Jaga Jaga

And this is why I'm in love with the Romanian language—because of masterpieces like this:


Songs are undoubtedly excellent tools for learning the vernacular. This particular piece has taught me a regional variation of a common Romanian word—a variant of the word "now", according to the DEX, used in the North of Romania:
AMÚ adv. (Pop.) Acum. – Lat. ad-modo.
Interestingly, amu has a different etymology than the standard word for "now", acum, which is said to derive from the Latin *ECCUM MODO > acum; while amu itself derives from AD MODO*, as seen above.

Having said this, I want take this opportunity to ask for my Romanian readers' attention once again regarding the singers presented here.

The female singer in the video pronounces a couple of words in a peculiar, different way. For example, she seems to pronounce the word ziua as ziue, or perhaps ziuâ, in the lines peste toată ziua șede un pescar and toată ziua-n sat (starting at 1:30 in the video). Also, it sounds to me she pronounces meu as mieu continously when she sings la fundul meu, which to my ears sounds like la fondu mieu (after 1:50).

Am I hearing this correctly?

For those familiar with this accent, I would appreciate hearing more about it.
Nu știu dacă este moldovean. Vă mulțumesc.

4 comments:

Silvia said...

I believe it is `La prins pește tătâ zâua șădi un pescar`. She pronounces `zâua` and `fundu nieu`.
It`s a subdialect, moldovenesc.
I can help, if something.
Also, I hope you can see the diacritics.

Filius Lunae said...

Thank you, Silvia! That was very helpful. It confirms what I was hearing.

I did hear the n in meu, but I wasn't entirely sure if she was pronouncing [n] or [m]. It was a very palatalized consonant, of that I was sure.

And the diacritics are fine.

Also, you saying you consider it a "subdialect" may be why I didn't recognize the accent. I've been familiar with the -i endings (instead of -e), and ci becoming şi, mainly. I had not heard the features from the female singer here as being part of the traditional moldovenesc accent.

Mulţumesc frumos.

Filius Lunae said...

Here's another example of the Moldovan pronunciation [nʲew] for meu—on this video at 1m20s.

Anonymous said...

Intelegi ce spune cantecu'? :))

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