Mihail-George Hâncu
Staico’s Grammar: a 17th-century Romanian Translation of a Grammatical Treatise in a Bilingual Manuscript
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Summary/Abstract
This paper is dedicated to a bilingual manuscript from the 1660s, conserved at the Library of the Romanian Academy as ms. rom. 312, which contains, between folios 217v and 254r, a copy of Meletius Smotrytsky’s Slavonic Grammar and its Romanian translation by Staico the Grammarian (who taught Slavonic in Târgoviște). The Romanian text, titled Tâlcuirea sau arătarea gramaticii slovenești („The Interpretation or the Expression of the Slavonic Grammar”), is on the pages opposite to the Slavonic text. The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary comparison between this grammatical text and the first grammars of the Romanian language from the 18th century, namely the one penned by Dimitrie Eustatievici Brașoveanul in a manuscript from 1757 and the one published by Ianake Văcărescu in 1787. By comparing them, it is possible to illustrate the different mechanisms used to render the corresponding terminology for parts of speech and nominal cases, ranging from direct translations and calques to neologisms.
Subject: Debuts