The Romanian Academy 2013

The Romanian Academy, the Institute of Linguistics "Iorgu Iordan - Alexandru Rosetti", the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest and the Baia-Mare Faculty of Letters of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca organized in Bucharest, on September 4-8, the Xth Congress of the International Society of Dialectology and Geolinguistics.

The president of the Congress was prof. univ. Dr. Nicolae Saramandu, corresponding member of the Romanian Academy and CSI Dr. Habil Manuela Nevaci and CS III dr. Irina Floarea provided the scientific secretariat of the Congress.

The Congress was opened with the words of the President of the Romanian Academy, Ioan- Aurel Pop, who specified: “Every natural language also lives through its dialects and speeches, which ensure its unity in diversity. Daco-Romanian is a unitary language, and Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian illustrate a certain historical evolution from a unitary ethnic and linguistic trunk.” Then spoke: Prof. Dr. Gheorghe Chivu, president of the Section of Philology and Literature of the Romanian Academy and Ass. Prof. dr. Adina Dragomirescu, director of the Institute of Linguistics “Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti”.

Nicolae Saramandu continued with a very interesting presentation of Romanian dialects. It is important to remember from his presentation: The lexical maps presented here highlight a very diversified distribution of words of the substrate and of Latin origin in the Romanian dialects. Phonology and morphology confirm this observation. It is not a question of an original territory, limited in space, from which the speaking subjects left to establish themselves in their current areal. Regional differences originated in the vast Romanized space of the Eastern Roman Empire, where Romanian dialects are spoken today.

More than 200 researchers from prestigious research and teaching institutions in Europe, America and Asia were present at this congress and they presented 140 scientific presentations. In the plenary session four keynote speakers, professors with prestigious scientific activity, held high level scientific communications: Prof. Dr. Enrique Gargallo Gil from the University of Barcelona, Prof. Dr. Johanes Kabatek from the University of Zurich, Prof. Dr. Alfred Lameli of the Philipps-Universität Marburg, director of the Forschungszentrums Deutscher Sprachatlas Marburg and Prof. Dr. Luchia Antonova-Vasileva of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, director of the Bulgarian Language Institute. These communications benefited from a wide audience among the participants and the scientific content attracted many positive reactions from the participating academic community.

The sections of the congress were very diverse and allowed participants to approach a multitude of points of view and areas of research closely linked to dialectology: linguistic atlases and digitization, new methodological and conceptual approaches, concepts and research methods, dialectometry and perceptual dialectology, dialectology and language structure: phonetics, morphology, lexicology, semantics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, phraseology, ethnology and toponymy, etymology and linguistic sources, multilingual and multicultural variability.

This year, the 53rd annual working session of the Atlas of European Languages (Atlas Linguarum Europae - ALE) was also organized within the framework of the SIDG Congress, where representatives members of the national committees discussed certain issues concerning the finalization of the 10th volume. Since 2005, the presidency, archives and general secretariat of the ALE have been located in Bucharest, at the Institute of Linguistics of the Romanian Academy.

In the closing session, Prof. Alfred Lameli, prof. Jose Enrique Gargallo Gil, prof. Manuel Gonzales Gonzales, prof. Johanes Kabatek and prof. Nicolae Saramandu who spoke about the future of dialectology and linguistic geography at European and global levels. It was concluded that the level of papers presented at this congress were of a high academic standard, with innovative aspects and new research methods on dialect material and idioms spoken in various parts of the world.

It has been established that the next SIDG congress will take place in 2026 in Marburg, organized by university professor Alfred Lameli, the director of the Forschungszentrums Deutscher Sprachatlas Marburg.

At the end of the Conference we organized an excursion to the mountainous region, Sinaia, where the Peles Castle and an Orthodox monastery are located, representative monuments for Romanian culture and history.

(Manuela Nevaci)