History of The Romanian Language - External History - Romanization and Vulgar Latin

Romanization and Vulgar Latin

Main articles: Romanization (cultural) and Vulgar Latin See also: Daco-Roman, Jireček Line, Moesia, Pannonia (Roman province), Roman Dacia, and Thraco-Roman

The integration of Southeastern European territories into the Roman Empire began with the establishment of the province of Illyricum on the Adriatic coast around 60 BC. The Dalmatian language which occupied an intermediary position between Romanian and Italian started to develop in these coastal regions. The Roman expansion towards the Danube continued in the 1st century AD. New provinces were established, including Pannonia in 9 AD, Moesia under Emperor Claudius (r. 41-54), and "Dacia Traiana" in 106. The presence of legions and auxiliary troops ensured the Romans' control over the natives. The establishment of colonies also contributed to the consolidation of Roman rule. Accordingly, a relatively peaceful period which lasted till the end of the 2nd century followed everywhere the conquest. This Pax Romana was instrumental in the "standardization of language, customs, architecture, housing and technology". Even so St Jerome and later authors evidence that Illyrian and other native tongues survived at least up until the late 4th century.

The literary form of Latin and its popular variants – which are now known as "Classical Latin" and "Vulgar Latin", respectively – started to split off by the time of the Roman conquest of Southeastern Europe. Accordingly, the Roman colonists introduced these popular forms when they settled in the newly conquered provinces. Inscriptions from the Roman period evidence that the Latin tongue of Southeastern Europe developed in line with the evolution of the language in the empire's other parts at least until the end of the 3rd century. Likewise, a number of inherited Romanian words testify that the variant of Latin from which they emerged experienced the changes affecting the phonemes, lexicon, and other features of the Latin in the same period. For instance, the merger of the close "e" and open "i" vowels into a close "e" can be demonstrated through inherited Romanian words, and many items of Romanian vocabulary had its origin in popular terms instead of literary forms.

Trajan's Dacia to the north of the Lower Danube was abandoned in the early 270s. Those who left these territories were settled to the south of the river where a new province bearing the same name, Aurelian's Dacia was carved out of Moesia. However, written sources refer to the use of Latin in the territories to the north of the Lower Danube up until the 6th century. Priscus of Panium's report of his visit in the court of Attila the Hun in 448 evidence that all "subjects of the Huns" who had "commercial dealings with" the Western Roman Empire spoke Latin, "but none of them easily" spoke Greek. He also met Rusticius from Moesia who acted as interpreter, Constantiolus, "a man from the Pannonian territory", and "Zerkon, the Moorish dwarf" whose words "were a confused jumble of Latin, Hunnic, and Gothic". A century later Procopius of Caesarea wrote of a prisoner of war who "was by birth of the Antae", but who "spoke in the Latin tongue"

The Goths and other neighboring tribes made frequent raids against the Roman territories in the decades following the Romans' withdrawal from Trajan's Dacia, but the Emperors Diocletian (r. 284-305) and Constantine the Great (r. 324-337) consolidated the empire's frontiers. The empire was officially divided into two parts in 395, but Latin remained one of the two official languages of the Eastern Roman Empire up to the early 7th century. For instance, when Leo II was proclaimed emperor in Constantinople in 474, his armies hailed him in Latin. Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565) who was born in Dardania even stated that Latin was his native language (paternus sermo). Eastern Roman rule in the Balkan Peninsula collapsed under Emperor Heraclius (r. 610-641).

Inscriptions and literary sources evidence that Latin remained the predominant language of communication in the provinces along the Danube throughout the 4th and 6th centuries. For the same reason, Justinian's Novels were published in Latin for these provinces. The last Latin inscriptions in the region are dated to the 610s. Gábor Vékony argues that some place name recorded in The Buildings of Justinian by Procopius of Caesarea show vowel shifts which characterize the development of Romanian. For instance, the featuring shift from "o" to "u" seems to be reflected in the name of Scumbro – a fortress in the region of Remesiana (now Bela Palanka, Serbia) – which cannot be independent of the ancient Scombrus mons name of the Vitosha Mountains. Theophylact Simocatta and Theophanes the Confessor recorded the first words – torna, torna fratre ("turn, turn brother") or torna, torna ("turn, turn") – which may be attributed to the Romanian language. These words were shouted by a soldiers from the region between the Haemus Mountains and the Upper Thracian Plain "in his native tongue" during an Eastern Roman campaign of 587.

The Latin variant from which Romanian developed shows the traits of many changes of the Latin which occurred in the 4th and 6th centuries. However, these changes cannot always be detected in all Romance languages which suggests that the Latin language underwent a process of regional differentiation in this period. Ovid Densusianu wrote, already in 1901, of a Vulgar Latin which "lost its unity, breaking into languages that developed into today's Romance languages. For instance, the sonorization of the voiceless consonants between vowels which can be demonstrated during the formation of the Western Romance languages cannot be detected in the evolution of the Eastern Romance and Dalmatian languages. In many cases, Romanian share common features with Italian, Romansh and Dalmatian languages. Nandriş argues that these common features suggest that "for some time the development of Carpatho-Balkan Latin" (that is of old Romanian) "moved along the same lines as the Latin of the Adriatic coast and that of the Alps and of South-Eastern Italy." On the other hand, he argues that the similar features of the Romanian and Sardianian languages "are explained by the principle of peripheral areas in dialectal development".