Romanian words in other languageswhat the neighbours borrowed, according to their own dictionaries
Accounts of Romanian, the Romance language of Romania and Moldova, usually list what it borrowed: from Slavic, Turkish, Hungarian, French. This is the reverse count: 392 loans from Romanian, in 13 languages, each resting on a dictionary or a study of the language that received it. For another 162 words, the dictionaries hesitate or contradict each other.
Marius Comper · 4 October 2026
The word, the language that uses it and the Romanian word it comes from. Select one to see what the sources say.
The history of pastrami runs through Romanian. The American Heritage Dictionary gives the etymology as Yiddish pastrame, from Romanian pastramă, from Ottoman Turkish [48]. Duden, the reference dictionary of German, traces German Pastrami from English through Yiddish to Romanian, and marks the earlier origin as unclear [22]. The Turkish etymological dictionary describes the same chain from the other end: the Romanian form came from Turkish, the Yiddish form from Romanian [33].
That is how a borrowed word looks in the dictionaries of the languages that received it. For every word here the evidence is the same kind: the entry on its origin in a dictionary of the language that borrowed it (Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Bulgarian) or, where no dictionary could be read, a study of that language. A word is counted as a loan from Romanian only if a dictionary of the language that uses it, or a study devoted to Romanian loans in that language, derives it from Romanian and no other source read proposes a different origin.
Each circle marks a language or dialect at the place given by the cited source. The number in it shows how many loans from Romanian are confirmed there, and the word beside it is an example, in that language's own letters. The shaded area is today's Romania and the Republic of Moldova.
Pick a word: the map shows which languages took it and how it is written there.
today's Romania and the Republic of Moldova · number in the circle: loans confirmed in that language or dialect · empty circle: a language looked into, with no loan countedWhat the map shows, in turn
Hungarian dialects (region not named in the dictionary): 59 loans (not on the map: the source names no region)
Ukrainian dialects (region not named): 50 loans (not on the map: the source names no region)
Yiddish of Romania, 1892: 38 loans (broske)
Carpathian and western dialects: 27 loans (кирд)
Bulgarian dialects: 24 loans (зър)
Bukovina Romani, 1875: 22 loans (lúme)
Hutsul dialect: 18 loans (дзер)
Slovak: 16 loans (žinčica)
standard Polish: 14 loans (bryndza)
standard Hungarian: 12 loans (palacsinta)
standard Ukrainian: 11 loans (бринза)
Hungarian dialects of Transylvania: nine loans (cáp)
Transcarpathian dialects: seven loans (жентиця)
Romani (Șăineanu, 1892): seven loans (not on the map: the source names no region)
Vlax dialects: seven loans (not on the map: the source names no region)
dialects of Podhale and Spiš: five loans (strąga)
eastern Czech dialects: five loans (redikat se)
standard Bulgarian: five loans (маса)
older Hungarian: five loans (not on the map: the source names no region)
the klezmer repertoire: five loans (not on the map: the source names no region)
Csángó dialects of Moldavia: four loans (ulica)
Bukovynian dialects: four loans (куркан)
Dniester and southern dialects: four loans (гелета)
standard Czech: four loans (brynza)
Serbian dialects: four loans (not on the map: the source names no region)
southern Russian dialects: three loans (герлыга)
craftsmen's argots of Kosovo: three loans
Albanian: three loans (rrojbë)
Romani dialects (not named by the source): three loans (not on the map: the source names no region)
standard Russian: two loans (мамалыга)
Austrian German: two loans (Palatschinke)
Transylvanian Saxon: two loans (Pomānǝ)
English: two loans (pastrami)
Székely dialects: one loan (esztena)
Banat Bulgarian: one loan
standard Serbian and Croatian: one loan (frula)
Timok dialects: one loan
older Polish: one loan (not on the map: the source names no region)
standard German: one loan (not on the map: the source names no region)
Greek: no loan counted (στρούγκα)
At least 77 of the 392 loans are assigned by their sources to dialects of Transylvania, Moldavia, Bukovina and the Banat, or to the Yiddish of Romania: most are in the Yiddish of Romania, then in the Romani of Bukovina, a historical region in the north; in the Hungarian of Transylvania, the region in the west and centre of today's Romania, and of the Csángós, Hungarian speakers in Moldavia, in the east; in the dialect of the Transylvanian Saxons, German settlers there since the Middle Ages; and in the Bulgarian of the Banat, a region in the south-west. The true number may be higher, because the Hungarian dictionary does not say which region most of its dialect words come from.
The loans derive from 303 Romanian words. Of these, 249 turn up in one language only. Brânză, the Romanian word for cheese, is counted in seven languages, more than any other: in six directly, and in Russian through Ukrainian and Polish. Next is urdă, a whey cheese, counted in six languages. See Brânză → bryndza for the cheese word's history and the shepherds' route along the Carpathians.
The numbers below cannot be compared from one language to the next. Only the Hungarian etymological dictionary could be read in full. For the other languages the words looked up were those proposed by the specialist lists and by Wiktionary, and only two volumes of the Bulgarian etymological dictionary could be read as text. A larger number here shows that more words were checked. Of the 392 loans, 52 rest only on the list of a Romanian linguist, with no dictionary of the receiving language behind them.
Each tile is a word. Its colour says what kind of thing it names. Solid tiles are confirmed loans; hatched ones are words on which the dictionaries hesitate or disagree. Select a tile to see what each source says about the word.
The sheepfoldsheep, shepherds, flocks, pens, the gear of the fold
Foodcheeses, polenta, pies, fruit
House and clothesbuildings, vessels, tools, clothing
Peoplekin, trades, officials, kinds of people
Natureplants, animals, landforms, weather
Field and cattlecrops, field tools, cattle, poultry
Market and lawmeasures, taxes, trade
Music and custominstruments, dances, church, beliefs
Words for ideasverbs, qualities, feelings, ailments, grammar words
Disputed
Hungarian
counted: 90 · disputed: 56 · candidates not counted: 50
Source: the Új magyar etimológiai szótár (ÚESz), the etymological dictionary of Hungarian in progress online, read in full: 12,842 entries [1]. In 102 of them the first explanation names Romanian as the language the word was taken from. Zaicz's dictionary is a second source for 15 words [2].
The oldest record the dictionary gives for a word on the list is katrinca (Romanian catrință, an apron skirt), in a glossary of about 1405, where it means a kerchief; the apron-skirt sense is recorded from 1612. The standard language has 12 of them, among them áfonya (bilberry, from afină), cimbora (pal, from sâmbră, a partnership in field work), furulya (flute, from fluier), tokány (a stew, from tocană), poronty (brat, from prunc, infant) and palacsinta (pancake, from plăcintă). The dictionary marks 73 as regional and five as obsolete. For seven of the words counted it adds that they also came, certainly or probably, through Slovak, Serbian and Croatian (“Serbo-Croatian” in the dictionary) or Ukrainian. For brindza, by contrast, the dictionary's first verdict is Vándorszó, a wandering word, spread from Romanian; as it is not entered as a Romanian loanword, it is listed here as disputed.
Of those counted, in the standard language: 12; dialect words: 73; obsolete or dated: 5. By kind of thing: the sheepfold 17, house and clothes 14, words for ideas 12, food 11, people 11, nature 10, music and custom 9, field and cattle 6.
Confirmed from Romanian 90
Names of Romanian things 8used only when speaking about Romania; counted apart
Disputed 56
Ukrainian
counted: 121 · disputed: 18 · candidates not counted: 28
Source: the Etymological Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language (ЕСУМ, 1982–2012), in which 167 words were looked up [6]. Of the 120 taken directly, the dictionary derives 49 from “the Romanian language”, 16 from “the Moldavian language”, 29 from both and 26 from the “East Romance languages”; here they are counted together, as loans from Romanian: this page takes the dictionary's “Moldavian” to be the Romanian spoken in Moldova. In 16 of them the verdict begins with “очевидно” (apparently). Emil Vrabie's list of 1967 is a second source for 85 of them [7].
Nearly all are dialect words, from the Carpathians, Bukovina and Transcarpathia: жентиця (whey, Romanian jintiță), кирд (flock, cârd), стина (sheepfold, stână), ґляґ (rennet, cheag). The standard language took 11, among them бринза, мамалиґа, плачинда and the verb плекати (to cherish, to rear), which the dictionary says was apparently borrowed “as a Carpathian shepherds' term”.
Of those counted, in the standard language: 11; dialect words: 98; obsolete or dated: 1; no register given by the source: 11. By kind of thing: the sheepfold 27, house and clothes 22, nature 20, words for ideas 15, food 14, people 9, field and cattle 7, music and custom 4, market and law 3.
Confirmed from Romanian 120
Came through another language 1
Disputed 18
Polish
counted: 20 · disputed: 24 · candidates not counted: 15
Sources: the great dictionary of the Polish Academy [11], the PWN dictionary [12] and Brückner's etymological dictionary of 1927 [13]; for the dialect of the Spiš region, a 2025 study [14]; for Turkish words that reached older Polish through Romanian, a 2024 study [15].
In the standard language: bryndza, cap (billy goat, Romanian țap), fujara (flute, fluier), maczuga (club, măciucă), gawra (a bear's den, from gaură, hole), redyk (the drive of the sheep up and down the mountain, from a ridica, to lift). Mamałyga came through Ukrainian. The origin of the best-known word, baca, the head shepherd, is disputed; the details are below.
Of those counted, in the standard language: 14; dialect words: 5; obsolete or dated: 1. By kind of thing: the sheepfold 8, food 4, field and cattle 2, house and clothes 2, words for ideas 2, music and custom 1, nature 1.
Confirmed from Romanian 18
Came through another language 2
Names of Romanian things 3used only when speaking about Romania; counted apart
From Aromanian (a Balkan Romance language), or attributed by the source only to “Vlachs” 1
Disputed 24
Slovak
counted: 16 · disputed: 9 · candidates not counted: 10
Source: Ľubor Králik's etymological dictionary (2015) [17], which also gives the century of the first record. The historical dictionary of Slovak could not be consulted.
Králik writes that bryndza reached Slovakia “during the so-called Wallachian colonisation of the Carpathians”. He also derives from Romanian žinčica (with possible Ukrainian mediation, he adds), geleta, strunga, putera, redikať sa. Through Hungarian came palacinka, fičúr and čutora. On bača and vatra the same dictionary hedges; at fujara it only compares Romanian fluier, without naming the language the word was taken from.
Of those counted, in the standard language: 13; dialect words: 1; obsolete or dated: 2. By kind of thing: food 5, the sheepfold 5, nature 2, people 2, field and cattle 1, house and clothes 1.
Confirmed from Romanian 13
Came through another language 3
From Aromanian (a Balkan Romance language), or attributed by the source only to “Vlachs” 1
Disputed 9
Czech
counted: 9 · disputed: 15 · candidates not counted: 5
Sources: the dictionary of standard Czech (SSJČ), which marks the origin as “z rum.” [19], Rejzek's etymological dictionary [20] and an article of 1974 on the words of Romanian origin in SSJČ [21].
The two Czech dictionaries often contradict each other, which is why the list of disputed words is longer than the list of confirmed ones. Brynza, žinčice and urda are derived from Romanian; bača, koliba and fujara each have two explanations.
Of those counted, in the standard language: 4; dialect words: 5; obsolete or dated: 0. By kind of thing: food 3, the sheepfold 3, house and clothes 2, nature 1.
Confirmed from Romanian 6
Came through another language 3
Names of Romanian things 1used only when speaking about Romania; counted apart
Disputed 15
German
counted: 5 · disputed: 1 · candidates not counted: 2
Sources: Duden [22] and DWDS [23]; for the dialect of the Transylvanian Saxons, a 2022 study [24].
Austrian German has Brimsen (sheep's-milk cheese) and Palatschinke (pancake). Among the Saxons, pomană (alms and the meal for the dead) and a pomeni (to mention, to commemorate) entered the dialect; the noun is on record from the second half of the 18th century. The sources read give no total for the Saxon dialect.
Confirmed from Romanian 3
Came through another language 2
Names of Romanian things 1used only when speaking about Romania; counted apart
Disputed 1
Russian
counted: 5 · disputed: 6 · candidates not counted: 5
Today's dictionaries of standard Russian have мамалыга and брынза; of the second, Vasmer says it came from Romanian through Ukrainian and Polish. Vasmer marks мамалыга and the others as southern.
Confirmed from Romanian 4
Came through another language 1
Disputed 6
Bulgarian
counted: 30 · disputed: 8 · candidates not counted: 0
Sources: volumes 1 (letters А–З) and 7 of the eight-volume Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary (БЕР), the only two available as text [25], and a 1923 study by the Romanian linguist Theodor Capidan [27]. For that reason the list is fuller at the start of the alphabet.
Most are dialect words; the dictionary records them at Novo Selo, near Vidin on the Danube: зър (whey, Romanian zer), зара (buttermilk, zară), згарда (a dog's collar, zgardă). Маса (table, masă) and козунак (Easter bread, cozonac), standard words today, are derived from Romanian by Capidan, who in 1923 knew the second mostly from the Tărnovo region. The words Capidan derives from Aromanian are kept apart.
Of those counted, in the standard language: 5; dialect words: 25; obsolete or dated: 0. By kind of thing: house and clothes 11, food 7, people 4, the sheepfold 2, words for ideas 2, nature 2, market and law 1, music and custom 1. Seven of them rest only on the list of a Romanian linguist (Capidan 1923), with no dictionary of the receiving language behind them.
Confirmed from Romanian 30
Names of Romanian things 1used only when speaking about Romania; counted apart
From Aromanian (a Balkan Romance language), or attributed by the source only to “Vlachs” 7
Disputed 8
Serbian and Croatian
counted: 9 · disputed: 11 · candidates not counted: 4
Sources: Petar Skok's etymological dictionary [28] and the Hrvatski jezični portal[29].
Where Skok writes “od rum.” the word is counted; six of the nine rest on Skok alone. Fičor, which he elsewhere assigns to the language of the “medieval Vlachs”, is listed under “Vlach”. Frula (flute) and kustura (clasp knife) are derived from Romanian by the Croatian portal as well. Three words come from craftsmen's secret languages: that of the masons of Sirinić, in the Šar Mountains, that of the potters of Priština and an argot of the same town.
Of those counted, in the standard language: 1; dialect words: 7; obsolete or dated: 1. By kind of thing: house and clothes 3, music and custom 2, food 2, people 1, the sheepfold 1.
Confirmed from Romanian 9
From Aromanian (a Balkan Romance language), or attributed by the source only to “Vlachs” 1
Disputed 11
Romani
counted: 39 · disputed: 2 · candidates not counted: 0
Sources: Franz Miklosich's glossary of the Romani of Bukovina (1875), where each loan is tagged “rum.” [35]; for the Vlax dialects, studies by Yaron Matras, Viktor Elšík and Daniele Viktor Leggio [36][37][38]; and one sentence of Lazăr Șăineanu (1892), who lists seven Romanian words as having entered the speech of the Roma, without giving their Romani forms [43].
Matras writes that Gilliat-Smith adopted the term “Vlax”, used by immigrant Roma “originating from Wallachia”, the southern Romanian principality [40]. In these dialects the linguists cited find grammar words borrowed from Romanian: maj (more, Romanian mai), ke (that, că), trebui (must), inke (still, încă). Elšík and Matras write that the loan trebui is found in most Vlax dialects spoken outside Romania too, some of which lost contact with Romanian centuries ago. The sources read give no number for all Vlax dialects together. For one of them, the Kalderash dialect of Romani as spoken in Sweden, Ian Hancock cites a glossary of 1963: of 3,600 words, some 1,750 are not inherited, “overwhelmingly from Romanian” [42]. Matras and his colleagues recall that until the middle of the 19th century Roma were subjected to slavery and serfdom in Wallachia and Moldavia [41].
Of those counted, in the standard language: 0; dialect words: 39; obsolete or dated: 0. By kind of thing: words for ideas 17, people 8, nature 5, house and clothes 5, market and law 2, music and custom 2. Seven of them rest only on the list of a Romanian linguist (Șăineanu 1892), with no dictionary of the receiving language behind them.
Confirmed from Romanian 39
Disputed 2
Yiddish
counted: 43 · disputed: 1 · candidates not counted: 3
Sources: the list printed by Lazăr Șăineanu in 1892 for the Yiddish spoken in Romania [43]; for the dance names of the klezmer repertoire, the traditional music of East European Jews, a study by Walter Zev Feldman [44].
For most of the words the only source read is Șăineanu's list of 1892, which says that the Yiddish of Romania “has also borrowed a series of Romanian words”; no dictionary of Yiddish was read. For 25 of them Șăineanu gives only the Romanian word, without the Yiddish form. Feldman derives from Romanian the genre names hora, zhok (from joc, dance) and sârba.
Of those counted, in the standard language: 0; dialect words: 43; obsolete or dated: 0. By kind of thing: nature 11, house and clothes 10, market and law 6, music and custom 5, food 5, people 3, field and cattle 2, words for ideas 1. 38 of them rest only on the list of a Romanian linguist (Șăineanu 1892), with no dictionary of the receiving language behind them.
Confirmed from Romanian 43
Disputed 1
English
counted: 2 · disputed: 1 · candidates not counted: 7
Sources: the American Heritage Dictionary[48], the Random House Unabridged[49] and Etymonline [50]. The Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster and Collins were not read.
English has two words that came from Romanian through another language, according to the dictionaries read: pastrami, through Yiddish, and hora, through Modern Hebrew. Brynza is only the name of the East European cheese. Vampire, boyar, voivode and haiduk do not come from Romanian according to the dictionaries read.
Came through another language 2
Names of Romanian things 1used only when speaking about Romania; counted apart
Below are the Romanian words looked up in at least three languages. A solid label means the dictionary of that language derives it from Romanian; a hatched one, that it hesitates or names another source. The best-known shepherd words are also the most disputed.
confirmed
through another language
Aromanian / “Vlach”
disputed
brânză7/8
fluier4/8
urdă6/8
plăcintă4/6
strungă4/6
țap3/6
găleată2/5
jintiță4/5
mămăligă5/5
baci1/4
ciutură2/4
colibă0/4
cucuruz0/4
fecior3/4
groapă4/4
gușă2/4
putină4/4
vatră0/4
bordei2/3
bucată3/3
cârd2/3
cârlig2/3
chiag2/3
custură2/3
gărgăriță2/3
gârlă2/3
grui2/3
pomană3/3
ridica3/3
țigaie3/3
traistă1/3
Baci, the head shepherd. For Polish baca, four sources give four routes. The great dictionary of the Polish Academy traces it to Romanian baci, which it derives in turn from Serbo-Croatian; the borrowed form would have been bacza, and the Polish word is on record from 1682 [11]. The PWN dictionary names Slovak and Hungarian and does not mention Romanian [12]. Brückner took it from Hungarian, and the Hungarian word from Romanian [13]. A 2025 study of the dialect of the Spiš region holds that it came from Serbian [14]. Of Slovak bača, Králik writes that it is a word of Carpathian pastoral culture of “insufficiently clear” origin, perhaps from Romanian [17]. And Skok, for Serbian and Croatian: it cannot be known who borrowed it from whom [28].
Cucuruz, maize. For Polish kukurydza, PWN arrives, through Ukrainian, at Romanian cucuruz in the sense of a fir cone [12]; the Academy's dictionary brings it from Ukrainian and Turkish [11]; Brückner suspected a South Slavic origin [13]. The Ukrainian dictionary allows for the possibility that Romanian formed cucuruz from a Ukrainian word and that Ukrainian later borrowed it back as кукурудза[6].
Colibă, hut. The dictionary of standard Czech derives Czech koliba from Romanian colibă, and PWN gives the same origin for Polish koliba[19][12]. Rejzek, Králik and the Polish Academy's dictionary start from Greek [20][17][11]. The Ukrainian dictionary calls Romanian mediation “probable” [6].
Vatră, hearth. Brückner wrote that the Poles have the word “from the Vlach shepherds” [13]. The Ukrainian dictionary gives Romanian, or Iranian through Turkish or Romani, as possible sources of Ukrainian ватра, and notes that Romanian vatră is itself held to be inherited, Iranian or Albanian [6]. Králik: “in the end probably from Romanian” [17]. The Hungarian dictionary mentions dialect vátra (1613) under another word and derives it from Romanian vatră, or from Slovak or Ukrainian [1].
Three long roads: the pie, the cured meat, the round dance#
Three words travelled far from the Carpathians, each through a different language.
Plăcintă: as far as Vienna
placentaLatin
plăcintăRomanian
palacsintaHungarian, 1577
PalatschinkeAustrian German
In Vienna a pancake is a Palatschinke. Duden gives its origin in three steps: Hungarian palacsinta, from Romanian plăcintă (a pie), from Latin placenta[22]. The Hungarian etymological dictionary labels palacsintaRomán jövevényszó, a Romanian loanword, and gives its first recorded form as palaczinta in 1577, meaning a flat cake; the pancake sense appears about 1600 [1].
The Hungarian dictionary also notes the road onward: from Hungarian the word passed into Austrian German, Serbian and Croatian, Czech and Slovak [1]. Králik confirms it for Slovak: palacinka comes from Hungarian, and the Hungarian word from Romanian [17].
The dictionaries do not agree everywhere. Duden takes Palatschinke straight to Hungarian; DWDS passes it through Czech or Slovak [22][23]. The dictionary of standard Czech derives palačinka from Slovak, Hungarian and Latin, without naming Romanian [19]; Rejzek writes “most probably through Romanian” [20]. That is why the Czech word is listed here as disputed.
Eastwards: плачинда in Ukrainian, with no intermediary [6]. For плацинда in the southern Russian dialects, Vasmer starts from Romanian but notes that the sounds of the word point to a Greek intermediary, which he has not found attested [9].
Pastramă: as far as New York
pastırmaTurkish
pastramăRomanian
pastrameYiddish
pastramiEnglish
The Random House dictionary gives the same road as the American Heritage as far as Romanian, and calls the Romanian word “a Balkanism of uncertain origin”, “perhaps ultimately” Turkish [49].
Etymonline suggests that salami “probably” influenced the spelling with -mi; the Jewish English Lexicon says the same of the pronunciation [50][46]. The same lexicon says the word was brought into American English by Yiddish-speaking Jews from Romania, in New York, at the end of the 19th century.
The real dispute lies one step earlier: where Romanian got the word. DEX, the standard dictionary of Romanian, derives it from Modern Greek and from Turkish; Ciorănescu's etymological dictionary, from Turkish, with an older Greek root [58]. On the step from Romanian into Yiddish, the dictionaries read agree. Dave Wilton notes, however, that older dictionaries wrongly brought it through Hungarian or from Latin, and that the earliest fully English use he knows is an advertisement by a Jewish butcher in Richmond, Virginia, of 12 May 1899 [51]. Etymonline gives the year 1916, Random House 1935–1940.
Horă: into Yiddish and, through Hebrew, into English
horăRomanian
הורהModern Hebrew
horaEnglish
The American Heritage Dictionary derives English hora from Modern Hebrew, and the Hebrew word from Romanian horă, the round dance, which came in its turn, perhaps through Bulgarian or Turkish, from Greek [48]. DEX derives the Romanian word from Bulgarian [58]. No Hebrew etymological dictionary was read; the step through Hebrew rests here on the English dictionaries alone. Random House dates English hora to 1875–80 and still derives it from Modern Hebrew; the two do not fit and are given here as printed [49].
In Yiddish the road is documented by musicologists. Walter Zev Feldman writes that the names of some genres of the klezmer repertoire, among them hora, zhok and sârba, are derived from the Romanian words horă, joc and sârbă[44]. The Hungarian dictionary has hóra too, as the name of the Romanian dance [1].
“Vlach” (влах, vlah, βλάχος, wołoch, oláh) is a name given from outside, and its meaning changes with the source and the period. It can refer to speakers of Romance languages in Eastern Europe, north of the Danube or in the Balkans, where Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian are spoken today. The history of the name is on the page Wales and Wallachia. In the northern Carpathians “Vlach” also came to describe a way of life, sheep-herding, whatever language the herders spoke. A 2024 study of the Polish Carpathians counts 479 settlements founded under “Vlach law”, the legal regime of herders' villages, or with an attested Vlach presence and says that this kind of settlement lost its originally ethnic character [59].
So a word that its source derives only “from the Vlachs”, without saying from which language, is not counted here as Romanian. Polish watra in Brückner is one. Slovak kľag (rennet) is derived by Králik from Aromanian. The words of this kind, 15 in all, are listed separately below.
Greek. In Greek, three words are derived by the sources from “Vlach” or from Aromanian, the Romance language spoken in the Pindus and Thessaly [30]. In 1902 George Murnu gathered a list of 155 words; he held about 89 of them to be loans and only 16 to be widespread among Greeks. As his introduction says, by “Romanian” he meant the language of the Romance populations pushed south [31]. None is counted here as a loan from Romanian.
Albanian. Romanian and Albanian share a few dozen old words; it is not settled whether one borrowed them from the other or both have them from an older language. They are the subject of the page on Dacian words. Orel's Albanian etymological dictionary enters six of the words looked up as borrowed from Romanian: trajstë (bag), flojere (flute), gushë (throat), kësulë (cap), rrojbë (safflower) and tërsirë (a rope), and sak through South Slavic [32]. The first four start from traistă, fluier, gușă and căciulă, words that both languages have. For three of them (fluier, gușă and căciulă) older scholars proposed the opposite road, from Albanian into Romanian. Ciorănescu, in his etymological dictionary of Romanian, records them and does not follow them: he writes that Albanian flojere comes “certainly” from Romanian, although Berneker had looked to Albanian for the origin of the Romanian word; he lists the Albanian words for traistă and gușă among those taken from Romanian, although Miklosich and Densusianu derived gușă from Albanian; and for căciulă he calls the Albanian origin proposed by Cihac “hardly probable” and writes that “the contrary seems more certain” [58]. For traistă, fluier and căciulă, DEX, the standard dictionary of Romanian, writes only “Cf. alb.”; Orel himself adds that Romanian căciulă goes back in turn to Albanian, and the Bulgarian etymological dictionary notes that Albanian gushë may come from Bulgarian or straight from Romanian [25]. Out of caution these four are not counted here and are listed as disputed. Counted are rrojbë (from roibă, madder), tërsirë (from târsână) and sak.
Turkish. The Turkish dictionaries read derive none of the eight words looked up from Romanian: boyar, funda, kaşkaval, kopil, mamaliga, masa, pelin, voyvoda. For masa (table), Nişanyan starts from Italian and adds that the Turkish form may have come through the Balkan languages [33]. In Bulgarian, on the other hand, Capidan enters маса as coming from Romanian [27]. In the dictionary of the Turkish Language Association the label “Rumca” means Greek [34].
The words derived from Aromanian or “Vlach”
The Albanian words Orel derives from Romanian: counted and disputed
How many words did Romanian give? The published counts differ with what they count#
The published counts cannot be added up or compared. Some count only the standard language, others every dialect; some count variants and derivatives, others do not. The table sets the counts side by side and shows what each author counted.
Ten words from other languages, drawn at random from the table. For each, say what the dictionary of that language writes.
A few answers: абонат (Bulgarian): from romanian; ботуш (Bulgarian): from romanian; kukuřice (Czech): from somewhere else; salaš (Czech): from somewhere else; банка (Bulgarian): the dictionaries hesitate; зестра (Bulgarian): the dictionaries hesitate.
The unit. A loan is a word in a language: bryndza in Polish and bryndza in Slovak are two. Derivatives of the same word are not counted separately. Names of people, places, peoples and currencies are left out. Names of Romanian things used only when speaking about Romania (cujka, plum brandy; Doina, a kind of song) are counted apart: there are 16.
What “from Romanian” means. What counts is the language the word was taken from, not its older origin. Bryndza is counted, although Romanian brânză has no agreed etymology. A word is “confirmed” if a dictionary of the language that received it, or a study devoted to Romanian loans in that language, derives it from Romanian and no source read names another route. It is “through another language” when it was borrowed through an intermediary language, as pastrami was through Yiddish. It is “disputed” if the sources contradict each other or the dictionary itself writes “perhaps”; an “apparently” or an “also through another language” added to the verdict does not take the word out of the count, but is shown in full. The rule was fixed before the search began; after the first count one point was settled: the labels “Moldavian language” and “East Romance languages” in the Ukrainian dictionary are read as Romanian.
Where the words looked up came from. The search started from the categories of the English Wiktionary, from the specialist lists and from the examples usually cited for each language. 153 candidates are not counted: 100 because the dictionary gives another origin, 53 because no dictionary of the language could be read or the one read gives no etymology. Among the latter are Yiddish pastrame, which the English, German and Turkish dictionaries read derive from Romanian, and Hebrew הורה, which the English dictionaries do.
What could not be read. The Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster and Collins; the historical dictionary of Slovak; six of the eight volumes of the Bulgarian etymological dictionary; Bakos Ferenc's monograph on the Romanian elements of Hungarian (1982), known here only through those who cite it; the etymological dictionaries of Yiddish, Hebrew and Romani. The form of some Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek, Romani and Yiddish words was verified on the printed page of the source; for some of the Bulgarian words Capidan gives only a transcription in Latin letters, reproduced here as he prints it.
Quotations. From the dictionaries only the label of origin is given, in its original form (“Román jövevényszó”, “z rum.”), with a link to the entry.