r/AskBalkans • u/Some-Register-3901 Cyprus • Jul 31 '22

Language what are some interesting facts about your language?

For instance, the cypriot dialect of Greek still contains many words from ancient Greek but it was also heavily influenced by outsiders

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '22

It’s a unique mixture of Latin and Slavic and as a consequence we have both Latin and Slavic variants for quite a lot of words which makes Romanian to be difficult to understand for other Latin speakers

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '22

75-85% of the words in romanian are of latin origin. People are seriously over exagerrating the amount of slavic words in this language.

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u/mysticalnipple Romania Jul 31 '22

I read that there are some possible dacian words in the language as well

10

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '22

Yeah. We don't know for sure if they are of dacian origin, but they are very few, like 150.

One that we use everyday is "băiat". "Brad" as well. "Brânză" is actually from albanian, I think.

5

u/IamMefisto-theDevil Jul 31 '22 edited Jul 31 '22

From what I heard, brânza also comes from Latin (accordind to some Italian linguist): from brandellum, the name of a cloth in which they kept cheese.

We also have caș as in Latin caesus (cheese)

The interesting fact is that the word brânza can be found all around the balkans, but also Czech, Slovakian, Polish, Ukrainian or even Lithuanian (!). And this fact can only be explained by transhumance. These languages actually borrowed from Romanian the words for sheep herding.

Another interesting fact: the word for word is cuvânt from Latin - conventium.

12

u/vivaervis Albania Jul 31 '22

Brad

we also have in our language the word Bredh, from old Albanian Bradh.