Analysis of incantation vocabulary of Vlachs (Romanians) from Eastern Serbia on the subject of lexical borrowings

Abstract

The article discusses the lexical borrowings from the Serbian language in the incantations of Vlachs (Romanians) from Eastern Serbia and is based on the authors’ field materials. Incantation vocabulary analysis is carried out on the example of two texts recorded from native speakers of Oltenian dialect of the Romanian language from the villages of Zaječar and Negotin. There is an incantation called Întorsura mare (literally „Great return“, this incantation aims at removing damage and returning it to the person who caused it); the spell De noroc (Good luck) is meant to attract good luck. During the field research were recorded other incantations, mainly aimed at curing various diseases: the incantation of toothache or ear inflammation (De năjit), boils (De buboaie), inflammation of the glands (De gâlci), mercury poisoning (De argint viu, lit. “Of live silver”) etc. The informants from whom the incantations were recorded are elderly women, all of whom completed at least primary school, but do not know the written form of their native language, because they studied in Serbian. The texts of incantations have a stable character (exclude the variability of the components). However, some borrowings from the Serbian language, which are part of modern lexical duplicates and are not recorded in Romanian dictionaries, are still preserved in the texts of the incantations