20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

764 Nistor BarduIn conversion: “Because writes Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, in theletter I, ch. XIV, v. XVI: if I have to pray in a foreign language, my soulprays, but my mind is fasting; at XIV, why? I want to pray with both souland mind. I want to sing with both soul and mind…” 18For making his Primer, Ucuta first had to compile a sort of spellingand phonetic guide in which he sets the graphemes for each Aromaniansound-phoneme. When he doesn’t find a matching grapheme in the Greekalphabet, the author combines two or three Greek letters in order to showthe Aromanian sound, giving explanations for its correct reading. We dealwith the first Aromanian phonetics and pronunciation guide, Ucuta thusbeing a pioneer in this area.Although it has a religious content, Ucuta’s Primer is a manual forstudying the Aromanian dialect and, very likely, it was useful to childrenand adults from the Aromanian community in Posen, who could see, somefor the first time, their native language written in graphics signs, even ifthey were Greek. The illuminist pro-Aromaninan gesture of Ucuta thusbecame the gesture of a great patriot devoted to his people.8. Also in this light, the anonymous authors must be regarded, whotranslated and adapted from Greek in Aromanian, using Greek letters,religious texts which compose the manuscripts known as Codex Dimonieand Liturghier aromânesc, dating from the beginning of the XIX century.If the texts from Codex Dimonie are more heterogeneous becausethey have been written by many authors, the language of the Litughieris “relatively unified, systematic, consistent, approaching more to that ofthe writers from the late XIX century. (Caragiu-Marioţeanu, 1962: 119)It is the only book of church service dedicated to “the divine service inAromanian”, written in Aromanian speech, without being Latinized orDacian-Romanized. (ibidem: 118)Gheorghe Constantin Roja and Mihail Boiagi follow anotherdirection, being in a close relation with the Romanian Enlightenment fromTransylvania, at the beginning of XIX century and with the Romanianlanguage spoken here, in the old Dacia, which they discover as their ownlanguage.All these Aromanian writings from the end of the XVIII century andthe beginning of the XIX century show, directly and indirectly, their ethnicawakening of consciousness, which took place in the favoring environment18The Romanian reproduction of the texts is made after Papahagi’s edition, Per.,1909: 65. For conversion ibidem: 61.