Gumuțeasca or Gomuțeasca (sometimes referred to as ''limba gumuțească'', "Gumutseascan language", or ''limba de sticlă'', "language of the glass") is an

argot A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argo ...

(a speech form spoken by a group of people to prevent outsiders from understanding them) used exclusively in the

commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to: Administrative-territorial entities * Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township ** Communes of ...

Mărgău Mărgău (german: Meregau; hu, Meregyó) is a commune in Cluj County, Transylvania, Romania. It is composed of six villages: Bociu (''Bocs''), Buteni (''Kalotabökény''), Ciuleni (''Incsel''), Mărgău, Răchițele (''Havasrekettye'') and Scrind ...

Cluj County Cluj County (; german: Kreis Klausenburg, hu, Kolozs megye) is a county (județ) of Romania, in Transylvania. Its seat ( ro, Oraș reședință de județ) is Cluj-Napoca (german: Klausenburg). Name In Hungarian, it is known as ''Kolozs megye ...

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

. The people of Mărgău traditionally worked with

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling ( quenching ...

for centuries, making

mirrors A mirror or looking glass is an object that reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror will show an image of whatever is in front of it, when focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the direction of the ima ...

window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent mat ...

s and

religious icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most c ...

s and selling them to other parts of the country such as

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

, the capital of Romania, or Brăila and Constanța. The people of Mărgău wandered all over the country to practice their profession, and in order to warn each other of possible dangerous people on the way to cities or to be able to put

price A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the ...

s to their glass products without outsiders being able to understand them, they invented a form of speech that only they could understand: Gumuțeasca. Although Gumuțeasca has been spoken for more than 100 years and it has been passed from generation to generation, today only a few people continue to speak it. This is because the practice of the traditional profession of Mărgău has been reduced considerably and because part of the local population has left the place. The emergence of

insulated glazing Insulating glass (IG) consists of two or more glass window panes separated by a space to reduce heat transfer across a part of the building envelope. A window with insulating glass is commonly known as double glazing or a double-paned window, ...

and glass-manufacturing companies also caused the people of Mărgău to lose customers. Some linguists from Cluj County have defined the argot as a "rural professional argot", which would be the only one of this type known in Romania. Gheorghe Braica, former

protopope A protopope, or protopresbyter, is a priest of higher rank in the Eastern Orthodox and the Byzantine Catholic Churches, generally corresponding to Western Christianity's archpriest or the Latin Church's dean. History The rights and duties of the ...

of Cluj-Napoca and a native of Mărgău, explained in his ''Monografia Mărgăului'' ("Monograph of Mărgău") that Gumuțeasca first developed at the base of the

Apuseni Mountains The Apuseni Mountains ( ro, Munții Apuseni, hu, Erdélyi-középhegység) is a mountain range in Transylvania, Romania, which belongs to the Western Romanian Carpathians, also called ''Occidentali'' in Romanian. Their name translates from Ro ...

and that it spread from there to nearby villages. Gumuțeasca has thousands of words and a rich

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

that is very different from standard

Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language *** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language ** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...

. Some examples of the argot are: *''Tălăuz'' ("Glass", in Romanian). *''Munuc'' ("Hey", "dude" or "lad", in Romanian). *''Munuc, s-asface spurav!'' ("Be careful, he/she is a dangerous person!", in Romanian). *''Munuc, s-asface deapsă!'' ("He/she is a good person!", in Romanian). *''Munuc, atină gădineală!'' ("Ask for food!", in Romanian). *''Tălăuzești?'' ("Do you understand?", in Romanian; or "Do you speak Gumuțeasca?", in Romanian). __NOTOC__

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* {{Romanian language Romanian language varieties and styles Romanian culture Cant languages Occupational cryptolects Language games Romanian slang Glass industry

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