Be-Belu or Be-Bela?

"There's a sucker born every minute"



It's been a long time since i saw the title of this publication that belongs to http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medien_Holding.

I wanted to signal the reality of the fact that in US a lot of people still strongly associate the name Bela with the name of the actor who first incarnated Dracula about a century ago then maintained in the public's conscience throughout decades through movies and media.

Even right now there is an ongoing commercial on networks about a ... lip-o-suction local company named... Sono Bello!

For Romanians, there are no such associations as the movies about Dracula entered in their conscience only recently and they do not realize the consequences of these associations and the fact they are actually in the middle of it all.

I suspected for a longtime now that there is quite a long list of words in modern Romanian that have been introduced, tolerated by bribed scholars, used by some as little trendy "language endearments - alintări" (actually more in sarcastic phrases which denotes the non-fully acceptance of the terms) and slowly promoted in the mainstream of our culture mostly within advertisement without the majority realizing how damaging this may be.

The word bébé is borrowed from French alright. But why add a diminutive suffix to it then contract it under the pretext of familiar use to get it to this final shape and add it to the title of a well financed and advertised magazine for babies' stuff?

Is it again a coincidence that the name of the most important cemetery in Bucharest is again, Bellu?

As for the name Bela, it started with the ex and current trainers of our Olympics Gymnastics Team. Painstakingly, right under the ignorant nose of the ex-regime they probably made great efforts to get those two chosen, but through what lengths did they have to go to do it again with the new ones? Bitang, Bellu, Bitman. I remember the first time i said something about, within the next few days Octavian Bellu got a decoration from the President of Romania, Mr. Băsescu.

Don't get me wrong, they might be meritorious people, but this is how the bigger picture looks.

How many others words, names, people and instances of this sort, fruits of the decades of efforts to undermine our languages are they and will they ever be exposed and/or stopped?