Banat Romanian dialect

Geographic distribution

Transition areas

Particularities

Phonetic features

• The unstressed mid vowels close to, respectively, and open to : for standard papuc, plecat, îngropat.
• Dentals become, respectively, and consonants are palatalized when followed by : for dimineață, frunte, bade, vine, lemne, mare.
• Affricates become the palatalized fricatives, respectively: for ceas, cină, cinci, fuge, ginere, sânge.
• In some varieties, the diphthong is realized as : for soare, moarte. In other varieties becomes the monophthong : for coajă, oală.
• The stressed vowel becomes when followed by another in the next syllable: for muiere, fete, poveste, verde, pește.
• After labials, reduces to : for fiere, miercuri, piele, piept.
• After the fricatives, affricates, and the sequence, becomes, becomes, and reduces to : for seară, semn, singur, zer, zid, pășim, șed, jir, și, cojească, înțeapă, simțesc, prăjească, povestesc, steag.
• Labials remain unchanged when followed by : for piept, bivol, obială, fier, vierme, miercuri.
• Etymological is preserved and palatalized, such as in Latin-origin words where it is followed by or in hiatus, words with inflection endings in, Slavic borrowings with the sequence, as well as Hungarian borrowings with : for cui, călcâi, căpătâi, tu rămâi, claie, sicriu. This phenomenon is distinct from the simple palatalization of when followed by a front vowel, which is newer, even though the two phenomena can now appear in very similar contexts: contains an etymological, whereas contains a more recently palatalized.
• The voiced affricate is preserved in words believed to be of substrate origin: for brânză, buză, grumaz, mânz. It is also preserved in Latin-origin words that contain a followed by a long or, by an inflectional or by or in hiatus: for zece, auzi, frunză.
• The monophthong : is old. In standard Romanian, the palatalization is anticipated, and a metathesis occurs : câine, mâine, pâine are best explained as > .

  Morphological features

• Feminine nouns ending in -ă tend to form the plural in -i instead of -e: casă – căși. This may be explained, in the case of nouns with roots ending in a fricative or an affricate, by the fact that the plural ending -e would be realized as -ă, which would produce a homonymy between singular and plural.
• Genitives and datives in nouns are often built analytically: piciorul de la scaun, dau apă la cal.
• The possessive article is invariable: a meu, a mea, a mei, a mele as in most Romanian dialects.
• The simple perfect of verbs is actively used in all persons and numbers, a feature the Banat dialect shares with the western areas of the Wallachian dialect.
• The auxiliary verb used for the compound perfect in the 3rd person has the forms o and or: o mărs, or mărs.
• The newer extended conjugation does not replace the older forms in the 1st and 4th conjugation groups: el lucră, ea înfloare.
• In indicative forms of verbs of the 4th conjugation group, homonymy is found between the 1st person singular and the 3rd person plural: eu cobor, ei cobor.
• Periphrasis is used to express the pluperfect: am fost avut, m-am fost dus, o fost mâncat.
• The negative plural prohibitive continues the Latin imperfect subjunctive: nu fugireț, nu mâncareț.
• The auxiliary fi used in the past subjunctive is variable: eu să fiu mâncat, tu să fii mâncat, el să fie mâncat.
• In some areas, the auxiliary verb used to construct the conditional is a vrea: eu vreaș face, tu vreai face, el vrea face. Sometimes the v of the auxiliary is dropped: reaș, etc.
• In south-western areas, under the Serbian influence, signs of a verbal aspect are found, relying on the use of prefixes: a dogăta, a zăuita, a se proînsura.

  Lexical particularities

• The demonstrative articles are: ăl, a, ăi, ale .
• Specific indefinite pronouns and adjectives are found: , , tot natul.
• Other specific words: șcătulă, șnaidăr, ai, farbă, golumb, cozeci, etc.

  Sample

Subdivisions

• south-western varieties, with particularities such as:
• * becomes : for făcut, pământ;
• * becomes : for luat;
• *a verbal aspect appears: am dogătat, am zăuitat, s-a pronsurat ;
• eastern varieties;
• northern varieties, where becomes more frontal, between and, in words like ;
• north-eastern varieties, in the Hațeg Country.