What the hell is happening in Romania!?

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I've been trying to ween myself away from politics for a while so that I can focus on learning my target language (that, and celebrating the new year of course!), but for some infernal reason political issues always seem to find me!

Here's what I'm curious about: I was reading about the varius romance descendants from latin, and I learnt that Romanian was the closest living descendent from the language of the Romans. Interested, I began looking around for resources on the Romanian language when a page about civil unrest popped up on my screen. According to a couple of articles I'd stumbled upon, Romania is currently in the midst of civil upheaval due to the Communist Party winning by an absolute landslide in the previous elections and being denied entry. Does anyone know anything else about what the hell is going on over there?

I'll try to relocate the articles in the meantime.

[Anti-Traditional]

Are you sure?! Just looked on wiki and none of the so-called "Communist" parties have a single seat of parliament! Perhaps you have this confused with the Social Democrats who are the second largest party in Parliament.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

Do we even have any romanians here on revleft?

[l'Enfermé]

No, no, basically, this:

There are 5 parties/alliances that received more than 1 percent of the vote in the legislative elections this month. The one in the last place, the Greater Romania Party, received 1 and a half percent. They are crazy xenophobic racists(and anti-semites, but nowadays they pretend they are Judeophiliacs) that are based around the cult of personality of their leader Tudor, who was a Stalinist hack under Ceauşescu and wrote poetry about this wonderful General Secretary, but then Stalinism went to hell and Ceauşescu isn't so wonderful anymore. All these crazies do, I think, is rant about how Hungarians are trying to destroy Romania and how Romania should annex Moldova(naturally, without asking the Moldovans first).

The 4th party, the UDMR, is a party that "represents" the interests of the Hungarian minority in Romania(over 1 million Hungarians live in Romania, they make up almost 7 percent of the Romania population). They're supposed to be liberal conservatives but all they do is suck up to whatever government is in charge at the moment. They got 5 percent of the vote.

The 3rd party was founded last year by a famous TV guy, his name is actually in the name of the party. Their official ideology is "populism". They're somewhat progressive. They got 14 percent of the vote.

The 2nd party is actually an alliance of 3 liberal-conservative/christian-democratic parties. Right Romania Alliance. They got 16 percent of the vote.

The 1st party is a coalition of 2 different alliances, the Centre Left Alliance(The Social-Democratic party and another Social-Democratic party that split off from the first at some point) and the Centre Right Alliance(the conservative liberal party and the social conservative party). They got 69 percent of the vote.

There are no communists.

Basically what's happening right now is that the current president, an Independent(but basically Right Romania Alliance's guy), is throwing a fit over re-appointing the leader of the Social-Democratic Party as PM. Earlier this year, the Social-Democrats tried to impeach the President (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_presidential_impeachment_referendum,_2012 ), but failed. They tried in 2007 also (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_presidential_impeachment_referendum,_2007 ).

[Blake's Baby]

... I was reading about the varius romance descendants from latin, and I learnt that Romanian was the closest living descendent from the language of the Romans...

Not in my understanding it's not. I'm not great at Latin but I have no understanding of Romanian. Romanian is exactly as close to Latin as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Galician, Catalan, Lange d'Oc, French, Rheato-Romansch and some other tiny linguistic groups in Central Europe... they're all modern languages descended from spoken Latin.

It may have changed the least, but to be honest I'd doubt it. From what I've been able to find out, it probably split from the main body of Latin first - so it's probably the one that's changed the most.

Anyway, that's nothing to do with the existence or not of protests... but I'm interested in history and language, so...

[Red Commissar]

I would be interested in seeing those articles. I would think it was likely some pundit raging over the results. Like a lot of eastern bloc countries the token social democratic parties that exist tend to be made up of people who were members of the previous communist party. Though at the same time there are also politicians who ended up joining right wing parties while being members of the party previously, so honestly it doesn't matter much. But still I guess it leaves room for red-baiting for some local pundits to attack.

[ellipsis]

A center left and center right combo party? Wierd

[hetz]

The one in the last place, the Greater Romania Party, received 1 and a half percent. They are crazy xenophobic racists(and anti-semites, but nowadays they pretend they are Judeophiliacs) that are based around the cult of personality of their leader Tudor, who was a Stalinist hack under Ceauşescu and wrote poetry about this wonderful General Secretary, but then Stalinism went to hell and Ceauşescu isn't so wonderful anymore.I think they interviewed that guy in the BBC's The king of Communism ( about Romania under Ceausescu ) and he said that Romanian nationalists had no big problems with Ceausescu and that they could find a lot of common ground with him and his ( national-communist ) regime. The Orthodox Church was also largely "pacified" and pro-regime,a number of priests were even Securitate agents.
Thanks for the great post.

[l'Enfermé]

A center left and center right combo party? Wierd
Greece is currently ruled by a coalition of New Democracy and PASOK too.

[Luís Henrique]

I was reading about the varius romance descendants from latin, and I learnt that Romanian was the closest living descendent from the language of the Romans.

Well, Romanian kept a case system (though if I remember correcly, with only three cases instead of the Latin 6), which all the other Romance languages dropped, so in this particular aspect it is closer to Latin. But the sheer lexical influence of neighbouring Slavic languages must have veered it quite far from Latin.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

It may have changed the least, but to be honest I'd doubt it. From what I've been able to find out, it probably split from the main body of Latin first - so it's probably the one that's changed the most.

The most, I don't know, but I think it changed in different ways than the rest of them.

Having inherited Portuguese and learned French, I can read most of the western Romance languages - Castillian (Spanish), Italian, Galician, Catalan, Langue d'Oc. But Romanian is unpenetrable.

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

Well, yeah; my Latin is poor, my French passable, my Italian is terrible, I can make out bits of Spanish, Portuguese, Corsican and Catalan (I've never tried with Langue d'Oc, Galician or any of the other tiny languages), but Romanian is pretty literally a closed book to me.

Good to now they have cases, that wasn't one of the worst bits of Latin to learn! Even worse than German.

[Luís Henrique]

Well, yeah; my Latin is poor, my French passable, my Italian is terrible, I can make out bits of Spanish, Portuguese, Corsican and Catalan (I've never tried with Langue d'Oc, Galician or any of the other tiny languages), but Romanian is pretty literally a closed book to me.

I don't know Latin at all - except for a few quotes. If you know French and can manage Castillian, written Catalan shouldn't be a problem (the biggest trouble with it that I have is that I keep having to remind that they say "vaig" ("is going") when they mean "went". Galician is basically the same as Portuguese except they sometimes use /x/ instead of /g/ ("xeneroso" instead of "generoso"), and finish words with "om" when Portuguese uses "ão" ("refeiçom" for "refeição"). Corsican I have never tried, but Langue d'Oc shouldn't be difficult if you can read French. Rhetic on the other hand is quite difficult for me, as are some Italic dialects.


Good to now they have cases, that wasn't one of the worst bits of Latin to learn! Even worse than German.They do, and they also have a postponed singular masculine article ("domnul" = "the gentleman").

Luís Henrique

[Djoko]

I have also heard that romanian is a most conservative romance language

[SoMarks]

- I'm from Roumania too. Simple put, we have a bunch of rightist politicians gangs that use "communist" like an insult to each other. Like comrade MDC5000 said, even if some of them was members in Romanian Communist Party before 1989, they are all chameleonic oportunists and they have nothing in common with marxism. I wrote about other roumanian political aspects at "Introductions", in "Greetings from Romania".

- About language: many roumanian emigrants (2-3 millions from 21 are scattered in the world after 1989) are gone to work in Italy or Spain because of easiness of learning facilitated by latin origin. Some basic words are almost identical in roumanian and italian, like hand-mînă or bread-pîine, I am-Eu(ieu) sînt, You are-Tu eşti (ieşti).

- The aromanian language is a latin dialect influenced by greek, spoken here and there in the Balkans and that is the second official language in Macedonia. A roumanian could understand like 80% from aromanian without training.

- The so call "moldavian" language, its just roumanian, with thicker regional accent and some older forms on some words on the left side of the Prut; think about "texan" language.

- MDC5000 said very well that we have strong slavic influences, we soften words with an "i" when first letter is an "e", we said "Yes"-"Da" like russians and a russian could understand also some people related words like (please) "sit down"-"şedeţi" (reg. countryside to guests), "my dear"-"dragul meu", sick-"bolnav", we eat borsh-"borş" that is considered roumanian traditional dish too, or we say when angered a very nasty swearing implying a certain feminin organ (we pronounce identical that one).

- Despite slavic influences and shared orthodox christianity, many roumanians, especially nationalists, are not seing russians too kindly: they have taken parts of Roumania several times and last time half of Moldova region (left of river Prut) and northern Bucovina (my parents are from these regions inhabited with roumanian people, but personally I'm neutral, people matters, not artificial borders or languages). Also they are saying that at the end of WWII, during retreat, germans didn't pillage and raped the villages like soviet armies did, I don't know if this is true, and, of course, that they brought communism on tracks of the tanks.

- Americans has been seen very fondly by many roumanians, all the time after WWII waiting for them to came back and bring liberty and prosperity instead of russians, but now its mostly an anecdotical faith, they are here now and they brought Bechtel highway scam, 1.5 billion euros payed for 53 kilometers builted in seven years, like a bribe to enter NATO and at least two military bases, a missile one at Deveselu and a military airport at Kogălniceanu. Soon will be bought from Portugal some overpriced refurbished F16 to replace Mig-29, and some bribes will enter again in right pockets.

- Speaking (also) generally, population here is disgusted of politicians and are meekly, feeling powerless, thinking that all big decisions was allways made by leaders whim (I consider it too, that that thing is true), no matter what they think about, need or want. It doesn't matter that was a king, "the party that knows better than you", "beloved leader" or the pseudo-democracy of the new bourgeois: you can change nothing that really matter, you must bent like a reed to not be broken, for now that is.

- Maybe you know that some religious christians say "NSD" (saw that on the grandmother's medalion), "Nihil sine Deo", meaning "Nothing without God"; I say also "NSD", but "Nihil sine Demos", that is "Nothing without People", not in blind faith, but by observation and logic, if we want to build something durable. In Czechoslovakian parliamentary election from 1946, communists won by fair voting (and no forced collectivization later), so now is elected again in Czech Republic, having like 20% of parliaments seats, by contrast with Roumania, where even the "communist" term is outlawed from a party's name. First sincerely win the peoples hearts and then the victory is assured and secured.