LANGUAGE CHALLENGE - Romanian VS Bulgarian

[PAGANE]

[Nurzat]

it's frustrating how little knowledge over linguistics and history of language in relation to culture people doing youtube videos have, but then again it's free content and entertaining in the end - I mean that of course Romanian and Bulgarian must share a lot of terms they both took from Turkish since both territories have been part of the Ottoman empire for centuries and it's not because "Turks attacked Romania hundreds of years ago", as the guys said, lol. while the Romanian spoken before 1850 had a lot of words similar to Bulgarian, which it actually took from Bulgarians mostly (there's additional East Slavic terms Romanian has from Ukrainians at regional level in Moldova and Bukovina but those are considered regional words only and many are already obsolete/archaic).

overall most similarity between Romanian and Bulgarian is in some grammatical structures, but it's been much more similar in terms of lexical outline/words in the past, before Romania got changed radically by the intellectuals and through schooling into a new language, forcefully Latinized (mostly French words) to bring it closer to Europe and depart from its Oriental and Slavic vibe.

even so, I am still able to understand quite a fair share of written Bulgarian at the most basic topics, but in a fragmentary way, bits of phrases, separate words, not always being able to link them and understand the idea, though sometimes I get to understand entire phrases, it depends. in general I can grasp the broader ideas. I take a guess at their meaning through their similarity to Romanian, Moldovan (regional) and Ukrainian words/roots

[TheForeigner]

it's frustrating how little knowledge over linguistics and history of language in relation to culture people doing youtube videos have, but then again it's free content and entertaining in the end - I mean that of course Romanian and Bulgarian must share a lot of terms they both took from Turkish since both territories have been part of the Ottoman empire for centuries and it's not because "Turks attacked Romania hundreds of years ago", as the guys said, lol. while the Romanian spoken before 1850 had a lot of words similar to Bulgarian, which it actually took from Bulgarians mostly (there's additional East Slavic terms Romanian has from Ukrainians at regional level in Moldova and Bukovina but those are considered regional words only and many are already obsolete/archaic).

overall most similarity between Romanian and Bulgarian is in some grammatical structures, but it's been much more similar in terms of lexical outline/words in the past, before Romania got changed radically by the intellectuals and through schooling into a new language, forcefully Latinized (mostly French words) to bring it closer to Europe and depart from its Oriental and Slavic vibe.

even so, I am still able to understand quite a fair share of written Bulgarian at the most basic topics, but in a fragmentary way, bits of phrases, separate words, not always being able to link them and understand the idea, though sometimes I get to understand entire phrases, it depends. in general I can grasp the broader ideas. I take a guess at their meaning through their similarity to Romanian, Moldovan (regional) and Ukrainian words/roots

Danubian principalities were not an integral part of Ottoman Empire in the same way Bulgaria and most of the Balkans were. They were tributary and vassal states with their own princes that were indeed appointed by sultan, but still... It did make an important difference 'cause we don't have ethnic Romanian Muslims and there were no mosques built in Wallachia and Moldavia, at least outside rayas which were administered directly by Turks, though even there I don't know if they did. Otherwise you are right that 19th century elites artificially made the language more Latin than it was with massive borrowings from French.

[Incal]

Danubian principalities were not an integral part of Ottoman Empire in the same way Bulgaria and most of the Balkans were. They were tributary and vassal states with their own princes that were indeed appointed by sultan, but still... It did make an important difference 'cause we don't have ethnic Romanian Muslims and there were no mosques built in Wallachia and Moldavia, at least outside rayas which were administered directly by Turks, though even there I don't know if they did. Otherwise you are right that 19th century elites artificially made the language more Latin than it was with massive borrowings from French.

You are blessed.

[ioas12]

Danubian principalities were not an integral part of Ottoman Empire in the same way Bulgaria and most of the Balkans were. They were tributary and vassal states with their own princes that were indeed appointed by sultan, but still... It did make an important difference 'cause we don't have ethnic Romanian Muslims and there were no mosques built in Wallachia and Moldavia, at least outside rayas which were administered directly by Turks, though even there I don't know if they did. Otherwise you are right that 19th century elites artificially made the language more Latin than it was with massive borrowings from French.

We were important cash cows for the otomans tho also the relatinztion is over blown. There letters are from 1500s that Romanians can understand pretty clearly