Museographers traveling through villages searching for old words

Tens of museographers travel each year through villages in the country to find archaic words that are almost forgotten and rarely used nowadays. Researcher Varvara Buzila, scientific director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History, thinks that these words must be saved to enrich the linguistic fund, Info-Prim Neo reports. “Museographers are those who always search for words, refresh them, reintroduce them into the social circuit and give a new life to the word and the objects or phenomenon designated by them. A year of activity for a researcher means discovering many words that entered the passive fund of the language, archaic words, regionalisms, localisms, because they enrich the language”, Varvara Buzila declared at a round table. The researcher says that museographers feel best in villages, when talking to carriers of national culture and heritage, when asking about calendar-related customs, about their occupations and knowledge. Researchers sometimes stumble upon linguistic inventions that people use when they don’t find other words. “We’re lucky to have the National Registry of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which was carried from the ancient times by oral tradition. Thanks to the registry, we can save a very rich traditional vocabulary”, said Varvara Buzila. Old words are disappearing. If they aren’t saved, culture will lose a lot, thinks Maria Ciocan, head of the Ethnography Section of the Museum. She brought several examples of old words that are refreshed: “caus” –which means a large spoon for moving wine from one pot to another; “goga” –a hemispherical vault of the cellar; “cotuna” –small summer oven; “bracace”-a clay pot which is used to bring wine from the cellar; “burca” –a corn bread baked on the fireplace; “gherdan” –a string of beads and many others.