Why all the -u endings in Romanian?

[CORNELIVS XXXIV]

While Latin is the primary language I have studied in school (I try to forget the dark lands of Rosetta Stone French), I am interested in other languages as well.

One that has always puzzled and fascinated me is Romanian – an island of Romance language amidst a sea of Slavic (and some Hungarian).

What I have never quite understood about Romanian is why so many of the words seem to terminate in -u.
(For example, consider all those -escu surnames!)

I find this strange because -u endings are relatively rare in Latin.
As far is I know, they only show up in the ablative supine and in some 4th-declension noun cases.

Does anyone have an idea of how these -u endings entered Romanian and why they are so prevalent?

Thank you!
Cornelius

 

[Pacifica]

Final -s and -m* sometimes got dropped in Latin from very early on, and the phenomenon generalized in late Latin. That led to only a u remaining in many words. That u often turned into an o (e.g. see the present-day result in Italian or Spanish) but apparently failed to in Romanian (unless it did and the process was reversed at some point).

*The story of final -m is actually a little more complicated. It probably went through a phase, roughly during the classical period, where it caused nasalization and lengthening of the preceding vowel rather than being either dropped or fully pronounced. But that vanished eventually, leaving only u/o.

 

[CORNELIVS XXXIV]

Fascinating! – This actually sounds quite logical.

The idea you presented of the u "failing" to turn into an o makes sense from a developmental standpoint.
From what I have seen, Romanian tends to appear a little more "primitive" than corresponding Romance languages.
That is, it just has this Latin "look" to it that languages like Spanish and French just don't have.

For example, Romanian keeps the -ii ending – something that other Romance languages never do (as far as I have seen).

Thank you for sharing all this!

 

[Quasus]

Looks like Latin -u(m) commonly disappears in Romanian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Romanian_language#Internal_history foc, pom, mult.

 

[Pacifica]

Looks like Latin -u(m) commonly disappears in Romanian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Romanian_language#Internal_history foc, pom, mult.

So the final us may (either sometimes or often) come from elsewhere. Perhaps I could tell where from if I had a list of such words.

At least I found that "one" is unu, so the u here wasn't lost, unless it was and reappeared later.

 

[CORNELIVS XXXIV]

I have been thinking more about the peculiarities of this language, and there is another notable one that comes to mind.
That is, the use of ea – both within words and as an ending.

Again, the ea combination is rather rare in Latin, appearing mainly in 2nd-declension present-tense subjunctive verbs.
However, it is pervasive throughout Romanian.

Does anyone have a suggestion on where it could have arisen from?
Perhaps, in the instances where ea is an ending, it developed from the common Latin ending -ia (but that is just an idea).

 

[Pacifica]

Can you provide examples of words where that ea occurs?

 

[CORNELIVS XXXIV]

Oh, sure –
1. The given name Milea.
2. The surname of their old dictator, Ceaușescu.
3. The suffix -eanu, which apparently is tacked onto place names.
4. Nouns* like ceară (wax) and peară (pear).

*In these cases when the ea is internal (i.e., not an ending), I have found that it arises from diphthongization of an e from the corresponding Latin word:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language#Phonetic_changes.

 

[Glabrigausapes]

I also would love to learn more about Romanian for the reasons you gave (Slavicized Romans or Romanized Slavs?).

But it's important to keep in mind that all across the Romance dialects there are 'o's realized as /u/, and the question becomes, as P put it, whether the vowel was ever actually pronounced as /o/ or whether it was written after a borrowed orthographical convention. In Standard Portuguese, for example, atonic (unstressed) 'o' is almost always /u/, e.g. morro. I think also in some Southern Italian dialects, final o is typically /u/.

Ol' Serenus is the man to see in this matter.

 

[Anbrutal Russicus]

/ea/ is the regular reflex of /ē, e, i/ in all stressed syllables, open and closed, that aren't followed by a high vowel; thus probably metaphonic in origin. Bizzarely enough it was preceded by open stressed syllable diphthongisation of /ae, e > ɛ: > je/, as in Florentine Italian pietra and French pierre.

The -u is the regular 2nd declension accusative ending -u(m), which was a nasalised vowel, as Pacifica mentions. It was dropped unless the resulting consonant cluster was banned word-finally; in this case it was retained, as in -scu, -tru. There are some Southern Italian varieties, as well as some Asturian ones (in the Pyrenees), that distinguish final -o and -u; also Logudorese-Nuorese Sardinian. Most varieties merged them into either one. Southern Italian never spells /u/ as o though - Sicilian (incl. southern Calabrian) merged /ō, u, ū/ into /u/ in all positions, so DÓNVM > dunu.

 

[Quasus]

e.g. morro

Ecce exemplum haud vulgare.

 

[CORNELIVS XXXIV]

Incredibly, the Romanian soccer team made it into the Olympics!
These are the highlights from their first game – if you listen closely you can hear that many of the surnames end in -u.

I'm not Romanian but it would be cool to see them go far.

 

[Bestiola]

While Latin is the primary language I have studied in school (I try to forget the dark lands of Rosetta Stone French), I am interested in other languages as well.

One that has always puzzled and fascinated me is Romanian – an island of Romance language amidst a sea of Slavic (and some Hungarian).

What I have never quite understood about Romanian is why so many of the words seem to terminate in -u.
(For example, consider all those -escu surnames!)

I find this strange because -u endings are relatively rare in Latin.
As far is I know, they only show up in the ablative supine and in some 4th-declension noun cases.

Does anyone have an idea of how these -u endings entered Romanian and why they are so prevalent?

Thank you!
Cornelius

-escu is a patronim, coming from -iscus. So, for example, Mihaescu means "the son of Mihai".

-ea is a common diftongation process in Romanian

-u is still there in many Romanian words because Dacia got cut off very early - in 275 AD, the first province to be abandoned. The process in which u ended up in o (in many other western romance languages) never managed to appear in Romanian due to withdrawal of the Roman administration and military (mostly). Romanian basically preserved the state of Latin in the late 3rd century of the Balkan area.

 

[Bestiola]

While Latin is the primary language I have studied in school (I try to forget the dark lands of Rosetta Stone French), I am interested in other languages as well.

One that has always puzzled and fascinated me is Romanian – an island of Romance language amidst a sea of Slavic (and some Hungarian).

What I have never quite understood about Romanian is why so many of the words seem to terminate in -u.
(For example, consider all those -escu surnames!)

I find this strange because -u endings are relatively rare in Latin.
As far is I know, they only show up in the ablative supine and in some 4th-declension noun cases.

Does anyone have an idea of how these -u endings entered Romanian and why they are so prevalent?

Thank you!
Cornelius

Don't forget the influence of Greeks - for a long time, Romania was ruled by the Phanariotes, which were Greeks. The Ottoman rule imposed Phanariotes to rule them, and it lasted for a few centuries, enough for a lot of Greek words to creep in. The Turks left some words, too. Then, it was the French and Italian influence later, with the emphasis on French.

 

[CORNELIVS XXXIV]

Romanian basically preserved the state of Latin in the late 3rd century of the Balkan area.

Very interesting, thank you for sharing all this!

 

[Bestiola]

Very interesting, thank you for sharing all this!

Any time!

As far as historical phonology is concerned, what I find most fascinating is that some authors make a connection between Oscic and Umbric consonant clusters and the way they resemble Romanian. How? Presumably, the Roman veterans which populated conquered Dacia may have come from that area. Or, Daco-Thracian substratum was somehow resembling Osco/Umbrian dialects, we'll ever know for sure. Then there's the neighbouring but extinct Dalmatian with its fascinating phonology...

 

[Pintea]

One fact is surly knowen. Trajan was born in Spain but his family was originaly from Umbria and was colonized in Spain.