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This paper introduces the USPDATRO dataset. This is a speech dataset, in the Romanian language, constructed from open data, focusing on under-represented voice types (children, young and old people, and female voices). The paper covers the methodology behind the dataset construction, specific details regarding the dataset, and evaluation of existing Romanian Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems, with different architectures. Results indicate that more under-represented speech content is needed in the training of ASR systems. Our approach can be extended to other low-resourced languages, as long as open data are available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The MacArthur Admission Experience Survey was developed to evaluate perceived coercion in psychiatric inpatients and comprises of three subscales: “Perceived coercion”, “Negative pressures” and “Voice”. The present study aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of a Romanian language version of the AES (R-AES) and to identify predictors for higher perceived coercion. We developed the R-AES using a translation/back-translation procedure and administered it to 137 patients admitted to the “Profesor Doctor Alexandru Obregia” psychiatric hospital in Bucharest, Romania. Discriminatory power was evaluated by comparing the scores of voluntarily and involuntarily admitted patients. The R-AES showed satisfactory internal consistency (Crohnbach’s alpha = 0.92). Principal components analysis disclosed a three-factor solution explaining 69.1% of variance. Factor components roughly corresponded to the original subscales. Higher scores were associated with involuntary admission, objective coercive measures, younger age, frequent past hospitalisations, treatment non-compliance, psychosis, mania, greater disease severity, aggression, and presentation by police or ambulance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign students' notions of the Romanian language can be enriched not only by exposure to the language but also by familiarizing them with important aspects of the local culture and civilization. Through workshops, excursions, visits to museums and cultural evenings, foreign students have the chance to familiarize themselves with Romanian customs and traditions and to learn the Romanian language. In this context, it is necessary to design some modern methods and tools for learning the Romanian language by foreign students, articulated with the cultural dimension and, at the same time, centered, not on the history of literature, nor on grammar, but on the practical dimension. From an intercultural perspective in the teaching and learning of the Romanian language as a foreign language, the importance of knowledge about the culture of the target language becomes a sine qua non condition in the context in which the acquisition of language and cultural knowledge are closely related. Romanian culture and civilization courses contribute significantly to the preservation and promotion of the Romanian language and Romanian culture, as well as shaping the image of a modern and dynamic Romania among foreign students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the Romanian language as a foreign language is a challenge for foreign students, who find themselves, not infrequently, in probable situations of understanding the Romanian language experienced in everyday life. Both the functional-communicative dimension and the one focused on the knowledge of grammatical structures are fundamental for learning the Romanian language as a foreign language. Learning a foreign language does not remain only at the individual level, but facilitates interpersonal contacts from different spaces and cultures. Learning Romanian as a foreign language is useful, even if those who try to do it will not end up being perfect and efficient speakers in all communication situations. Foreign students wishing to learn Romanian as a foreign language are characterized by linguistic and cultural diversity, so there is the possibility of a more difficult adaptation to a cultural and linguistic space totally different from the one they come from. This is where foreign students sometimes have difficulties in understanding and learning new grammatical structures for their linguistic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examined the Romanian institutions and their networking in Szeklerland, while I also looked at how this institutional system is represented in the Romanian media from Szeklerland. I was curious to see if there was a connection between the image developed and distributed by the Romanian language media and the everyday reality of Romanians living in that region, taking into consideration the fact that the representation of Szeklerland in the media and the reality of people living there do not always overlap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a book by Radu Mârza that explores the history of Romanian travelers and patients in the Karlsbad resort in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The book is based on extensive research and provides a comprehensive account of the Romanian presence in Karlsbad. The author's unconventional career strategy is noted, but his work is gaining recognition. The book covers topics such as the presence of Romanian physicians in Karlsbad, politics, modernities, and transport systems. It also focuses on the memoirs of a famous Romanian doctor who practiced medicine in Karlsbad. The book is praised for its rich illustrations and provides a unique and enjoyable read on an unusual subject. [Extracted from the article]

The purpose of this article is to trace the journey of the term stihii within the Romanian language, focusing on its evolution from the early modern period to the 19th century. Deeply connected with the Byzantine theology and philosophy, stihii traditionally refers to the four fundamental elements of nature (air, earth, fire and water), and their inherent powers. The study examines the term's progression from representing the four classical elements to embodying more abstract notions such as spiritual or incorporeal entities. Through an analysis of predominantly theological sources, the article explores how stihii served as a lens through which the natural world was understood and interpreted in harmony with theological thought. The research highlights the transformation of these elemental concepts within Romania's culture, underscoring their role in shaping language, practices, and beliefs. The article aims at providing a broad cultural analysis, encompassing language, mythology, ancient philosophy, theology, anatomy, folklore, and literature, to explore the multifaceted significance of stihii in the Romanian ethos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study draws attention to the tight connection between the Transylvanian School and the prelates of the Greek Catholic Church, who advocated the replacement of the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin script, the creation of schools and education of the youth, and the rights of the Romanians in Transylvania based on their Latin origin and allegiance to the Church of Rome. The contribution of the Greek Catholic scholars and priests does not only refer to historical and cultural aspects, but also to the rejuvenation of the Romanian language, as proven by the promotion of Latin-Romance neologisms to the detriment of Slavic synonyms. The evolution of the Liturgikon for over two centuries testifies to the modernisation of the Romanian vocabulary. Nowadays, a uniformisation of religious books would be necessary, along with the elimination of incorrect forms which are not in accordance with current academic regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims at identifying and interpreting the role that the horse plays in legends, stories, riddles, and sayings. More specifically, we extracted the material from the answers to question number 138 of the first survey issued by The Museum of the Romanian Language in 1922 (the first one in a collection of eight surveys): "What do people believe about the horse? What role does it play in carols, spells, and disenchantments?" The answers were provided by village intellectuals, mostly teachers and priests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Franciscans carried out an important pastoral ministry in the Diocese of Alba Iulia, which included Romanian-speaking communities. A particular example of this ministry is the decades-long preaching of István Olti, OFM, a Hungarian friar, to Romanian believers, in the first half of the 19th century. This essay discusses his unpublished Romanian sermons given in Grădiștea de Munte, Sibișel, Sebeșel and Rodna Veche, preserved in the Franciscan Archives in Cluj. The sermons, entirely inspired by the Bible, are interesting not only as witnesses of the Franciscan ministry to Romanianspeaking communities, but also as examples of religious texts in Romanian, written with Latin characters, a phonetic transcription using Hungarian letters and digraphs, in a (trans)formative period of the Romanian language, when writing and printing used Cyrillic characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to analyse how Romanian has been perceived, known and presented by some of the great foreign linguists of the past one hundred years. They are dialectologists, Romance languages’ specialists, grammarians, mostly from the European space, who have known differently Romanian language and approached it in their work.

This study aims to trace the linguistic thinking of the author of a Romanian language textbook, used as a “Romanian as a second language” coursebook. The novelty lies in the fact that the work we have studied is the first of its kind in the history of Romanian language grammars and that its author is not a native speaker of Romanian, but a Frenchman, i.e., one of the declared beneficiaries of this particular type of book. It gathers multiple perspectives as it is a descriptive, synchronic but also diachronic grammar. At the same time, it is contrastive-typological research, but it also contains teaching methodology indications. Furthermore, it bears the marks of interculturality and alterity, as language facts are explained from the point of view of the foreigner who receives them, not of the native speaker who utters them.

The main objective of this paper is to present the historical evolution of the adjectival subsystem in the written Romanian language, as it is reflected in the most representative Romanian religious texts from the time period between the 17th century and the 20th century. The conclusions refer to the permanent interweaving of the Romanian literary language with the special language of the church, to the development of both functional variants. They have influenced each other, imposing forms that have acquired viability and standardised use, not without possibilities of stylistic and pragmatic nuancing, in various other registers, levels, styles. In other words, the essence of our research has been to recompose the moving, i.e., diachronic, picture of the Romanian adjectival subsystem within the general Romanian language system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended as a review of the study in which Cosmin Căprioară analyses the process of metaphorization undergone by many of the terms designating human body parts in the Romanian folk language. The research is based on the cognitive theory of metaphor. In this case, the author has encoded an interdisciplinary analysis grid, using various methodologies and tools from dialectology, language history, lexicology and semantics, psycholinguistics etc. These were necessary in the operation of inventorying and delimiting the types of metaphors, resulting from semantic transfer, namely: [concrete] for [concrete] metaphors and [abstract] for [abstract] metaphors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book recently published by the Publishing House of the Romanian Academy is one of the touchstones that even the best professionals in the field often stumble upon. An old text edition, written between 1725 and 1736, in two languages with a difficult structure and, whatever may be said, foreign to the author, namely Christian Latin and Romanian spoken in Moldavia in an age of dramatic searches for literary forms, is not within everyone's reach. On the other hand, it is a dogmatic text, with a lexico-semantic, grammatical and pragmatic-stylistic specificity that is difficult to penetrate and convey in the modern era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to trace the linguistic thinking of the author of a Romanian language textbook, used as a "Romanian as a second language" coursebook. The novelty lies in the fact that the work we have studied is the first of its kind in the history of Romanian language grammars and that its author is not a native speaker of Romanian, but a Frenchman, i.e., one of the declared beneficiaries of this particular type of book. It gathers multiple perspectives as it is a descriptive, synchronic but also diachronic grammar. At the same time, it is contrastive-typological research, but it also contains teaching methodology indications. Furthermore, it bears the marks of interculturality and alterity, as language facts are explained from the point of view of the foreigner who receives them, not of the native speaker who utters them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to analyse how Romanian has been perceived, known and presented by some of the great foreign linguists of the past one hundred years. They are dialectologists, Romance languages' specialists, grammarians, mostly from the European space, who have known differently Romanian language and approached it in their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LegalNERo is a manually annotated corpus for named entity recognition in the Romanian legal domain. It provides gold annotations for organizations, locations, persons, time expressions and legal resources mentioned in legal documents. Furthermore, GeoNames identifiers are provided. The resource is available in multiple formats, including span-based, token-based and RDF. The Linked Open Data version is available for both download and querying using SPARQL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research of the names of old Germanic populations cannot be completed without also finding out the origin of the names of its rulers. Around the middle of the 19th century, historiography is enriched with more and more works on the history of Romanians, and Romanian philological and historical research makes notable progress. At the same time, in the first half of the 19th century and a good part of the second half, great progress was made in terms of writing in the Romanian language, moving from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet. During this process, some transitory variants of old Germanic ethnonyms appeared, which would later disappear. Moreover, all Romanian scientific literature (philological, historical, archaeological) aligns with the West and is modernized in terms of methodology and information. Highly prestigious personalities from various disciplines, such as Al. Odobescu, Al. Philippide, A. D. Xenopol or N. Iorga, are just a few edifying examples of the Romanian research modernization process. As a general remark, at the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, old German ethnonyms appear in numerous authors, their stabilization is done gradually, and the brand leaders fixing these ethnonyms are more elected A. D. Xenopol and N. Iorga. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our article presents the little known so-called Ratiu collection of documents from the years 18501877 regarding the death of the Romanian hero Avram Iancu. The documents were donated in 2015 by Indrei Ratiu to the Lucian Blaga Central University Library in Cluj-Napoca. They are valuable legal historical documents regarding the testaments of Avram Iancu (1824-1872) and of his father, Alesandru Iancu (1797-1855), as well as their trials for succession. The documents were written mostly in the Romanian language with Cyrillic and Latin letters, but inserts and documents in German and Hungarian were also added. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Written communication skills are one of the most important parts of language learning, starting with level A1, the most important level, in our opinion, as this is where the language learning process begins. To develop this skill, students should write as many and as varied texts as possible. To this end, we would like to bring to your attention the creative writing method through which our students can practice writing texts. Although we refer to Romanian as a foreign language, these methods can be applied to any foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Languages for Specific Purposes is the property of University of Oradea, Faculty of Economic Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper introduces the USPDATRO dataset. This is a speech dataset, in the Romanian language, constructed from open data, focusing on under-represented voice types (children, young and old people, and female voices). The paper covers the methodology behind the dataset construction, specific details regarding the dataset, and evaluation of existing Romanian Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems, with different architectures. Results indicate that more under-represented speech content is needed in the training of ASR systems. Our approach can be extended to other low-resourced languages, as long as open data are available.

The paper emphasizes the pragmatic and discursive extensions of a special verbal structure – at its origin, a Future Tense form – known in Romanian linguistics as presumptive mood (hereinafter: PRESUMPT). In terms of evidentiality, the PRESUMPT has two types of meanings: an inferential meaning, expressing an inference-based supposition, and also a reportative meaning, when the utterer does not take responsibility for the truthfulness of information from another source. These significances are very subtle and closely related to their context of use. That is why, sometimes, it is very difficult to distinguish one value from another. Therefore, Romanian PRESUMPT deploys in discourse pragmatic enrichments depending on the syntactic-enunciative structure it is inserted in or on some other parameters, such as: speaker’s epistemic stance, genre of discourse, intersubjectivity, and extends its core meaning of evidentiality through a range of discursive dimensions. Considering this situation, our approach outlines that a complex rhetorical strategy is involved in such contexts, where the PRESUMPT actualizes in fact only its prototypical feature [+placement in a subsequent relation (“ultériorité” – see Bres 2012. Conditionnel et ultériorité dans le passé: De la subjectivité à l’objectivité. In SHS Web of Conferences, Volume 1 (3ème Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française), 1719–1730.)], exclusively marking the relation of subsequence of the hypothesis or of the quoted speech act (in counter-argumentative frames) compared to a previously mentioned state of facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sentiment analysis has increasingly gained significance in commercial settings, driven by the rising impact of reviews on purchase decision-making in recent years. This research conducts a thorough examination of the suitability of machine learning and deep learning approaches for sentiment analysis, using Romanian reviews as a case study, with the aim of gaining insights into their practical utility. A comprehensive, multi-level analysis is performed, covering the document, sentence, and aspect levels. The main contributions of the paper refer to the in-depth exploration of multiple sentiment analysis models at three different textual levels and the subsequent improvements brought with respect to these standard models. Additionally, a balanced dataset of Romanian reviews from twelve product categories is introduced. The results indicate that, at the document level, supervised deep learning techniques yield the best outcomes (specifically, a convolutional neural network model that obtains an AUC value of 0.93 for binary classification and a weighted average F1-score of 0.77 in a multi-class setting with 5 target classes), albeit with increased resource consumption. Favorable results are achieved at the sentence level, as well, despite the heightened complexity of sentiment identification. In this case, the best-performing model is logistic regression, for which a weighted average F1-score of 0.77 is obtained in a multi-class polarity classification task with three classes. Finally, at the aspect level, promising outcomes are observed in both aspect term extraction and aspect category detection tasks, in the form of coherent and easily interpretable word clusters, encouraging further exploration in the context of aspect-based sentiment analysis for the Romanian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the narrative production of 12 trilingual children aged 8;7–11;10 in three languages: heritage Romanian as a first language, mainstream English as a second, and school French as a third. Narrative macrostructure was analyzed via the Narrative Structure Scheme, while microstructure was assessed via story length, lexical diversity, and subordination index. An additional microstructural measure was Guiraud's index of lexical richness. Results were only partially compatible with monolingual or bilingual findings. Analyses demonstrated that: (i) group macrostructural strength was equal across languages but only as a central tendency; and (ii) while the correlation between Romanian and English macrostructure almost achieved significance, neither was related to French scores. Contrary to the findings of Heilmann et al.'s monolingual study, no microstructural component correlated with macrostructure. Within microstructure, there was no significant difference in sentence complexity (measured through the subordination index) across languages, but scores for lexical diversity and Guiraud's index were lower in French than in Romanian and English. The findings point to distinctions between trilinguals and both bilinguals and monolinguals, and the possible problem with testing trilinguals for language proficiency or disorders using instruments created for monolinguals. Trial registration: Netherlands National Trial Register identifier: ntr-. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way humorous verbal communication is construed in a linguaculture can be analyzed within the framework of cognitive metaphor theory and its more discursive and cultural developments. Cognitive/conceptual metaphors are instrumental for framing humor as a communicative form which goes beyond mere aesthetic experience. This article focuses on the conceptualization of verbal forms of humor in Romanian. The examples are retrieved mainly from internet mediated communication, backed by corpus analysis, and compared to older literary examples (19th–early 20th century). The examples illustrate the stability of various metaphorical scenarios in the Romanian linguaculture. The analysis reveals that several conventional metaphorical scenarios exist in parallel, displaying what are the functions of humor in an emic perspective. In the case of the Romanian examples, the list comprises the disciplinary, aesthetic, and therapeutic functions. The main metaphorical scenarios are subsumed to (physical) aggression, food, and health domains. The scenarios associated with each domain emphasize a certain function: for example, the disciplinary function of humor relates to physical aggression, while the aesthetic function relates to food. However, the conventional scenarios also show combinations between these functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physiopathology is one of the basic disciplines which helps to understand the mechanisms of diseases and, accessing effective and personalized therapies. The purpose of this work was to compare the answers provided by human intelligence with experience and professional qualification with the answers provided by ChatGPT, regarding the targeted questions addressed to two clinical cases, to decipher the key pathophysiological mechanisms. Two cases published in an applied pathophysiology book represented the input data. ChatGPT-3.5 was used in our study to retrieve responses to five specific questions per case and GPTZero to score the responses. The input and output text were in Romanian language, and we collected the answers on August 7, 2023. Two researchers independently did the classification of the answers provided by ChatGPT as correct, partially correct, or incorrect. The ChatGPT generated answers were partially correct in 4 out of 5 questions and incorrect in one question in both cases. The number of words generated by ChatGPT was similar to the response given by professionals and the perplexity, burstiness, readability and simplicity have smaller scores. GPTZero did not identify the responses generated by ChatGPT as generated by a large language model. ChatGPT-3.5 generated satisfactory responses but not complete in most of the cases, but must be supervised by experts to ensure the validity of the responses and explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The perceived impact of hearing loss varies considerably among those affected due to the heterogeneous types of hearing loss, their diverse etiologies, and the different rehabilitation possibilities. Therefore, assessing listening skills in a daily context using questionnaires is essential. This study aimed to investigate the validity and reliability of the adapted version of the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale 12 (SSQ12) in the Romanian language. Materials and Methods: The SSQ12 is a 12-item self-reporting questionnaire that assesses a range of everyday listening situations. The internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and validity of the r-SSQ12 questionnaire resulting from the adaptation of the original scale were investigated. Results: The responses of 183 subjects aged between 11 and 79 years were evaluated. In total, 121 subjects had hearing loss (19 adolescents), and 62 subjects had normal hearing (11 adolescents). Significant differences were observed in the means of the overall score and for individual items between normal-hearing subjects and subjects with hearing loss. The SSQ12 had high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.97), and the test–retest scores were highly correlated. Conclusions: The SSQ12 scale can be used to investigate the self-reporting of hearing quality in both general populations to identify hearing disorders and populations with hearing loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Instruments to measure functional mobility for patients in the ICU are primarily written in English. However, translations of instruments into the Romanian language are also needed. Aims. This study aims to perform the translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Perme ICU Mobility Score and ICU Mobility Scale into the Romanian language, evaluate inter-rater agreement, inter-rater reliability, and correlation between the two instruments. Methods. The steps involved in the translation and cross-cultural adaptation process were: preparation, translation, reconciliation, synthesis, back-translation, revision, approval, and pre-test. Two physical therapists evaluated patients in the ICU using the Romanian language version of both instruments, the Perme Score and IMS. The inter-rater agreement for the Perme ICU Mobility Score and ICU Mobility Scale was confirmed using weighted kappa statistics, and the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient used for the inter-rater reliability. The correlation between the instruments was also evaluated. Results. The study included 110 patients, 56% (n=62) men and 44% (n=48) women. Patients admitted with surgical diagnoses comprised a considerable proportion of the sample at 73% (n = 80). The duration of ICU stay at the time of evaluation was 5.04 days. Both instruments showed excellent inter-rater agreement (κ > 0.90) and inter-rater reliability (α > 0.90). Additionally, there was a significant positive correlation between the instruments (r = 0.998; p < 0.001). Conclusions. As a result of this study, we conclude that the Perme ICU Mobility Score and ICU Mobility Scale were accurately translated, cross-culturally validated, and suitable for use in Romania. The Romanian translations demonstrated strong inter-rater agreement, inter-rater reliability, and positive correlation between the two instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of online platforms and services has revolutionized communication, enabling users to share opinions and ideas seamlessly. However, this convenience has also brought about a surge in offensive and harmful language across various communication mediums. In response, social platforms have turned to automated methods to identify offensive content. A critical research question emerges when investigating the role of specific text spans within comments in conveying offensive characteristics. This paper conducted a comprehensive investigation into detecting offensive text spans in Romanian language comments using Transformer encoders and Large Language Models (LLMs). We introduced an extensive dataset of 4800 Romanian comments annotated with offensive text spans. Moreover, we explored the impact of varying model sizes, architectures, and training data volumes on the performance of offensive text span detection, providing valuable insights for determining the optimal configuration. The results argue for the effectiveness of BERT pre-trained models for this span-detection task, showcasing their superior performance. We further investigated the impact of different sample-retrieval strategies for few-shot learning using LLMs based on vector text representations. The analysis highlights important insights and trade-offs in leveraging LLMs for offensive-language-detection tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to investigate the multi-word verbs, which are very common in English, but are acknowledged as difficult to acquire by nonnative learners of English. Phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs serve an idiomatic purpose. Therefore, they should not be taken literally; rather, they have a figurative or metaphorical meaning. The existence of a simple notional verb in a synonymic relationship with a verb with an adverbial particle determines the non-native English speakers to avoid the latter. From the perspective of the Romanian language, where such constructions do not exist, it is obvious that the attempt to avoid verbs with an adverbial particle and the preference for simple verbs will be more significant as the semantic transparency of the English verbal construction is reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romanian Sign Language (LSR) interpretation is underrepresented in Romanian research, significantly affecting the accessibility of TV and online commercials destined for deaf people. This paper investigates the theoretical aspects of the relationship between Romanian advertising and the deaf community, highlighting the shortcomings of providing accessible advertising content. In both television and online environments, Romania faces challenges compared to other European countries when it comes to including sign language interpretation in advertisements. The absence of an adequate regulatory framework and mandatory legislation for advertising agencies limits the integration of deaf people in the media environment. This research analyzes these issues, contributing to a deeper understanding of the impact on the deaf community and the need to improve information accessibility in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the role of Covid-19 pandemic in accelerating the digital transformation in Europe, the main aim of this paper is to explain the unemployment rate in Romania based on Internet searches for jobs during the epidemic at national and county level. Google Trends indexes for certain keywords related to jobs in Romanian language (’’locuri de muncă’’ and ’’joburi’’) and the most famous websites with job announcements (’’eJobs’’ and ’’Hipo’’) are considered. At national level, the unemployment rate in the period February 2020-December 2022 in Romania is explained using an autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) based on Google Trends index for ”locuri de munca”, while for youth unemployment ”joburi” and ”eJobs” are relevant. At county level, a spatial error model based on searches for ” locuri de munca” performs better than OLS regression. The results support the recommendations to improve governmental making-decision process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an extensive exploration of the significance, utilization, and cultural implications of greetings in the Romanian language, particularly in the context of teaching Romanian to foreign students. It delineates the theoretical underpinnings of greetings, emphasizing their dual nature as linguistic constructs and social behaviors embedded within cultural norms. Furthermore, it examines the practical considerations involved in teaching greetings, advocating for a structured instructional approach that integrates theoretical concepts with experiential learning opportunities. The article also delves into examples of iconic greetings in Romanian culture and explores the nuances of ironic greetings. Overall, it serves as a valuable resource for language educators, students, and researchers seeking to understand the multifaceted nature of greetings and their role in communication, social interaction, and cultural identity within the Romanian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a discursive and semiological analysis of some examples of gestural and proxemic manifestations of the faithful engendered by pragmatic ambiguity in certain statements of the Orthodox Liturgy, in the Romanian language. On a diachronic level, the translation of Christian Orthodox liturgical texts, mostly from Slavonic in Romanian culture, has also had to take into account the management of ambiguity, particularly lexical ambiguity. While the vast majority of the words used in these texts are well interpreted today, at the pole of their reception, some statements still retain an ambiguity related to a diachronic translation, an ambiguity that can be qualified as pragmatic in the immediate synchronicity. In the discursive and ritual context of the Eucharistic Liturgy, they trigger certain gestures by the faithful, who interpret them as speech acts or "first-degree" illocutionary and perlocutionary statements. Because of the consequences of their ambiguity on the gestural actualization of the speech acts they carry, we will call this type of ambiguity pragmatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On March 2 and 16, 2023, the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova adopted the project regarding the replacement of the name "Moldovan language" with "Romanian language" as the official language. The im portance of this decision was commented on by politicians, analysts, writers, linguists, and state institutions. At the same time, however, it provoked criticism and protests from the parliamentary opposition and reverberated in the official circles of the Russian Federation. The materials published in Izvestia reveal all commentators' concern in relation to the great danger in adopting the name of Romanian language. They fear that Moldova, as an independent state, will lose its sovereignty and will be united with Romania. The publication is an example of how the language problem has been politicised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the language characteristics of the Megleno-Romanian dialect, using texts recorded by a speaker from Gevgelija (Huma), North Macedonia. The texts were collected during an ethnolinguistic survey while studying funeral and memorial rites among the East-Romanian communities of Macedonia, including the Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians. The Megleno-Romanian recordings have significant linguistic value. Given the fact that Megleno-Romanian is on the verge of extinction, it is important to gather data from the few speakers in order to document the state of the idiom today and compare it with the earlier studies. This article also includes a small comparative component: the collected MeglenoRomanian data is analysed and compared with the neighbouring Aromanian dialects and the Romanian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]