ROMANIAN help for AmE speaker: some vocabulary translations, plus a breakdown of "negru ca abanosul

[runa27]

So, I'm going to be teaching myself Romanian in the future, because a.) it's a beautiful and intriguing language with a rich and interesting history and b.) I have a story set in Romania using (naturally) some Romanian characters and it's nowhere near close enough to the Spanish I've studied previously for me to "get by" in some of my resources

Comments

[runa27]

I was wondering if that was the case, too. I didn't know about abonos, but it makes intuitive sense (fairly close to ebony, plus knowing negru means black...). Also, the EUdict reference specifically uses jet-black and ebony (-colored), making me wonder now if it's literally black as ebony.

I wonder if the reason I wasn't able to find abanosul, is that it is one of those words that is conjugated? (Er, can you "conjugate" something that isn't a verb? Ugh, I need to brush up on my grammatical terms). Hmm...

Actually, that may well be the case! Granted, this is a user-generated dictionary, so I'm taking everything with a grain of salt until I hear from somebody fluent. But it looks like abanos refers to the ebony wood/tree. It also looks like lemn may also refer to more generic wood, given some of the other results when I click on the "abanos (lemn.)" reference, so that would mean that indeed abanos literally translates as ebony?

Wonder if this means Abanosescu would be a good derived surname? Which would be neat, as it's close to the placeholder I had ("Ebonescu" was the "until I figure out what it should be" placeholder). I might be going overboard on using the escu suffix though, heh. Especially as I already have a Luminescu in the cast. :P

[turquoiseyes]

Heh, my own grammatical terms(and especially the ones in English) are pretty much non-existent. I forgot the simplest of terms as for me the intuitive method works best when learning any foreign tongue and not burdening my weak lil' brain with all those terms :)

"Abanosul" may well be a sort-of-conjugation in relation to the description "the color of [ebony]" where it changed it's form from "abanos", depicting the tree/gem to a more descriptive form, something like saying "ebony-ish" in a way, but that's just me guessing.

As for the surname, I can't really help much there, but from a completely unprofessional point of view, it sort of doesn't seem right? As if it should be rather Abanoscu instead of Abanosescu? As I said, it's completely unprofessional and I have little to no knowledge of how you'd make a believable Romanian surname so I say if you still feel iffy about it, ask around some more, or if your time is running out, go for it and wait and see if the editors will comment anything on it. You could probably even prompt them in that direction and ask if they think the surname could work!

[runa27]

Well, it's specifically escu, not scu, that means "patriarchal origin", as it were. An excellent example of what I'm talking about that should clarify it:

Ion is the Romanian equivalent of the name John. The very common Romanian surname Ionescu is the literal equivalent of Johnson (a variant of the same is Enescu).

But, by the same token, I have seen some names that seem like they might not be from literal names of patriarchs, like Lupescu (from the word for wolf), so I kind of have this assumption that "if it was a plausible nickname or appellate for a patriarch, it might still get that suffix, or to have mutated into such". But then, there are other surnames in Romanian that don't have escu on the end, too. I haven't run across them as commonly, but they do exist.

This is definitely something I want to hear from some actual Romanians on, needless to say. I have a small amount of knowledge and a large number of assumptions. XD

ETA: Of course, that said, it's a tricky-to-pronounce name, so it could have possibly mutated to something like "Abansescu" or "Abanescu" for all I know. Again, hopefully a Romanian will chime in on this!

[turquoiseyes]

Yeah, I remember you explained in your original post why it has the "escu" suffix :) As I said, someone more knowledgeable should definitely be the one to chime in about that. What I failed to express properly, you did awesomely, though: I felt that it could maybe be in a way shortened(kind of like a coined term?) so that it still retains its noticeable origin, something like how Johnson = John's son but with the Romanian flair ;)

[runa27]

Oooh, I'm so mad at myself for not remembering what it is, but there is a term for that, for words that change pronunciation over time. It's a normal form of linguistic evolution that normally ends up with easier pronunciations (for instance, cobweb used to be copweb, from the archaic word cop, meaning spider, but p and b are close in pronunciation, so the one that was easier to say won out after a number of generations of use).

I'm dead sure there's a specific linguistics term for that that I am forgetting, though if you say "evolved into" or "mutated into", I think most people would understand it.

[turquoiseyes]

And if the terms "evolved" and "mutated" don't work, there's always the example giving in the effort to explain yourself :) I'm pretty sure there's an actual term for that sort of change as well, but my knowledge of the proper names of such things has long been gone...Anyway, I wish you the best of luck with your story!

[runa27]

Thank you :)

[muckefuck]

There is a range of common sound changes, each with its own specific name. In copweb > cobweb you are dealing either with a form of lenition or a more general type of voicing assimilation. /p/ is an unvoiced segment, /w/ is voiced, so /p/ assimilates in voicing. Or /p/ appears between two voiced segments (a vowel and a semivowel) and so lenites to /b/, a more sonorous consonant. Neither of these changes would apply to a change of *Abanosescu > *Abanescu. That would be a form of syncope.

[runa27]

Thank you! I knew linguistics was too fussy not to have at least one word for something that major. :D

Syncope... syncope... I'll have to remember at least that one.

Because whenever somebody complains about "I couldn't care less" morphing into "I could care less", and are surprised that it doesn't bug me (even though I fly off the handle at uses of "irregardless"), I want to explain that as an idiom, most people's brains are going to treat it as a unit, and obviously, "I could care less" is easier to say, so people sort of slip and say it without thinking, to the extent that effectively, that's a normal variant of the idiom (albeit hilarious because it borders on saying the opposite of what they mean - I say "borders", because I know some people have justified it by saying they always assumed it was "sarcastic"). Whereas you know, "irregardless" isn't remotely easier to say than "regardless", so it's obvious they're just being pompous and Trying to Use Big Words. Syncope. I will have to remember that.

Thank you for linking the Wiki page on that by the way. :)

[muckefuck]

The general term is inflection. Verbs are conventionally described as being conjugated for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, voice, etc. whereas nominals (including words which show agreement with nouns, such as adjectives) are said to decline for such categories as gender, case, number, definiteness, etc. Nouns decline for gender, number, and case in Rumanian, but the -(u)l ending on abanosul is a suffixed definite article.

[runa27]

Ah! Thank you. I knew it. The use of "conjugation" was bugging me, but I couldn't remember words like "declension", which is funny, because I think of Latin when I think of "declining nouns", and I knew Romanian was "grammatically close to Latin"... at least, I normally know that, but for some reason forgot to make that very important association (though, as you point out, the ending of abanosul isn't a "declension" anyway, so I'd still have been wrong. So this worked out anyway).

Also, when I tried to Google "define:conjugation", it only mentioned verbs, but it did mention "inflected languages". That should have been a clue I could have Googled or Wiki'd but I didn't think of it. XD I blame work for exhausting the hell out of me. Thank you for clearing it up!

Edited: to correct grammar. Also, to add: so, is the plural of moroi being moroii (IIRC) an example of a noun declining to indicate number?

Also - I have to admit, I haven't formally studied many languages where it was a big deal or at least, where teachers made a big deal out of it, but what do you mean by "case"? I know what gender means (even in its wacky more-than-two variants) in linguistics, I know what tense, person, etc. mean, but I can't figure out from context what you mean by "case" when speaking of noun declensions in Rumanian. (And I'd rather ask you/the comm directly than Google it, because I'm inclined to think your answer would be more efficiently conveyed. Wiki's results tend to be kind of dry for midnight reading :P)

[muckefuck]

Case indicates an noun phrase's role in the sentence. English has three cases (which are expressed only in pronouns): subjective, objective, and possessive. You'll sometimes hear the Latin labels "nominative" for "subjective" and "accusative" for "objective", but these are misleading because the grammar of English works very differently from Latin's. Objective case forms are used not only for direct objects (accusative in Latin), but also for indirect objects (Latin dative) and objects of prepositions (accusative, dative, ablative, or genitive). Furthermore, English shows disjunctive use of objective pronouns. That is, in any case where the subjective pronoun isn't immediately adjacent to the verb, an objective pronoun may be substituted (and is often preferred, at least in colloquial speech). E.g. "Him and me, we're coming, too!"

[muckefuck]

What language is moroi? The only word I know with that spelling is Japanese and it can't be pluralised in that way.

[ekeme_ndiba]

Romanian for ghost/phantom. And, yes, Greek plural masculine for 'stupid' ;-)

[muckefuck]

Ah, thanks. According to its Wiktionary entry, the plural of moroi is moroi. Moroii is the nominative/accusative plural form with suffixed definite article, making it the plural of moroiul "the moroi". (For comparison, the oblique forms are moroiului in the singular and moroilor in the plural, e.g. misterul moroilor "the mystery of the moroi".)

[runa27]

Ah... apologies. I misremembered what was cited as a common modern respelling as the normal "plural" (possibly I misread it since the alternate spelling is listed next to the plural? Eh, I don't pretend to understand my brain sometimes). Good thing I found this out before I talked to any Romanian fantasy fans! ;)

Or... hmm. Perhaps I misremembered it because a feminine variant of the term does change with number? "A female moroi is called a moroaică (pl. moroaice)", according to Wiki. I had forgotten there was a female-gendered version of the concept/term. Perhaps I conflated the two in the midst of confusing the spellings. I can see myself doing that... >.>

Calling it just a "ghost or phantom" isn't necessarily the best translation though (albeit not a terrible translation, as it's often one, or a variant of one anyway). In terms of the lore, it's often given vampiric characteristics ("rising from the grave to draw life from the living", etc.) - and in modern fiction my understanding is, perhaps because of this, it's often conflated with other vampire lore, to the extent that some (albeit not always Romanians themselves, it should be noted, so, salt, take with grain of...) simply use it interchangeably with vampire. Wiki in fact goes so far to say it is a type of "vampire or ghost" in Romanian folklore. So, it's either one, or possibly both at once, depending on who's using it and in what context. Either way, it's something you don't want to run into in a dark alley. ;)

And yes, this seems to happen sometimes with folkloric terms, where they get fuzzy or end up used for more than one thing. "Vampire" in particular, now that I think of it, isn't nearly as specific as a lot of people might think; pretty much any folkloric creature or character that is depicted as parasitic, particularly of blood or life energy, can get labeled a "vampire" legend. I mean, if they can sparkle and still be called a "vampire"... ;)

Heck, sparkling? Being ghostly? That's not even weird, not either one. There's an Asian vampire legend where it's something like, a woman whose head flies off with her digestive system every night to gorge herself on blood, and then she has to soak said organs in vinegar or some such to shrink it to fit the rest of the body again (I want to say the that one's from the Filipino culture? But I can't quite recall). So, yeah. Compared to that, moroi sound almost tame, and sparklers sound almost normal. Um, but I digress (hugely).

Sooo... back to the original question: I suppose I should rephrase my question to "moroaice being the plural of moroaică, is that declension based on number?" Seeing as that's the version of the word that apparently changes in the normal plural. :P