Iaurt 'yogurt' vs lapte acru 'Sour Milk'. Meanings and Geographical Distribution Based on ALR and the Responses to MLR Questionnaires

Our study approaches the meanings and geographical distribution of the terms iaurt ‘yogurt’ and lapte acru ‘sour milk’ based on the responses to the Questionnaires of the Romanian Language Museum (MLR) and the linguistic material resulting from the surveys for the Romanian Linguistic Atlas (ALR I and II).
The idea of addressing this distinction comes in the context of Turkey’s initiative to submit to UNESCO, for evaluation and inscription in The Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the multinational dossier Traditional techniques of yogurt making and related social practices (to which Romania and Bulgaria were invited to contribute as partner states), respectively the compilation of the technical file of the element, where, under the section of Romanian local and regional names, various terms (and phonetic variants) in a relationship of partial synonymy are listed.
The analysis of dialectal material indicates that on the Daco-Romanian territory there is a fairly large variety of terms recorded for the dairy product obtained by fermentation of raw milk / raw milk mixed with boiled milk / boiled milk, and the production processes, although they may differ more or less from one area to another, are known and used for different types of milk. In the case of cow’s milk, in the northern area of the Daco-Romanian territory, terms with extremely well-delimited areas are recorded in the interwar period (sămăchișă, chișleag ‘sour milk’), while lapte acru ‘sour milk’, a much more general term, is predominant in the case of sheep’s milk processing. Regarding the term iaurt ‘yogurt’, it is limited to the southeastern area of Daco-Romanian (and is completely absent in the South Danubian Romanian dialects), however, in field research from an ethnological perspective recently conducted, due to the industrial manufacture of yogurt and the aggressive advertising of this product through various means, the term has spread rapidly in the last decades.