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

Dec 09, 2012 15:55


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 ( Read more... )

advice, romanian, spelling, learning languages, translation request

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turquoiseyes December 9 2012, 22:27:54 UTC
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!

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runa27 December 9 2012, 22:37:14 UTC
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!

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turquoiseyes December 9 2012, 23:04:44 UTC
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 ;)

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runa27 December 9 2012, 23:08:55 UTC
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.

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turquoiseyes December 9 2012, 23:27:59 UTC
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!

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runa27 December 10 2012, 00:08:09 UTC
Thank you :)

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muckefuck December 10 2012, 02:25:20 UTC
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.

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runa27 December 10 2012, 05:02:05 UTC
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. :)

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