sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
Sonia Connolly ([personal profile] sonia) wrote2024-11-17 08:25 pm
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Romanian language geekery

We're singing a Romanian song Sculați gazde nu dormiți in Balkan choir, so I sent out some pronunciation links. Posting them here so I can find them again in the future, and maybe folks here are interested too.

Here's a quick reference for Romanian pronunciation: socalfolkdance.org/resources/romanian.htm

And a more detailed reference on the language, including an alphabet pronunciation video: omniglot.com/writing/romanian.htm

I got curious and looked up the diacriticals. This curved diacritical ă is called a breve, pronounced "breev" or "brehv." This one with the point up â is a circumflex, and this one with the point down ǎ is a haček "hachek" (not used in Romanian, included for comparison). Source: altcodeunicode.com/alt-codes-letter-a-with-accents/

From the omniglot page in the Romanian pronunciation notes section, Romanian is one of the few languages that uses the letters s and t with a comma below (ș, ț). Using a cedilla instead (ş, ţ) is considered incorrect by the Romanian Academy.
jesse_the_k: cap Times Roman "S" with nick in upper corner, captioned "I shot the serif." (shot the serif)

Hooray for Unicode!

[personal profile] jesse_the_k 2024-11-18 04:22 pm (UTC)(link)

Recognizing the difference between the breve and the haçek is not easy, even for my typographical-trained eye at 125% zoom.