The Creation of the Romanian Literary language Theoretized by Gheorghe Asachi

Abstract

The principal objective of this paper is to investigate the question of the Romanian literary language creation as it was viewed by Gheorghe Asachi at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since the writer remained known more as a poet by the public, our purpose is to focus on the linguistic preoccupations of Gheorghe Asachi, precisely to reveal the way he positioned himself towards the problematic of the language formation. To answer to this interrogation, we intend to analyze his theoretical points of view from the prefaces of his volumes and also from other articles. In order to have a wider perspective of the subject, we cannot leave beside his cultural initiatives which were important for the language development and also for the awareness of its importance in the epoch. The idiom was still in search for a norm in those times, lacking grammatical rules and, thus, being pursued by the danger of receiving ill-fated influences. In the middle of the struggle for imagining a national language, the contribution of Gheorghe Asachi is pertinent, some of his theoretical ideas being even continued by his predecessors.