Eastern Romance Languages - Common Features

Common Features

Eastern Romance languages
Vulgar Latin language
Substratum
Thraco-Roman culture
Romanian
    • Moldovan
    • Vlach
  • Grammar
  • Nouns
  • Verbs
  • Numbers
  • Phonology
  • Lexis
  • Regulating bodies
    • Romanian Academy
    • Academy of Sciences of Moldova
Aromanian
Megleno-Romanian
Istro-Romanian
  • Grammar

The Proto-Romanian branch was one of the earliest language groups to be isolated from the larger Latin family. As such, the languages contain a few words that were replaced with Germanic borrowings in Western Romance languages, for example, the word for white is derived from Latin "albus" instead of Germanic "blank".

They also share a few sound changes with the western Romance languages: some with Italian, such as > (Lat. clarus > Rom. clar, Ital. chiaro) and also a few with Dalmatian, such as > (Lat. cognatus > Rom. cumnat, Dalm. comnut). However, most of them are original, see: Latin to Romanian sound changes.

The languages that are part of this group have some features that differentiate them from the other Romance languages, notable being the grammatical features shared within the Balkan language area as well as some semantic peculiarities, such as lume ("world") being derived from Latin lumen ("light"), inimă ("heart") being derived from Latin anima ("soul"), etc.

They also contain a Paleo-Balkanic substrate of a few hundreds of words, shared with Albanian and 70 early Slavic borrowings.

Read more about this topic:  Eastern Romance Languages

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