still provides us with information about the language, even if a stage perhaps a decade or so earlier (if that even makes a difference). Evidence from the 6th century (in the form of names quoted by medieval Greek authors) is routinely adduced in discussions about Proto-Slavic, even though it is usually dated to ca. 600 or a bit later.
 * Are you really making such a fuss about 13 years in the prehistorical period? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:06, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I think you're the one being deliberately obtuse. First you removed the tag without understanding why it is placed. Now you try to minimize the problem: "merely 13 years". It's not merely 13 years, it's a different century, and moreover, is this language either hypothetical or an actual language (for we have a sample of it)? Perhaps the second section does not belong here, I am not really sure, but sort it out, don't sweep it under the carpet and get mad at those pointing the problem. Daizus (talk) 21:13, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * 1998 is a different century, too – hell, even a different millennium! –, that doesn't mean people in 1998 spoke a different language or form/historical stage of English than we do now. You're being pedantic, and you seem to suggest arbitrary century boundaries somehow mattered to the evolution of languages.
 * As I've emphasised, changes in language proceed slowly, and take generations, not years or decades. Also, dating proto-languages is mostly a guesstimate thing (unless you have loanwords you can correlate with historical events, for example), you can't usually nail it down to the century, much less even more precisely. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:30, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Look, in the current article there are some obvious contradictions: attested vs hypothetical (in vain you state obvious things about language change when you apparently support the ludicrous claim that a hypothetical proto-language is attested!), before 7th century or starting in the 7th century. None of what you said deals with these issues, but instead you choose to direct an ad hominem at me (you called me "obtuse", "pedantic"), thus a null argument. I have not suggested "arbitrary century boundaries", I have not written this article, I have not referenced it.
 * And FYI, since we (according to some views) have the language attested in a 6th century written source, this is not a "prehistorical period". And moreover, according to many enough scholars (J. N. Adams A. Du Nay et al), the Balkan Romance languages spoken until ca 600 are called Latin or Balkan Latin. But these digressions are not helpful, nor is the extra tagging (e.g. neutrality), since the first issue to be solved is the topic of this article. Daizus (talk) 21:42, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I removed the "arbitrary century boundaries" and also changed this language from "hypothetical" to Romance. I marked the part about loanwords as dubious, because most Slavic loanwords in Romanian date after 8-9th century AD (Slavic liquid metathesis). Daizus (talk) 22:00, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Citation tags added over two years ago -
In the 9th century Proto-Romanian already had a structure very distinct from the other Romance languages, with major differences in grammar, morphology and phonology and already was a member of the Balkan language area.

The first language that broke the unity was Aromanian, in the 9th century, followed shortly after by Megleno-Romanian. Istro-Romanian was the last to break the link with Daco-Romanian in the 11th century.[citation needed]

I'm not sure what factual basis there is for either of these statements (as opposed to some theory) - anyway, add references of they will be deleted.HammerFilmFan (talk) 20:30, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Proto-Romanian vs Common Romanian
, I suggest the discussion should be continued here instead of my Talk page. I think Proto-Romanian is the proper term, because it is a reconstructed language, which is extremly poorly attested. Borsoka (talk) 03:41, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Copying my POV, from your talk page, is that this article is not about language reconstruction, so calling it "proto-" is misleading. I'd be fine with that if we were to rewrite the article to be about reconstruction, but currently it only consists of an introduction and a section on attestation -- that is, per Agard's usage, Common Romanian rather than Proto-Romanian.

This is what I've been using as a guide for a model usage: Frederick Browning Agard (1984) A Course in Romance Linguistics, volume 2. Agard distinguishes "proto" (reconstruction) from "common" (the actual language):

Part One is "From the Romance languages up: Phonological reconstruction", and chapter 2 is "The reconstruction of Proto-Romance". Part Two is "From Latin down: Phonological changes", and chapter 1 is "The Latin language becomes the Common Romance language". Section 1.9 is "Equating Proto-Romance with Common Romance".

At the title of Part Two chapter 1 there is a footnote, explaining the term "Common Romance", and this is on p. 60, as follows (italics in the original):
 * As applied to what had become by present criteria new language, this new label [Common Romance] quite properly supersedes not only the imprecise and much-abused term 'Vulgar Latin', but also Hall's preferred term 'Popular Latin' and, indeed, Agard's (1976) 'Imperial Latin'. ... As for the term 'Proto-Romance', which must be kept fully distinct from Common Romance, it refers simply to the common source of all Romance languages as reconstructed by the comparative method, and therefore should be reserved for use in a different fram of reference. The fact remains that all the grammatical features for which the comparative method does not show evidence—e.g. the phoneme h or a six-case nominal system—need not be ascribed to Common Romance as we define it. Proto-Romance and Common Romance are, in this sense, the two faces of one and the same coin.

— kwami (talk) 03:50, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The attestation is a simple word from a 7th-century text. Furthermore it is rather a Vulgar Latin term, because Proto-Romanian must have been influenced by Slavic idioms, as it is attested by Slavic loanwords in its daughter languages. Slavic influence on "Proto-Romanian" before the 8th century cannot be proved. Borsoka (talk) 04:10, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Regardless, this article is still about Common Romanian. If that's spurious, then it needs to be rewritten. If it's supposed to be about Proto-Romanian, where is the coverage of Proto-Romanian? I don't care one way or the other, but an article should cover the topic it claims to be about. — kwami (talk) 05:44, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Proto-Romanian is the reconstructed common ancestors of the four modern variants of Romanian. Proto-Romanian and Common Romanian are treated as synonyms in linguistic literature. What is the proper term, independently of the present text? Borsoka (talk) 05:48, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * IMO, if the article is about the reconstructed language, then it should be titled "Proto-Romanian", like it was before I moved it. But if the attestation is from an early stage of Common Romanian from before Slavic influence, and Proto-Romanian must show Slavic influence, as it can be reconstructed from the modern languages, then that entire section on attestation out of place. Per WEIGHT, it's undue -- as it stands, the entire text of the article is on a different (though related) topic than what the article is supposed to be about. I could see that section as background or peripheral info in an article on Proto-Romanian that actually covered the topic, but we don't do that. — kwami (talk) 05:55, 10 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for bringing this discussion to my attention. It's all about WP:COMMONNAME and what we are actually talking about. The "fleshy" part of the article is about one single attested word of what might well be an early predecessor of Balkan Romance, while the lead promises to talk about the "hypothetical and unattested Romance language evolved from Vulgar Latin and considered to have been spoken by the ancestors of today's Romanians and related Balkan Latin peoples". That language should be called "Proto-Romanian", independently of whether it is reconstructed bottom-up or top-down; personally, I find Agard's distinction forced and artificial, since the comparative method makes no limitaions about the time-depth of our input data—we reconstruct PIE using both Sanskrit and Lithuanian (etc.), or for a better analogy, we reconstruct e.g. Proto-Balto-Slavic based on what we know about attested West/East Baltic and Slavic languages, but also on our knowledge about its ancestor PIE.
 * But in any case, common usage by scholars trumps our theoretical preferences. I'm not familiar with the relevant lit to have an opinion about how reconstructed "Proto-Romanian" should called here. As for the content, ideally the article should give some impression about how much of this "Proto-Romanian" already has been reconstructed using bottom-up and top-down methods (cf. Proto-Albanian language). Otherwise, it remains a dictionary entry with a section about a related, but different topic. It's a bit like Proto-Armenian language, which has some interesting information, but alas none about Proto-Armenian itself. your ideas? –Austronesier (talk) 09:21, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Maybe I didn't read Agard closely enough. I thought he was speaking of the attested language, AKA Vulgar Latin, as "Common Romance", and the reconstruction as "Proto-Romance". If we followed that convention, then the attested elements of the ancestral Scandinavian language would be "Common Norse/Scandivavian", while the reconstruction would be "Proto-Norse/Scandinavian", regardless of which direction the reconstruction was done in. The common language would have evolved over centuries (between when pGermanic broke up and when pNGermanic broke up), while the protolanguage would be closer in time to when pNGermanic broke up, even given that it wouldn't be a true snapshot of any one time. — kwami (talk) 09:42, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I think "Primitive X" (or "Archaic X") is a better way to indicate a stage considered to be older than a proto-stage, or roughly as old with no certainty, as in the torna, torna (fratre) example. "Common X" implies a close-knit dialect continuum descending from a proto-language, which can still co-evolve. Common Romanian in this sense would date to the 11th or 12th centuries or so, and Common North Germanic would be what we call Old Norse. "Proto-X" is best reserved for external reconstructions produced using comparative method. I'm not sure if Proto-Romanian reconstructions have been published, but it should be a relatively easy task to produce them. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:57, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Terminology of "Proto-Romanian" etc.
Okay, this is just ridiculously inconsistent: in the first sentence─ which, by the way has no sources─ it says "[...] (inaccurately) as Proto-Romanian," but then that is the designation it goes on to use throughout the rest of the article! Someone should fix this, one way or the other, to make the terminology consistent throughout the article; I don't really care whether "Common Romanian" or "Proto-Romanian" is settled on, whichever seems to make most sense to more experienced readers than I, but in the case of the latter, the Article probably should also be renamed and/or moved. Also, if the name "Proto-Romanian" is indeed "inaccurate", then why? How is it misleading or confusing? That part needs further elaboration, explanation, or clarification, not to mention sourcing/verifiability/references citations, and if neither can be found, such a claim should be removed from the text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6c44:237f:accb:47e:9066:6b64:6a2e (talk) 00:35, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Even the renaming of the article was questionable, and we should not exile any of the terminologies.(KIENGIR (talk) 21:52, 11 December 2020 (UTC))

"Common-Romanian", Terminology
The title of the page is wrong. The term common is used in an abusive way namely, it is used to designate the whole region of the Balkans, meaning that all Latin speaking people from the peninsula were ancestors of nowadays Romanians, which is false. Romanians are descendants of the Dacian and Getae people and can not revendicate the whole peninsula. The correct term that should be used is that of Proto Romanian in order to delimitate the Romanian people and their language from the rest of the Latin speaking people of the Balkans.Legione-Romana (talk) 08:04, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

please read our principal policies, especially WP:NOR and WP: Source, before continuing your edits. WP is a platform to share knowledge based on scholarly works. We cannot debate scholarly PoVs based on our own research. Borsoka (talk) 08:08, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

The creator of the page should explain what is the meaning of common? Common to whom? To the whole Balkans? Romanians being descendants of the Dacian and Getae people is a fact proved by scholars in linguistics and history (both Romanians & foreigners) and not my personal research. Also, that they have inhabited mostly the geographical area north of the Danube river is a fact thus, the language of their descendants (Romanians), cannot be common to the whole Balkanic peninsula. If they want to keep the term common then, they have to specify that it is related to nowadays Romanians and the Romanian minorities in the neighbouring countries but not to the entire peninsula.Legione-Romana (talk) 08:29, 2 April 2021 (UTC)


 * No, most modern scholars agree that the venue of the development of modern Romanian is uncertain (See for instance, The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages (2013 ) and The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages (2016 ). That the four variants of Balkan Romance (including Aromanian) developed from the same ancient language Common/Proto-Romanian is a common place in linguistic literature (for references read the Background section of the History of Romanian). Please always refer to scholarly works when editing to avoid original research and mispresentation. Borsoka (talk) 08:57, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

What do you mean by no? No what? That the venue of the development of modern Romanian is uncertain does not answer any of my questions. Again, the term common is used in an abusive way namely, it is used to designate the whole region of the Balkans, insinuating that all Latin speaking people from the peninsula were ancestors of nowadays Romanians, which is false. Romanians are descendants of Dacians and Getae and they have inhabited mostly the geographical area north of the Danube river. Moreover, the page is not about the modern Romanian, it is about a hypothetical and untested ancient language.

What do you mean by most modern scholars? Romanian scholars of the 18-th century?

What do you mean by, common place in ''That the four variants of Balkan Romance (including Aromanian) developed from the same ancient language Common/Proto-Romanian is a common place in linguistic literature (for references read the Background section of the History of Romanian)? The History of Romanian writen by Romanian scholars?

What do you mean by, ancient language Common/Proto-Romanian? That is nonsense. Common can not be Proto and Proto can not be Common.

Again the creator of the page can not use the title common. They have to decide what are they going to do with the page. If they want to write about any Common Romanian they must be specific and focus on the topic and not wander around the whole Balkans.

The above are not the only problems with this page. The whole page constitutes an absurdity. The start: Common Romanian (româna comună), also known as Ancient Romanian (străromâna), Balkan Latin or Proto-Romanian, is a hypothetical and unattested Romance language evolved from Vulgar Latin and considered to have been spoken by the ancestors of today's Romanians and related Balkan Latin peoples (Vlachs) between the 7th or 8th centuries AD[1] and the 10th or 11th centuries AD.[2]

A hypothetical and unattested language? - how can a subject like this have a page on Wikipedia? The cited sources are proving what? That the language is hypothetical and unattested? What about the fact that the supposed sources contradict each other? 7th or 8th centuries AD and the 10th or 11th centuries AD? What happened between the 8th and the 10th? The hypothetical language disappeared and reappeared again after 200 years?

The sample section: It refers to the Thracian Vlachish of the 6th c. AD, not to any Common/proto/ancient Romanian. How can that constitute a sample? Again, the creator of the page must consider all the above and decide. Otherwise, we can not accept it in the current form.Legione-Romana (talk) 10:19, 2 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes, the page is problematic, but no editor can edit it based on their own interpretation of facts, factoids or ancient sources. The History of Romanian is likely not written by Romanian scholars, but it is well sourced, with references to works of leading scholars of Romance linguistic. Proto-/Common Romanian can be subject to scholarly research, similarly to Proto-Indoeuropean. For scholars mention Common/Proto-Romanian, it can be subject to a WP article. Borsoka (talk) 10:57, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Your answer can not be taken into consideration. It is a superficial and insufficient one. If you want me to do so please provide full and detailed answers to all the points mentioned above. I agree only with the first sentence of your answer, Yes, the page is problematic, but no editor can edit it based on their own interpretation of facts, factoids or ancient sources. The page is not just problematic. All of it is nonsense. It should be rewritten or closed. I agree that no editor can edit it based on their own interpretation of facts, factoids or ancient sources. The fact is that the whole page is based upon that kind of information. Again, the creator of the page must consider all the above and decide. Otherwise, we can not accept it in the current form thus I will resume my editing.Legione-Romana (talk) 16:06, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
 * If we agree that no editor can edit the article based on their own interpretation of facts, factoids or ancient sources, we are on the same side. Borsoka (talk) 00:44, 3 April 2021 (UTC)