Einige Bemerkungen zur Etymologie des rumänischen Wortschatzes in Ioan-Piuariu Molnars „Deutsch-Walachische Sprachlehre” (1788) und „Wörterbüchlein deutsch und walachisches” (1822)

Abstract

Some Considerations of the Romanian Vocabulary of Ioan-Piuariu Molnar’s Deutsch-Walachische Sprachlehre (1788) and Wörterbüchlein Deutsch und Walachisches (1822) An intellectual of the Enlightenment, involved in the modernization of the Romanian society according to a Western model, the ophthalmologist Ioan Piuariu­Molnar (1749-1815) gained recognition, among other things, by being the author of a Romanian-German grammar (Deutsch­Walachische Sprachlehre, Vienna, 1788). Through this work, Molnar reached at least three important objectives: the first one refers to the articulation of numerous rules for the Romanian language in a precise and clear manner; the second involves the creation of a teaching manual for the Romanian language to be used by the Austrian military officers and civil servants in Transilvania and by the foreign tradesmen. The third objective is connected to the introduction of the chapters in which the author provides samples of statements in Romanian to be used in various situations of communication (including models for applications and letters) that were meant to bring the Romanian language to a a level of expression of the same contents as a cultivated language, such as German. The article briefly presents Ioan Piuariu-Molnar’s vocabulary, highlighting some aspects connected especially to the German or Hungarian etymology of the Romanian words. We selected, for a detailed presentation, some of them.

Keywords

• The Enlightenment
• the western model
• language cultivation
• romanian
• vocabulary