Halfway down the Danube

Romanian 101

So we're all learning Romaneste. Knowing that Romanian is a close relative to Italian and Spanish, you'd think it's easy, eh? Not so.

OK, it's not as hard as Serbian. But it's definitely not as easy as Italian or Spanish. That's because Romanian is a Romance language with a twist. Let's hear it from the experts:

Romanian is a Romance language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European family.

[...]

Romanian is an inflected language comparable to other Romance languages. However, unlike other Romance languages, Romanian has retained a case system. It uses two nominal cases: the nominative/accusative and genitive/dative. A third and rarely used case, the vocative, is a Slavic influence and is in the process of disappearing. Three grammatical genders, masculine, feminine, and irregular (masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural) are distinguished. Word order is Subject-Verb-Object, although OVS also occurs.

Romanian has seven vowels and three diphthongs. Consonant clusters occur at the beginning of syllables, which is unusual among Romance languages. Stress can occur on any syllable. Varying the stressed syllable can change meaning.

Romanian has borrowed vocabulary from the surrounding Slavic languages, most noticeably in the religious sphere. Turkish and Greek words entered the language during the period that the Greeks rules Romania on behalf of the Turks, from 1711-1821.

The UCLA Language Materials Project

You got that? Cases. Stresses that shift meaning. Slavic loan words. Irregular genders. Diphtongs.

If that's not enough, there is also the confusing reform of the Communist orthographic reform: nowadays, you can choose whether you want to spell the word for "bread" pîine or pâine.

Which brings us to pronunciation. The mysterious "î" and "â" are pronounced the same way. Just purse your lips to say 'ee' but say 'oo' instead. (The Eastern Europe Phrasebook by Lonely Planet). Yay, right. The letter "ã" which is really not an 'a' with a tilde but an 'a' with an upside down circumflex, is pronounced like a mixture between "a" and "e". (I couldn't find that one on an ISO chart.) "i" isn't pronounced at the end of the word. At least, that's how it sounds to us. No, say the Romanians, it is pronounced but only very slightly. If I listen very closely, I hear some sort of very aspirated nothing.

Indefinite articles are in front of the noun, definite articles and plurals are added to the noun as suffixes:

- un taxi: a taxi
- taxiul: the taxi
- taxiurile: the taxis

The suffix changes to indicate whether the noun is singular or plural, masculine, feminine or neuter. So, instead of "la" and "le" and "un" and "une", one painstakingly has to learn the plurals of every single word. There are rules but there are also exceptions to the rules, so it's really much easier to learn all the variants of the noun you're just trying to memorize. Or forget about the plurals and articles and stick with your indefinite singular -- people will understand you anyway.

I have to say that Romanians are very charmed by a stranger trying to speak their language and react enthusiastically. Now, if that stranger happens to be a not-quite-2-year-old with blonde hair, green eyes, and a big smile, he'll get free pastries for saying "buna!" (hi!) in the bakery, while his mother struggles with "pâine". There is no justice.

Posted by claudia at January 29, 2004 12:32 PM