Vol. 3 No. 3-4 (2020): ROMANIAN STUDIES TODAY III-IV, 2019-2020
The main domains include: the positioning of Romanian studies as integrating part of contemporary social and humanities subjects, issues related to Romanian as a foreign/non-native language. Romanian Studies Today is a journal for specialists, researchers and instructors in Romanian studies in all universities and research centres, and also for specialists, researchers and instructors in regional studies, history, anthropology, political studies or researchers in other domains with an interest in Romanian language, literature, culture and civilisation.
Full Issue
Articles
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Limba română – „partea noastră de cer”. Aspecte ale individualității lingvistice
Abstract
Out of the plethora of definitons and acceptations that were conferred to language throughout time, two greater paradigms were especially delineated: on the one hand, the understanding of language as an “instrument for communication”, and on the other hand,
the understanding of language as a “worldview”. I shall emphasize in my paper certain aspects pertaining to the current context that impose an adequate understanding of language and its function, presenting and discussing therewith the definition of language under these two trends / paradigms in linguistics and the direct or indirect implications of these types of understanding of language. I deem that the furthering (through various ways, either: didactic, scientific, cultural etc.) of one or the other of these perspectives for understanding language determines in the consciousness of the speakers an intuition as to what language
represents. As such, a change of outlook on language (from the quasi-generalized perspective of language as an “instrument for communication”, towards language as a “worldview”) is highly important, especially in the present context where the phenomenon
of English language “globalization” is being increasingly noticed. The realization that each language represents an inestimable spiritual value first is possible solely through the angle of understanding the fact that the individuality of every language is being situated, after a first approximation, at the level of the specific way through which it demarcates and structures reality using its own signifiers, offering thus a “worldview”. -
Discurs și putere în timpul foametei în masă din Moldova sovietică, 1946-47
Abstract
The article analyses the Communist discourse strategies in Soviet Moldavia during the mass famine in the immediate postwar years. Based on recent archival findings from several post-Soviet archives as well as Western historiography, the article focuses on why
it was so important for the soviet regime to control language during mass famines. Controlling language was an intrinsic part of controlling reality, designing scape-goats, and protecting the power from popular blame and wrath. -
Anul 1918 în istoria Catedrei de limba română de la Universitatea din Budapesta
Abstract
The year 1918 finds the Department of Romanian from the University of Budapest engaged in a fight for leadership, a fight that had commenced to a certain extent after the death of its founder, Alexandru Roman. Ioan Ciocan, Iosif Siegescu, and Gheorghe Alexici were the main contenders for the leading position of the Department of Romanian. Each of the three has remained in the history of the department or in the memory of their successors with the light and shadows of their activities. Ioan Ciocan’s name, the editor of Albina journal, has earned recognition due to the monograph on the history of Romanian orthography, but also due to the collection of texts written for the Romanian soldiers fighting in World War I, while Gheorghe Alexici distinguished himself by his research on folklore.
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Segmentul fonetic inițial ‘pie-’ în pieptene și denumiri pentru pieptene, pe baza ALRR. Sinteză, vol. I
Abstract
This paper takes a look at the palatalization of initial p e- in pieptene ‘comb’ (noun) based on the answers synthetized in ALRR. Sinteză, vol. I. Twenty-three individual map headers are included in the phonetic map, based on respondents’ first answer given in the regional atlases, added by different variants given as second and/or third answers. While the collocation “palatalization of the labials” may not be the most accurate in describing the discussed phenomena (see cited works), it has been used by virtue of Romanian linguistic tradition. As far as names for the notion of pieptene ‘comb’ are concerned, the entire Daco-Romanian territory (today’s Romania and the Republic of Moldova, where regional atlases have been published) favours the inherited term pieptene, from the Latin accusative pectinem (Lat. pecten, pectinis) over words with different etymologies. Of course, the word pieptene (which is the literary form) shows a great deal of variation both phonologically, and morphologically (change of declension).
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Max Blecher în periferia imaginară a Europei Centrale
Abstract
Max Blecher’s connections with the Central-European imagination, critically established through comparative readings of Franz Kafka and Bruno Schulz, could be revisited not only comparatively, but also by tackling some key issues in his work and biography that may confirm the writer’s belonging to this vast intellectual territory. Provincial spaces, marginality, uncertainties regarding identity, existential confusion, immaturity, the invasion of objects and the artificial, all reveal a perspective upon literature that may function, in the absence of geographical belonging, as a bridge and connection between worlds that mirror their essence and difference.
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Centenarul la polonezi și la români. Istoria unei retorici culturale
Abstract
Starting from the centenary of the Great Union and, respectively, of the Regainment of Independence, celebrated by Romanians and Poles in 2018, the text confronts the contemporary perspective on them with the historical realities from one hundred years ago. The author declares himself against the thesis according to which there are similarities between the historical fate of the two states/nations and he proves this through a series of arguments. It is analyzed, among others, the internal political situation in both of the countries, the position of the interwar political leaders (Piłsudski, Dmowski, Averescu, Brătianu etc.), the confrontations of ideas etc. A special chapter is dedicated to the way of perceving of the historical moment of 1918 during the communist period.
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Rolul laboratorului de traducere în grupurile lingvistice mixte de studenți – analiză de caz
Abstract
The case study we bring to your attention in the present paper refers to the structure of the student group learning Romanian language at Sapienza University in Rome, a mixed language group, consisting mainly of Italian and Romanian mother tongue students, gathered within these translation laboratories, organized on the following principles: competence levels (student perspective); translation direction based on these levels of competence (from Romanian to Italian for first and second year students, from Italian to Romanian, for senior and master students); the typology of the notions provided for each level (teacher's perspective) and the materialization and alignment of the two perspectives in choosing the typology of the texts and the direction of translation. In our approach, we will focus on aspects related to the structure of courses, the structure of laboratories, the importance of differentiating between the concepts of mother tongue/ethnic language/foreign language/second language, the notion of cultural gap, and the role of the act of “plural teaching”, as a exercise of collaboration between the Italian teacher and the Romanian lecturer.
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Naționalism și patriotism în memorialistica românească din Primul Război Mondial. Două studii de caz: Voicu Nițescu și Elie Bufnea
Abstract
This article sets out to examine Elie Bufnea’s memoirs (Crusaders, Tyrants, and Crooks; Cruciați, Tirani și Bandiți – vol. I, In the Soviets Russia; În Rusia sovietelor, vol. II, In Kolchak’s Siberia; „În Siberia lui Kolciak” – 1931) and Voicu Nițescu’s memoirs (Twenty Months in Russia and Siberia; „Douăzeci de luni în Rusia și Siberia”, 3 vol.: 1926, 1928, 1932), resulting from their personal experience in revolutionary Russia, plagued by civil war, at the end of WW I. The two Transylvanian authors were involved in the organization of the Romanian Volunteer Corps in Russia, created from ethnic Romanian prisoners from Austria-Hungary. It is true that these memoirs not only document the historical times, but also give voice to the first authentic exploration of the historical trauma in the Romanian space. However, what is perhaps more important is that they both share an ‘open’ rhetoric that combines a nationalist discourse with critical reflection and an awareness of current social and political tensions. Their rhetorical choice grants more value to their memoirs, i.e. a natural expression of ‘patriotic’ emotions, experienced in the midst of troubled historical times.
Book Reviews
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Corina Ciocârlie, Andreea Răsuceanu, Dicționar de locuri literare bucureștene, cu hărți originale de Rareș Ionașcu Editura Humanitas, București, 2020, 395 p.
Abstract
Harta și teritoriile unui oraș sunt uneori consecințe ale unor proiecții fictive. Marja irealizabilului, frizând utopia, a fost atinsă în idealurile de reconstrucție urbană renascentistă: în fervoarea reconfigurării unei lumi care să găzduiască ambițiile expansioniste ale noului umanism și odată cu vraja călătoriilor din epoca marilor descoperiri geografice, ideea de oraș devine un concept deschis, în interiorul căruia se întretaie năzuința și pragmatismul. Prin natura sa amestecată, compusă din mozaicuri și din arabescuri, orașul poate funcționa ca un tip aparte de cabinet de curiozități, fie prin strângerea capitalului de imaginație a celor care participă concret la constituirea arhitecturii și a decupajelor sale comunitare, fie prin ficțiunea ce însoțește proiectarea unor idealuri stinse înainte de a se concretiza.
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Gabriela Pană Dindelegan, Adnana Boioc, Blanca Croitor (editori), Variație diacronică și diatopică. Note gramaticale București, Editura Universității din București, 2019, 390 p.
Abstract
Cartea de față reunește 30 de articole care abordează teme legate de flexiune, sintaxă, morfosintaxă, scrise de 19 autori (cei mai mulți fiind cercetători ai Institutului de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti” al Academiei Române). Articolele sunt împărțite în două secțiuni, intitulate Variație diacronică, respectiv Variație diatopică, de întinderi inegale: prima parte are aproximativ 230 de pagini, iar cea de a doua – 150 de pagini. În Introducere, semnată de Gabriela Pană Dindelegan, sunt descrise principiile pe care s-a bazat redactarea acestei cărți. Astfel, lucrarea se adresează cercetătorilor lingviști români și străini, precum și tuturor celor interesați de limba română (p. 9). Totuși, având în vedere că toate articolele sunt redactate în limba română, numai străinii care cunosc limba română o pot consulta (până la o eventuală traducere într-o limbă de circulație internațională).
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Libuša Vajdová, Jana Páleníková, Eva Kenderessy, Dejiny rumunskej literatúry Bratislava, AnaPress, 2017, 492 p.
Abstract
Dejiny rumunskej literatúry (Istoria literaturii române), publicată anul trecut ca rezultat al unui proiect sprijinit de Academia Slovacă, este prima lucrare de acest tip în mediul ceho-slovac, scrisă de românistele slovace Libuša Vajdová, Jana Páleníková și Eva Kenderessy. Până atunci, oamenii interesați de literatura română au avut la dispoziție Slovník rumunských spisovatelů (Dicționarul scriitorilor români, 2001, L. Valentová a kol.) sau mai vechiul Slovník spisovatelů. Rumunsko (Dicționarul scriitorilor. România)
apărut în anul 1984 (M. Kavková a kol.). În ambele publicații, în afară de informații despre scriitori rânduiți în ordine alfabetică, găsim, de asemenea, un studiu introductiv despre literatura română (în cazul Dicționarului din 2001 au mai fost adăugate intrări
legate de literatura română din Republica Moldova). Alte lucrări din ultima jumătate de secol sunt influențate de ideologia comunistă (de exemplu, manualul pentru studenți Nástin dějin a kultury Rumunska, 1978, M. Kavková) sau sunt incomplete (comunicări de la simpozioane, articole etc.). -
Gabriela Pană Dindelegan (editor); Martin Maiden (editor consultant), The Syntax of Old Romanian, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, 691 p Sintaxa limbii române vechi, București, Univers Enciclopedic Gold, 2019, 647 p.
Abstract
The Syntax of Old Romanian (= SOR) a apărut inițial în limba engleză în colecția „Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics”; versiunea românească reprezintă o traducere – realizată de autorii înșiși –, cu modificări minimale față de versiunea englezească (indicate mai jos).
