A FORGOTTEN ACCENT

• Main Author: Dr. Nicolae GEORGESCU
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Editura Muzeul National al Literaturii Romane 2010-11-01
• Series: Diversitate si Identitate Culturala in Europa
• Subjects: Accent; Eminescu; Epigones; Perpessicius; text editing; pale; visionary
• Online Access: http://www.diversite.eu/pdf/07_2/DICE_07.2_Full_Text_p80-p89-Nicolae-GEORGESCU.pdf

Unlike its European sisters, French, Italian or Spanish, the Romanian language remains the only Romance language in which the graphic accent is not marked. Of course there are studies attempting to establish accentuation rules on a series of words - but the rules are few, the exceptions many - and the words of a language... are very, very many, of the hundreds of thousands order. Romanian remains in the situation of English or Russian, where the accent is a matter of habit - or it can simply shift out of the speakers’ desire / ignorance. We are talking about Romanian words which have different meanings according to where we put the accent. As it concerns the verse 84 from Epigonii („Epigones”) by M. Eminescu, where the Present form /voi/ mergeţi is considered by certain editors as an Imperfect form: /voi/ mergeaţi, we compare the Imperfect forms stressed by M. Eminescu himself with the same forms unstressed by the poet, and we conclude that the poet stressed only under rhythm, with a prosodic aim, generating what he called „the ethic accent”, i.e. the word is not stressed so as to underline its relevance in the context. To sum up, the accentual forms must be kept different from the unstressed ones, as it is the author's personal writing system, which has its poetic meaning, and must be understood.