Romance Pannonian language

The Romance Pannonian language is an extinct language that was spoken in the romanized Pannonia after the fall of the Western Roman empire, until the 10th century.

History

The Roman population survived in Pannonia after the Attila invasion, especially near the lake Pelso (actual Lake Balaton) in fortified settlements like Keszthely-Fenékpuszta. Other places inhabited by the Romanic population, after the 5th century, were Pécs, Sopron, Szombathely, Dunaújváros. Several Christian antiquities were found and are known even objects with Latin inscriptions.

According to the french historian André Du Nay (in his book The Origins of the Rumanians -- The early history of the Rumanian language) "...in the north (of the Balkan peninsula) a Roman population still lived in the former province of Pannonia at least in the sixth century and the question whether the dialect spoken there belonged to east Latin or western Latin has been discussed by scholars like Tagliavini (in his Le origini delle lingue neolatine) without a definite conclusion..." In his opinion there was a romance dialect spoken around the Lake Balaton during the times of the Plague of Justinian, in the year 541.

The Romanic population from Pannonia created the Keszthely culture that evolved during the 6th-7th centuries. Its artefacts were made in the workshops of Roman origin located mainly in the fortified settlements of Keszthely-Fenékpuszta and Pécs. The Romanic craftsmen worked for their masters (Gepidae and Avars).

The settlement continuity allowed the inheritance of several Roman toponymes. The historian Theodore Mommsen wrote in his The Provinces of the Roman empire that the Romanic population of Pannonia was more than 200,000 persons in the fouth century, but was reduced in the sixth century to some thousands, who survived only in defended places (the fortified settlements). The geographic milieu did not offer the advantages that existed in post-Roman Dacia.

The church organization was preserved until the 6th century, but the Christendom survived in popular forms. The Franks found in 796 a Christian population in Pannonia, which had clerici illiterati, i.e. without instruction. The Christians from Pannonia lost the church hierarchy during the Avar domination. In the 9th century began the Christianization of the Slavs (who arrived with the Avars) in the pannonian plains. This led to the final assimilation of the Romanic people, who were very few in comparison with the Slavs.

The local Romanic population of Pannonia disappeared in the 9th-10th centuries. It was a different Romanic people than the Romanians and their Pannonian Romance language disappeared with them, according to the scholar Alexander Magdearu (in Românii în opera Notarului Anonim).

Geography

The Romance pannonian language was spoken in western Hungary, mainly around the lake Balaton near Keszthely and Fenékpuszta.

Other places inhabited by the Romanic population, who spoke this extinct language after the 5th century, were Pécs (the Roman Sopianae), Tokod, Sopron (Scarbantia), Szombathely (the pannonian Savaria) and Dunaújváros.

The area around the lake Balaton has the warmest climate of western Hungary, similar to the one around the northern Italian alpine lakes. Alexandru Magdearu believes that the warm climate was one of the explanations of why the romanized pannonians remained for centuries in the Keszthely area, and did not escaped to the mediterranean shores during the barbarian invasions (Huns, Gepidae,Avars, Magyars, etc.)

Archeology

After the fall of the Western Roman empire, the leading stratum and part of the population left the territory of Roman Pannonia, but another part of the population, mainly peasants and artisans, remained in their homeland. Archaeological traces of these groups (romani) can be clearly observed until the end of the 5th century in the cemeteries and settlements, and in the abandoned, formerly Roman towns and fortresses that they used together with the Germanic population.

Carlo Tagliavini (in Le origini delle lingue neolatine) wrote that it must be a deficiency in archaeological research that we still lack data on the romanised population living in a largely Germanic environment under the rule of the Avars.

By the end of the 6th century we find the romanised population mainly in the row cemeteries that were newly laid out in the area of the Late-Roman fortresses of Keszthely (Castellum) and of Pécs (Sopianae) (southwestern Hungary). In the early Avar Age there also will have been romanised and Byzantine people arriving from the Balkans. These probably Christian communities preserved or renewed their relations with the romanised population of the Mediterranean. The characteristic costume of their women includes earrings with basket-shaped pendants, disc brooches with early Christian motifs, and dress-pins. The early Christian symbols include crosses, bird-shaped brooches and pins decorated with bird figures (one bird-shaped brooch bears an incised cross). At the turn of the 6th–7th centuries the aisled basilica in the Keszthely fortress was rebuilt, according to Arthur Sós (in Cemeteries of the Early Middle Ages (6 th-9 th c.) at Pókaszepetk).

In formerly Pannonian territory, more and more objects relating to the romanised population appear in the cemeteries of the early Avar Age (at Csákberény and Várpalota), and in some cases there seems to be evidence of individual balkanic or Byzantine immigrants (at Budakalász and Szekszárd). So the romanized Christian population, perhaps in order to emphasize its identity in this multicultural environment, gave up its tradition of burying the dead without grave-goods. At Keszthely, even very rich people accompanied by several grave-goods were buried near the granary (horreum). The find material and burial rites show that in the vicinity of Keszthely there still was a community of romanized and Germanic people. However, the romanized population of Pannonia in general became ‘Avarized’, and only in the close vicinity of Keszthely can their ‘island’ of late-antique culture be traced, where their traditional costume was worn until the beginning of the 9th century. Then they lost contact with the Mediterranean civilizations and disappeared, together with their romance pannonian language, in the next century.

We can only suppose that after the Hungarian conquest in the 9th century the romanized pannonian population lived on undisturbed just like those of the other settlements of the lower Zala Valley. Common Hungarians appeared here only in the last third of the 10th century and they invaded the ridge of the hill of Keszthely, just like they did in the nearby Zalavár. At the beginning of the new millennium all the archeological evidences and findings are Hungarian, according to Franz Daim (in The Avars (Archaeology).The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World. Ed by: Hans-Werner Goetz/Jörg Jarnut/Walter Pohl. Leiden-Boston 2003, 463-570.).

Language

Further than belonging to the Indo-European language family, probably as a Centum language, the relation of the Romance Pannonian to other ancient and modern languages remains unclear because no writings in this romance language have been found. Today, the main source of authoritative information about this language (according to the linguist ) consists of many toponyms and a handful of anthroponyms, ethnonyms, and hydronyms.

The name Keszthely (pronounced in Hungarian "Kestei") is similar to the venetian/istrian dialect "castei", that means "castle", and is probably an original romance pannonian word loanworded by the Hungarian language (Julius Pokorny in Indogermanisches Etymologisches Worterbuch).

This Hungarian linguist pinpoints that the word "Pannonia" is originated from the illyrian name "pen" (that means "marsh") and this shows the possible relation of the romance pannonian language with the Illyrian language, another extinct balkan language.

The romance pannonian language probably contributed to the basic 300 words of the Eastern Romance substratum, according to the Romanian linguist Alexandru Rosetti (in his Istoria limbii române).

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has requested the classification of the Romance Pannonian language as ISO 639-3, with the pending code "rpa" for an extinct language.

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