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Post by c0gnate on Dec 1, 2007 12:35:25 GMT -5
The Vlachs or Romanians of Eastern Serbia and "The Vlach Question"Excerpts from the bilingual (Serbian and Romanian) report to the Helsinki Committee on Human Rights in Serbia, 2000-2002: (my translation) [...] in the Principality of Serbia the first census was carried out in 1846, in which the Rumans (that being the Vlach term for all Romanians regardless of their origin) of Serbia (in current Serbian terminology known as VLACHS) were recorded as ROMANIANS. [...] The term ROMANIANS for the VLACHS was used officially in Serbia as long as across the Danube there existed the state with the Serbian and also international name – VLACHIA. However, after the union of the principalities of VLACHIA and MOLDAVIA in 1859 through 1862, under the joint state by the name of RUMANIA, this practice came to an end. Then started the emphasis of the term VLACHS followed by the systematic suppression of the idea that such VLACHS have any kind of connection with ROMANIANS in general and, in particular, with Romania. [...] Therefore in eastern Serbia in Serbian in the 19th century the term ROMANIANS was used for the Vlachs, while after the constitution of Romania (1862), abandoning the earlier name Vlachia in Serbian, the ethnonym ROMANIANS was also abandoned, in favor of VLACHS – especially after 1900. (original Serbian text) [...] u Knezevini Srbiji ostvaren je prvi popis stanovistva (1846) na kome su Rumani (na vlaskom se tako nazivaju svi Rumuni bez obzira odakle su) iz Srbije (u danasnjoj srpskoj terminologiji VLASI) popisani kao RUMUNI. [...] Ime RUMUNI za VLAHE korisceno je zvanicno u Srbiji dok je preko Dunava postojala drzava sa srpskim pa i internacionalnim imenom – VLASKA. Medjutim, posle ujedinjenja knezevina VLASKE i MOLDAVIJE 1859. do 1862. godine, u zajednicku drzavu pod imenom RUMUNIJA, ova praksa je preinacena. Pocelo je forsiranje imena VLASI uz sistematsko potiskivanja asociranja da takvi VLASI imaju bilo kakve veze sa RUMUNIMA uopste i posebno, sa Rumunijom. [...] Prema tome u istocnoj Srbiji se na srpskom za Vlahe koristio u XIX veku naziv RUMUNI, a posle konstituisanja Rumunije (1862), odstupajuci od ranijeg naziva Vlaska na srpskom jeziku, odstupilo se i od entonima RUMUNI, u korist VLASI – narocito posle 1900. godine. www.timoc.org/54_Bor_12092005/BROSURA.pdf
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Post by superman on Dec 1, 2007 13:16:47 GMT -5
All are romanians. Period. The bad thing is that Romania was not powerful enough to defend them as they deserved it.
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Post by vlaici on Dec 2, 2007 9:45:58 GMT -5
All are romanians. Period. The bad thing is that Romania was not powerful enough to defend them as they deserved it. ... and Sebia was weak enough to fear Romanian neighbour...
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Post by c0gnate on Dec 2, 2007 22:33:27 GMT -5
Origins of Vlachs/Romanians of Northeast SerbiaThe origins of the Vlachs/Romanians of northeast Serbia are not well known to most Vlachs, principally because nothing is taught about the subject in Serbian schools. As Romance-speakers the Vlachs can relate to the Roman ruins (forts, roads, palaces, graves, baths, aqueducts, mines, half-burried cities, etc ) that are scattered in NE Serbia, as indeed they are throughout the entire Balkan Peninsula. Following Roman withdrawal from Dacia in the third century, much of what is now Serbia and Bulgaria was renamed Dacia Aureliana, and an undetermined number of Romanized Dacians was settled there. Strong Roman presence in the region persisted through the end of Justinian's reign in the 6th century. The Vlach region of NE Serbia was part of the 12th-13th century Bulgaro-Vlach empire of the Assens, who were themselves Vlach. The chroniclers of the Crusaders describe meeting with Vlachs in the 12th and 13th century in various parts of what is now Serbia. Serbian documents from the 13th and 14th century mention Vlachs, including Tsar Dushan's famous prohibition of intermarriage between Serbs and Vlachs. Fourteenth and fifteenth century Romanian (Valachian) rulers built churches in NE Serbia. Fifteenth century Turkish tax records (defters) list Vlachs in the region of Branicevo in NE Serbia, near the ancient Roman municipium of Viminacium. The 16th-17th century warlord Baba Novac (Starina Novak), who served as Michael the Brave's general, was born in NE Serbia. Thus the modern descendants of all these people can be held to originate south of the Danube. Starting in the early 18th century NE Serbia was settled by Romanians (then known by their international exonym as Vlachs) from Banat, parts of Transylvania, and Oltenia. These are the Ungureni (Ungurjani), Munteni (Munćani) and Bufeni (Bufani). Today their descendants form about three quarters of the Vlach population. In the 19th century other groups of Romanians, originating in Oltenia, also settled south of the Danube. These are the Ţărani (Carani), who form some 25% of the modern population. The very name Ţărani indicates their origin in Ţara Româneasca, i.e., The Romanian Land. It should be noted that from the 15th through the 18th centuries large numbers of Serbs also migrated across the Danube, but in the opposite direction. Significant migration ended with the establishment of the kingdoms of Serbia and Rumania, respectively, in the second half of the 19th century. The lack of records and the linguistic effects of the Ungureni and Ţărani on the entire Vlach population make it difficult to determine what fraction of the present Vlachs can trace their origins directly to the ancient south-of-the-Danube Vlachs. However it is likely that they are in the minority. The Vlachs of NE Serbia form a contiguous linguistic, cultural and historic group with the Vlachs in the region of Vidin in Bulgaria. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlachs_of_Serbiaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanians_of_Serbia
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ioan
Amicus
Posts: 4,162
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Post by ioan on Dec 3, 2007 3:32:21 GMT -5
Serbian documents from the 13th and 14th century mention Vlachs, including Tsar Dushan's famous prohibition of intermarriage between Serbs and Vlachs. Really? Why? What were the reasons stated?
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Post by c0gnate on Dec 3, 2007 9:08:03 GMT -5
To be precise, Dushan's law said "A Serb man should not marry among the Vlachs". In another version of the code a proviso is added: "but if he does, he will pay a fine and his wife will also become a serf".
In medieval Serbia "Serb" and "Vlach" had not only what we would recognize as attributes of ethnicity, but also social and legal status. The Serbs were workers of the land, legally bound to the land owned by the nobility. They could not leave the property they were born on. They were obligated to work the fields of the feudal lord. In other words they were serfs. (Many people erroneously connect the word "Serb" to "serve", just as "Slav" is erroneously connected to "slave".) The Vlachs were pastoralists that moved cyclicly with their flocks through vast undeveloped territories. Their feudal obligations were to give the king, or in this case Tsar Dushan, a number of sheep and lambs every year. In Croatia at about the same time there was a law prescribing how they also had to serve in battle, bringing their own horses and weapons. The Vlachs had their own law, "Jus Valachicus".
The life of the serfs (Serbs) was harder than that of the nomadic shepherds (Vlachs). The serfs were exploited to a larger extent than the nomadic shepherds. Thus a movement from serfdom into pastoralism resulted in a net loss to the nobles, and to the ruler. That's why it was forbidden.
The mere fact that it was forbidden shows that enough people wanted to do it for it become an issue to the ruling class.
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ioan
Amicus
Posts: 4,162
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Post by ioan on Dec 3, 2007 9:32:36 GMT -5
I see. Very very interesting. Funny that in Bulgaria the situation was not the same, at least no act is saved from that period and we dont know what the situation was. Strange that a certain ethnic group is connected with certain lifestyle. Actually in Bulgaria, people with vlah or cumman origin have been kings (the Assenes).
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Post by c0gnate on Dec 3, 2007 10:09:05 GMT -5
Historically speaking the Vlachs were the Romanized population of the Balkans that was encountered by the Slavs when they migrated here during the 6th through 8th centuries. The Vlachs were not Romans in the classical Roman Republic sense, but, since 212AD, they were full citizens of the Roman Empire, as were all other freemen throughout the empire.
The people later known as Vlachs never used that term for themselves. They called themselves Romans. That name is preserved in the modern self designation of the Romansh in Switzerland (Rumantsch), the Romanians (Romani), Aromanians (Armani) and Istro-Romanians (Ramari). Moreover the eastern Roman Empire which eventually became linguistically and culturally Greek never called itself Byzantine, but Romania. The Byzantines also said they were Romans: Romaioi. In fact no one ever used the term “Byzantine Empire” until the 16th century, well after its demise. Others have aspired to be heirs to the Roman Empire: Charlemagne arranged to be crowned in Rome, the Germans wanted to be the Holy Roman Empire, Americans often wonder if they are the modern Rome. Even the imperial Russians said they were the third (and last) Rome.
There is little reason to doubt that during the 7 centuries of life in the Roman Empire, most of the Balkan population was Romanized, a process that was completed with the ascension of Christianity as the state religion during the 4th century. The people later known as Vlachs had been Christianized two centuries before the arrival of the Slavs. The only known exceptions to Romanization in the Balkans were the Greeks and the ancestors of modern Albanians. The Greeks managed that by the strength of their culture, the Albanians by their physical isolation.
Latin speakers lived everywhere in the Balkans, especially north of the so called Jirecek Line that runs approximately from Durres in Albania to the central Bulgarian coast on the Black Sea. The Latin they spoke was not Cicero's, but Vulgate, i.e., Vulgar Latin, i.e., the common folk's Latin. That was true in Spain, France, and Italy as much as in the Balkans, though in time dialectal differences emerged and became increasingly pronounced. South of the Jirecek Line the Greek language prevailed.
During the Roman Empire the ancestors of those later known as Vlachs were people of all occupations. They were by no means isolated shepherds. The strongest argument for this is the very language they spoke when they met the Slavs. Had they been the descendants of mountain tribesmen from some inaccessible corner, they would not have been speaking Latin.
The ancestors of the Vlachs were the survivors of the destruction of Roman power and society in the Balkans under the onslaught of the Huns and Avars that prepared the way for peaceful migration by the Slavs. They were people from cities like Aemona (Ljubljana), Siscia (Sisak), Sirmium (Sremski Karlovac), Singidunum (Beograd), Viminacium (near Pozarevac), Serdica (Sofia), Naissus (Nis), Remesiana (Bela Palanka), Ulpiana (Lipljan in Kosovo), Scupi (Skopje), Adrianopolis (Edirne), etc., as well as the surrounding countryside.
If recent DNA studies are correct, the migrating Slavic speakers were in the minority. The Romanized Balkan population, in other words the Vlachs, were in the majority. How this Slavic minority managed to impose their language (but not their culture, religion or technology) on a Vlach majority remains a mystery. Clearly the process lasted centuries.
The 9th century designation by the Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople of Slavonic as a language of religious ritual, teaching, and administration doubtless played an enormous role in the later assimilation of the Vlachs. Recall that initially Cyril and Methodius, carrying their Slavonic Bible and alphabet, were sent as missionaries to distant Moravia, not to the Balkans, although there certainly were groups of Slavs present around Thessalonica and elsewhere in the Balkans.
The acceptance of Slavonic by the Vlachs first happened in the river valleys, the regions with arable land, even in the cities where life and civilization had continued uninterrupted by the Avars.
The last Vlachs to accept a Slavic tongue were those that had lived for centuries in relative isolation at the periphery of medieval society: the shepherds and the cattlemen. That is how the term Vlach, which initially meant ‘speaker of Latin(ate)’, came to mean shepherd / cattleman.
The Balkans of the Middle Ages were sparsely populated. There were vast forests and grasslands that were only nominally under the control of the ruler and the nobility. Vlach pastoralists who practiced transhumance were able to live and move through these vast lands relatively unmolested by central authority. Their obligations to the nobility were much smaller than those of the Slavic speaking agriculturalists, most of whose ancestors, according to DNA studies, also had at one time been Latin speakers, i.e., Vlachs.
Dushan’s prohibition of a land-bound serf (i.e., Serb man) from marrying a Vlach woman testifies to the desire of the agriculturalists to ease their oppression by returning to the relatively freer life lead by the Vlachs.
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ioan
Amicus
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Post by ioan on Dec 3, 2007 10:45:26 GMT -5
Tnx for this story. I somehow knew it, but still there are moments which were new to me. In Bulgaria its widely accepted that the nowadays Bulgarians are the desedants of the Thracians (the romanized and the hellenized and eventually those that saved their language and lived on our teritory, we have information from Byzantine author that the Thracian tribe Bessi (that lived in the Rodopi mountain) managed to save their language at least till 6 century, so there is a posibility that there were Thracians that have saved their language (or at least were billingual)), the Slavs and the Bulgars (which probably werent too numerous, but had defying role in the state building, tnx to them we have a state since that early period). Our king Boris that imposed the christianity on the Bulgarians, also pronounced the Old Church Slavonic (also known as Old Bulgarian) as official state, administrative and church language and thus the Thracians and the Bulgars lost their languages. Still Bulgarian is one of the little langues that have 2 words for one think for example "beautiful" can be translated as "krasiv" (Slavic) or "hubav" (Bulgar). Also lots of Thracian words are saved in the Bulgarian language. Plus the Bulgarian is part of the Balkan linguistic union (with Romanian and Albanian). Those languages have similar grammer, but the lexic is different. Some linguist believe this is due to the Thracian and the Ilirian language, that those three people used to speak (which eventually was very close to the Thracian). However, this is not prooved, because Thracian is not fully examined.
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Post by c0gnate on Dec 3, 2007 11:41:14 GMT -5
Yes, the Albanians, Bulgarians, Romanians and to a lesser extent the Serbs, share some prominent but unusual linguistic characteristics that are attributed to the pre-Roman, pre-Slavic substratum. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_linguistic_unionUnfortunately hardly anything is known directly about the languages of the Thracians, Dacians, Illyrians, Moesians, Tribalians, Dardanians, etc.
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wbb
Moderator
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Post by wbb on Dec 4, 2007 8:11:49 GMT -5
servus is also another name for serbs, servus means slave in latin, according to our hungarian language hehehahahaaa, we sometimes say serbus instead of servus, most hungarians however prefer serbus for hello instead of servus lol, 1 times my friend ask me how to say hello in hungarian, he didnt know so i told him to pronounced Serb-bus which means serb's autobus, hehahehaheha. ;D ;D ;D
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Post by c0gnate on Dec 4, 2007 9:03:08 GMT -5
Szerbus WBB!
More power to UMM (United Magyar Muslims)! ;D
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Post by superman on Dec 4, 2007 16:59:45 GMT -5
wbb is our hungarian muslim proud friend of romanians, I as half secui I can be only friend with wbb who is going to be the next future of HU
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wbb
Moderator
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Post by wbb on Dec 5, 2007 3:14:56 GMT -5
Merhaba Bonni, but please dont say servus or serbus to me cause ur not my slave, ur a free person. and u dont serve me please, i am not Allah, im just a created not creator. ;D say Merhaba instead of Servus. insha-allah. thanks for the nice lecture Bonni lol. ;D ;D
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Post by radovic on Dec 5, 2007 12:33:58 GMT -5
servus is also another name for serbs, servus means slave in latin, according to our hungarian language hehehahahaaa, we sometimes say serbus instead of servus, most hungarians however prefer serbus for hello instead of servus lol, 1 times my friend ask me how to say hello in hungarian, he didnt know so i told him to pronounced Serb-bus which means serb's autobus, hehahehaheha. ;D ;D ;D That's an alledged meaning of the word. First of all the ethnonym is of Sarmatian origin, not of latin. Furthermore Serbs were known as Rascians into the 19th cenuty and still referred to such by austrian authorities into the 20th.
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