Balco-Romance languages

♪ Balloon languages ** Balkan languages: Istrorrumano Meglenorrumano Arrumano ** Dalmatic †: Vegliota † Ragusano † ** Panonio Panonium †

The Balkan Romance languages or Balcorromance are a group of Romance or “Neolatin” languages spoken on the Balkan Peninsula, mainly in Romania and Moldova. Most are derived from Daco-Romanian and, therefore, from the ancient Roman —or Romanized— settlers established in Dacia in the time of Trajan. It mainly includes the Balco-Romanian languages and Dalmatian, two languages that share a good number of isoglosses and similar grammatical characteristics. Some authors include the extinct Romance language of Pannonia. These languages differ from other Romance languages because they have a lexical influence from the old Balkan languages and Slavic languages, this is especially notable in the Balco-Romanian languages that replaced an important part of the Latin vocabulary, while in Dalmatian the influence was minor. The Balco-Romance group has traditionally been called the 'Eastern Romance languages', however according to the broader isoglosses associated with the Massa-Senigallia Line, the Eastern Romance languages also include Italo-Romance languages, which might be the closest to the Balco-Romance languages.

On the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea there were historically regions where non-Balco-Romance languages such as Venetian, Istrian and even standard Italian were spoken, mainly in and around Istria.

List of Balco-Romance languages

The Balco-Romance languages are:

• Panonic Romance (Panonia, dead tongue)
• Dalmatic (Dalmacy, dead tongue)
  • Vegliota
  • Ragusano
• Balkan languages
  • Romanian (Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary)
  • Istrorrumano (Croatia)
  • Arrumano (Greece, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Romania)
  • Meglenorrumano (Greece, North Macedonia)

In the Balkans there is also a language that some scholars consider to have a strong Neo-Latin influence: Albanian. The influence may have been reciprocal as many of the pre-Roman words in modern Romanian actually seem related to Proto-Albanian as well.

Linguistic features

The Balco-Romanian and Dalmatian languages share unique isoglosses and grammatical forms within the Romance languages, thus proving that this group is phylogenetic. Ethnologue, without evidence in its favor, believes that Dalmatian is related to the Italo-Romance languages and Istrian, proposing a group called Italo-Dalmatian, however, this group is not phylogenetic, because Dalmatian due to its isogloss is closer to Balco-Romanian and Istrian is closely related to the Gallo-Italic languages, especially Venetian.

When Dalmatian and Balco-Romanian split, Balco-Romanian would become an isolated group heavily influenced by the non-Romance languages around it, while Dalmatian would converge towards Italo-Romance and Venetian.

Language evolution

Dalmatian and the Balco-Romanian languages share the following linguistic evolutions.

• Development of Latin groups -kt, -gn and -ks like -pt, -mn, and -ps, a unique characteristic of this group.

Latin	Spanish	Italian	Dalmatian	Romanian	Arrumano
pugnus	fist	pugno	poimn	pum	pumnu
insegnare	teaching	insegnare	insemnur	însemna	nsimnari
signalis	signal	segnale	Yes, sir.	semnal	samnal
cognatus	brother-in-law	cognato	comnut	cumnat	cumnatu
lignum	wood	legno	lamn	lemn	lemnu
coxa	Cuja	coscia	copa	coapsă	coapsã
pectus	chest	petto	Pyp	piept	Chieptu
lactem	milk	Lette	.	lapte	lapti
octo	eight	otto	.	opt	optu

• Retention of the Latin groups -bs, -mn, -ps, -pt, a unique characteristic of this group.

Latin	Spanish	Italian	Dalmatian	Romanian	Arrumano
absentis	absent	assente	absent	absent	absenti
somnus	dream	Sonno	samno	somn	somnu
capse	Box	cassa	coopsa	capsă	capsã
septem	Seven	sette	sapto	șapte	shapti

• Reduction of the diptongo -qua and palatalization of the groups -qui and -que. A unique feature.

Latin	Spanish	Dalmatian	Italian	Romanian	Arrumano
quando	When	Cand	quando	când	cãndu
quattuor	Four	Catro	quattro	patrol	patrol
quadrus	Table	cadrial	quadrole		padru
quem	who	čin	♪	cinema	tsini
Atque-iste	this	čost	I'm sorry.	acest	aeshtu
conquire	conquer	cončar	conquidere	cuceri	Cunceriri
Hold still	stay.	četur	chetare	înceta	nshitari

• Retention of the group -cl intervócalico, a trait shared with the central Italian languages.

Latin	Spanish	Italian	Dalmatian	Romanian	Arrumano
genuclum		ginocchio	denaclo	genunchi	dinuclju
peduclus	piojo	I beg you.	peduclo	păduche	piduclju
veclus	Old man	vecchio	vieclo	vechi	veclju
pariclus	Couple	parecchio	paraclo	Pereche	păreaclji
oclus	eye	occhio	uaclo	ochi	oclju
Oricla	ear	orecchio	oracla	ureche	ureaclji

Furthermore, Balco-Romanian shares with Dalmatian a lack of palatalization in some verb conjugations, and Aromanian lacks palatalization in some Latin words. Also all the other Balco-Romanian languages retain the group -cl like Dalmatian without passing to -ki or -ke, in contrast to Romanian (Daco-Romanian). Dalmatian along with Balco-Romanian are also the only Romance languages that do not have the phoneme /ɲ/, in Spanish ñ.

Lexicon

In the lexicon they differ in that the linguistic borrowings from other languages are from the old Balkan languages and the Slavic languages in their majority. The influence was very strong in Balco-Romanian which replaced several Latin words with Slavic, pre-Balkan and Hungarian. Examples in Romanian are: a spuas, a citi, prieten, branzâ, a gândi, tată, copii, lant, mereu, neveastă, etc. Dalmatian also received some borrowings from these languages, but they did not replace most of the Latin words. Examples in Dalmatian: spuas, trochi, cautri, cua, toic, tuota, murauca, blair, bragon, nineasta, etc.

In the Latin lexicon there are also differences in the meaning of words and there are some Latin words that are unique to these languages, but do not exist in other Romance languages. An example of words with different meanings in Romanian are țara, om, biserică, foarte, vorbi, which mean country or region, people, church, very, talk, but not as one would expect it to mean in the other Romance languages earth, man, strong, verb, church. The same situation can be observed in Dalmatian for the words tiara, jomno, basalca with the same meaning as in Romanian. In addition there are certain Latin words that are only preserved in Dalmatian and Romanian but not in the other Romance languages, such as amu, bătrân, alb and intelege from Romanian, jamo, vetruon, jualb inteliguar from Dalmatian, in Spanish now, elderly, white and understand.

Numerals

The numerals in the different Balco-Romance languages are:

GLOSA	Balkan languages				Dalmatian
	Arrumano	Megleno-rumano	Istro-rumano	Romanian
'1'	One/ One / One	a / a One / aă	un~u margin / unæ un~ur / aę	One/ One / One	jojn /jojna join / joina
'2'	doi / daw / doi / dao	doi doi	doi / do doi / do	doi / dow doi / două	doi / doa doi / doa
'3'	t trei	t trei	t trei	t trei	t tra
'4'	patho patrol	patho patrol	pѕt påtru	patho patrol	kat margino Catro
'5'	inii tsintsi	inii ţinţi	inin ţinţ	inii cent	enk čenc
'6'	・asi shase	・asi I know.	s・si såse	・ase şase	Yeah. Yeah.
'7'	・apti shapte	・apti şapti	s bookti såpte	・apte şapte	sapto sapto
'8'	optu optu	optu ~ wopt optu ~ uopt	(orange) osân	pt opt	gwapto .
'9'	nawɨ Nao	noaw noauă	(devet) devet	now nouă	nu nu
'10'	a i dzatse	zeatsi zeaţi	zæee zęţe	zeee zece	dik Dec

The numerals for '1' and '2' They distinguish between masculine and feminine forms, in most varieties. The terms for '8' and '9' in Istro-Romanian they are Slavic loanwords.

Number of speakers

The Balco-Romance languages are spoken by approximately:

• 28,500,000 Romanians and Moldovans
• 250,000
• 40,000 valacos
• 5,000 Mexicans
• 1,000 istrorumans