ORIGINEA ROMÎNILOR – THE FUNDAMENTAL WORK OF ROMANIAN LINGUISTICS
ORIGINEA ROMÎNILOR – THE FUNDAMENTAL WORK OF ROMANIAN LINGUISTICS

Summary/Abstract: A. Philippide concentrated his efforts on the monumental Originea romînilor, published in two volumes: Ce spun izvoarele istorice (Iași, 1925), respectively, Ce spun limbile romînă şi albaneză (Iași, 1928). The massive and dense work details the formation of the Romanian people from a triple point of view: place, epoch and its manner of formation, process pursued on two paths: one purely historical, by consulting the written sources of all sorts, in which one can find data about the issue and one linguistic, by studying the Romanian language itself. With his vast work, the scholar from Iasi sought to answer the basic issues which had been concerning all Romanian linguists and historians for more than one century: the territory and epoch of formation of the Romanian people and language, their constitutive elements and the development of our language over time. The text does not capture only the essential issues related to the territory where the Romanian people was formed, to the branches of the Romanians and Romanian language, in other words, to the dialectic division of the Romanian language. A. Philippide aims at solving the thorny issue of the origin of Romanians, in a manner different from the other historians and linguists and to form an opinion strengthened on his own analysis of sources and documents, therefore, the linguist from Iasi is, here and there, reflexive-polemical, proving critical spirit regarding the results of the Romanian and foreign researchers (B. P. Hasdeu, Ion Scurtu, P.J. Schafarik, K. Hopf, R. Roesler, W. Tomaschek and others). One of the mastery elements of the work lies in the rigor with which every statement is proven with the help of texts, the methodical scrupulosity of the scientific work undertaken, the objectivity and rigor of the interpretation of the facts being exemplary, which determines Ioan Petrovici to state: „Alexandru Philippide had a boundless and tyrannical passion for scientific research. Science signifies for him the supreme instrument of human improvementŗ.

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