INFLUENŢA MAGHIARĂ ASUPRA LIMBII ROMÂNE VECHI

Abstract

The Hungarian influence on Romanian language manifested beginning with the 10th -11th
centuries. The first translations from Hungarian (such as The book of Songs) that took place in the
16th century brought about a significantly increased number of lexical borrowings. The following
century was marked by the Calvinist literature that amplified the Hungarian influence on Old
Romanian. Hungarian l loanwords cover almost all semantic fields. Administrative, politic or
economic terms were predominant, since they could penetrate Romanian easily due to the Hungarian occupation on Transylvania and its western feudal organisation. Such examples are: aprod, bir, birău, hotar, meşter, pârgar, pârcălab, vamă. The Hungarian influence did not bring changes at the phonetic, phonological or morphological levels of the Old Romanian languages, but it only gave birth to several local tendencies visible in certain local idioms.