Introduction to Romanian: Lesson 4

We learned words like face, înțelege, vorbește or diferă and how to deal with them in the last lesson. We have learned that for the tu form the last letter changes to i and for eu it simply disappears. The next word almost follows this pattern as well:

Romanian for is is este.

This word often gets contracted to simply e but we will always be using the full form.

Romanian for here is aici.

?He is here.|El este aici.

?She isn’t here.|Ea nu este aici.

If you were to change that e to i you would almost get it except you also get the letter ș and it becomes ești.

Talk to a man (skip the word for tu because it is a question and it would sound unnatural to use it):

?Are you Romanian?|Ești român?

If you were a woman and you were to say you are Roman or English, you would have to add că to the end of the word. Ask to a woman:

?Are you Romanian?|Ești româncă?

Now you would expect that if it followed the rules, the word for am in I am would be est but it’s not:

?Romanian for am is sunt.

Answer the question whether you are Romanian (talk as a man):

?Yes, I am Romanian.|Da, sunt român.

You already know that the word for not is nu. It is the word for no as well. Say:

?No, I am not Romanian.|Nu, eu nu sunt român.

Another word which almost follows the pattern is wants:

Romanian for wants is vrea.

How do you say:

?you want|vrei

Skipping tu again because it’s a question:

?Do you want a coffee?|Vrei o cafea?

This is exactly what you would expect. However, the form for eu is not vre as you would think it would be but it is vreau.

?I want a coffee.|Eu vreau o cafea.

Ask having the coffee in mind (and skipping tu again):

?Do you want it?|O vrei?

Correct. Now we will get better asking questions. Here is the word for what:

Romanian for what is ce.

How would you ask (let’s skip the word for tu again... we will do this in questions now):

?What do you want?|Ce vrei?

Ask:

?What language do you speak?|Ce limbă vorbești?

Romanian for of is de.

This is pretty much universal in all Romance languages. How would you say:

?of what|de ce

If you ask of what did you do something it kind of implies what was the reason of you doing it or why did you do it. It guess it makes sense because:

The words of what or de ce mean why.

Say:

?Why are you here?|De ce ești aici.

?Why do you understand Romanian?|De ce înțelegi românește?

If you add va to ce you get ceva:

Romanian word ceva means something.

You will also need to know that:

Romanian for but is dar.

Think but darling ... !.

Say:

?I have something but I want a coffee.|Eu am ceva, dar vreau o cafea.

You skip the second eu because it sounds better if you do. I think it’s pretty evident why that is so. Moreover, as it was told in the first lesson, you usually skip words like eu, tu, etc. anyway so it is for the very least natural if you at least skip the second one.

Another word which is similar to that in other Romance languages is where:

Romanian for where is unde.

Portuguese is onde and Spanish is donde. That’s something. How would you ask:

?Where is Romania?|Unde este România?

Good. If you want to ask from where you have to ask of where. How would you ask that:

?where from?|de unde?

And then:

?Where are you from?|De unde ești?

I will let you in on a small secret... You thought that the feminine word for the was ua, right?

Well, the truth is, depending on the word, there are a couple of version of the feminine word for the rather than just one ua. (This is also true for the masculine ul.) We will not cover these now though, and I just thought it would be fine to let you know that.

For example, we have another feminine article the which is a instead of ua. We also have the word for love which is dragoste. The word for the love is dragostea. Perhaps you know about a famous Romanian song called Dragostea din tei. The word tei means lime tree and din means from thus the title of the song means The Love From Lime Tree or love from a lime tree.

How would you answer that question about where you come from:

?I am from America.|Eu sunt din America.

?I am not from Romania.|Eu nu sunt din România.

Romanian for and is și.

Say:

?I am from America, and you?|Eu sunt din America, și tu?

Try to guess how you would say as a man:

?I am American.|Eu sunt american.

Say that as a woman and we are done for this lesson:

?I am not American.|Eu nu sunt americancă.

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