Raymond A. Brown wrote:
> [...]
> >> I guess something similar is the case with Romania. It surely is the
> >> reason that now the high central vowel is spelt with a-circumflex only in
> >> the roma^n- words, i-circumflex being used elsewhere.
> >
> >Yes, the a-circ is used only in words clearly derived from "Rome".
> >But I don't think the English vowel shift can be relevant when clearly
> >the source of "R[o]umania" is French.
>
> Sorry - what I meant is that there was parallelism between the learned
> restoration of 'o' in English /rum/ and the what I understood P. M. ARKTAYG to
> be saying about the earlier _Romanian_ 'rumi^n- ' being changed to 'roma^n- '.
Yes, I meant just that.
> The change to /u/ in the initial unstressed syllable of the word is like we
> find in 'Rumansch', one of the names for Swiss Rheto-Romance.
>
> The English did come via the French 'Roumanie' etc, but that in term if
> I've understood P. M. ARKTAYG correctly derived from what was once native
> Romanian.
Yes, for the second time. :-)
> And indeed one of characteristics, I believe, of eastern Romance (which
> admittedly I'm less familiar with than western Romance) is the tendency to
> reduce unstressed /o/ to /u/.
What you mean "eastern Romance"? There are so many classifications.
--
P. M. ARKTAYG