Romanian

Introduction

Romania Map Romanian is the easternmost member of the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family. It developed from Vulgar Latin during the 5th-6th centuries when the territory which is now Romania was part Castle of the Roman Empire. During the 7th and 8th centuries, Romanians came into contact with their Slavic-speaking neighbors who exerted a great deal of influence on their language, religion, and culture. Other influences included Hungarian, Turkish, and Greek.

Romanian is the official language of Romania where it is spoken as a first language by 20 million people and is used in all spheres of life. Education in Romanian is available from the elementary through the university level, and well over a thousand Romania Flag newspapers and magazines are published in the language.

Romanian is also the official language of Moldova, a former Soviet republic, where it is called Moldovan for political reasons. It is spoken in Moldova by 3 million people. Up to an additional 1 million speakers of Romanian live in Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro, Moldova Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece. In addition, there are Romanian speakers in Canada, the United States, Germany, Israel, Australia and New Zealand, mainly due to post-World War II emigration (Ethnologue).

Dialects

Woman

Vlach

Romanian is traditionally divided into six dialects.

Eastern Romanian (including Moldavian);
Western Romanian (including Transylvanian);
Southern Romanian (including Muntenian/Wallachian);
Aromanian (also known are Macedo-Romanian or as Vlach) spoken in parts of Greece, Albania, and former Yugoslavia;
Megleno Romanian (endangered) spoken in the Moglena region of Greece, in a few villages in the Republic of Macedonia and a village in Romania;
Istro Romanian spoken on the Istrian peninsula in former Yugoslavia.

Some scholars believe that Aromanian, Megleno Romanian and Istro Romanian should be classified as separate languages rather than dialects.

Structure

Sound System

people on bench

children

village

The sound system of Romanian is characterized by a large inventory of vowels and diphthongs, and a relatively simple system of consonants.

Vowels

Consonants

Romanian has seven vowel phonemes: /i/, /e/, /i/, /a/, //, /u/, /o/.
The vowel // does not occur in any other Romance language, but is common in Slavic languages such as Russian. Try pronouncing the sound /i/ with your tongue pulled back.
A short non-syllabic variant of the vowel /i/ is found after consonants in word-final position. It often manifests itself as a palatalization of the preceding consonant.
Romanian has numerous rising and falling diphthongs and triphthongs.
Click here to learn more about Romanian vowels.

Romanian has twenty consonant phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning.
The voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/ are unaspirated.
There are six fricatives: /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /sh/, /zh/ (as in measure), /h/.
There are three affricates: /ts/, /tsh/, /tzh/.
/r/ is an alveolar trill.
Click here to learn more about Romanian consonants.

Stress
Stress can occur on any syllable. Varying the position of stress can change the meaning of words. Stress is not normally marked in writing, except to distinguish between homographs.

Click here to listen to some common phrases in Moldovan.
Click here to watch short videos of Romanian as spoken in Romania.

Grammar

Romania Mansion

Country Church

Castle

River

Romanian has preserved more of the Latin grammar than other Romance languages, possibly due to its relative isolation in the Balkans from other Romance languages, the existence of identical grammatical structures in the Dacian language spoken in the area that is now Romania, and the presence of similar structures in the neighboring languages.

Nouns

Verbs

Inanimate nouns have three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter, e.g, bou "ox" (masculine), carte "book" (feminine), drum "road" (neuter). Gender is only partially predictable from the shape of the noun. The grammatical gender of animate nouns coincides with sex, e.g., om "man" (masculine), "grandmother" (feminine).
There are two numbers: singular and plural. Plural is formed by adding -i to masuline and -e to feminine nouns.
Romanian has retained five cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and vocative. Nominative/accusative and genitive/dative share the same endings. The vocative case is rarely used.
Romanian is the only Romance language that attaches the definite article to the end of a noun, e.g., frate "brother" — fratele "the brother." However, the indefinite article is placed before the noun, e.g., un copil "a child."
Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in gender, number, and case. They normally follow nouns, e.g., un student bun "a good student."
Romanian distinguishes between tu and voi, the informal and formal second person pronouns when addressing people.

Click here to learn more about Romanian nouns, pronouns, articles, and adjectives.

Romanian verbs agree with their subjects in person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular, plural). Personal subject pronouns are usually dropped, e.g., fac "(I) do."
There are four conjugations.
There are three simple tenses: present, past, future. Compound tenses are formed with the auxiliary verb avea "to have."
There are five moods: indicative, conditional, subjunctive, presumptive, imperative. Most moods have one or two tenses, the indicative mood has eight tenses.
There are three voices: active, passive, and reflexive.

Click here to learn more about Romanian verbs.
Click here for a Romanian verb conjugator.

Word order
The normal word order in Romanian sentences is Subject-Verb-Object.

Vocabulary

Church

Bucharest

Castle

As is the case with other Romance languages, Romanian vocabulary is mostly of Latin origin. Romanian also has many borrowings from neighboring Slavic languages (most notably in the sphere of religion), Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, French, and most recently from English.

Below are some common expressions and words in Romanian.

Click here to listen to some common phrases in Romanian.

Below are the numerals 1-10 in Romanian. Romanian Numerals

Writing

Mihail Eminescu

Writing system
The earliest written text in Romanian dates back to 1521. It was written with the Old Church Slavonic alphabet. From the late 16th century a version of the Latin alphabet using Hungarian spelling conventions was used to write Romanian in Translyvania. In the late 18th century a spelling system based on Italian was adopted. An adapted version of the Cyrillic alphabet was used in the Soviet Republic of Moldova until 1989, when it was replaced by the Latin alphabet used in Romania. However, many Moldovans, educated during the Soviet period, still use the Cyrillic alphabet.

Below is the standard Romanian alphabet used today, and the Cyrillic alphabet that was used in Moldova.

Latin Alphabet

Click here to learn more about Romanian orthography.

Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco

Nadya Comaneci

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Romanian Latin and Moldovan Cyrillic scripts. UHDR Romanian

Vlad III "The Impaler," Prince of Wallachia

Romanian words in English
Here are two Romanian loanwords:

Dracula

"king of the vampires" in Bram Stoker's novel (1897). It was a nickname of Prince Vlad of Wallachia (d.1476). The name "Dracula" comes from a secret fraternal order of knights called the Order of the Dragon. Vlad III's father was admitted to the Order c. 1431. The word for "dragon" in Romanian is drac and ul is the masculine form of the definite article. Vlad III's father was known as Vlad Dracul, or "Vlad the dragon." Vlad III thus became Vlad Dracula, or "the son of the dragon." (Wikipedia).

pastrami

via Yiddish, from Rumanian pastrama, probably from Turkish pastrima, "dried meat"

Resources

Click here to find out where Romanian is taught in the United States.
Click here to find learning materials for studying Romanian.

Online resources for the study of Romanian language and culture
Ethnologue report on Romanian
Wikipedia article on Romanian
Romanian Grammar (very detailed)
SEELRC Romanian Webliography
UCLA Language Profile for Romanian
LanguageLinks: Romanian
Ethnologue report on Romanian
Yamada Language Center Guide for Portuguese
Languages-on-the-Web: Romanian
BBC Country Profiles: Romania
Library of Congress Portals to the World: Romania