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I'm so proud of these, especially the painting of the crew :>

me, born in a post communist romania:

miroase a cadavre și a lut?!? te întrebi dacă li s-a stricat iar frigiderul ălora de la facultatea de medicină

strigi după iubită, iubita nu îți răspunde. îți amintești că nu ai iubită

în spatele blocului, peste câmp e un abator.speri ca ninsoarea să acopere sângele. măcar chiria e mică

totul e violet. pe bune, absolut tot. te întrebi dacă o fi vreun daltonism mai ciudat

parcul e pustiu tot timpul, ceva te cheamă mereu spre parc. se aud plânsete de piculine. îți dai seama că mai bine nu te apropii

 “I should have let you know… I’m… a Dacian werewolf”

“Should I be worried?” “Neah, it’s just harder to get around on a full moon”

flyhaven | Flughafen farspeak | Fernsprecher farsee | Fernseher

In the 11th century, William the Conqueror came to rule England though he was a Norman (French). Both during and after his reign, English words that had Anglo-Saxon or Germanic roots were sometimes replaced or supplanted by words with Latin, Norman, or Anglo-Norman roots instead.

Since then, English is a bit of a jumble. Since Latin was often used by the nobility and the clergy, you frequently have cases where English has multiple words for the same thing but organized in a hierarchy of formality.

Hello there! Welcome to my blog! As you might have read from the description of the blog and title, this little blog has one purpose: to help English speakers learn Romanian, and bring more attention to this small Romance island, in a sea of Slavic languages.

Romanian, or Daco-Romanian, is an Eastern Romance language, spoken by about 30 million speakers overall. It is the official language of Romania and Moldova.

The Romanian alphabet is pretty simple. It’s the Latin alphabet, but with five more letters: Ă, Â, Î, Ș and Ț.

When writing in Romanian, here are two handy things you need to know: the letters K, Q, W and Y appear only in foreign words, such as hobby, teamwork, quasar and the prefix kilo-. The other thing to note is the fact that if you know how to read the alphabet, you can read almost anything in Romanian. No, really, that’s all you need to know, beside a couple of exceptions that we will get to in this post.

First, the vowels with letters that are also present in English:

A is the A in father

E is the E in merry, but in some words that begin with the letter E, where the letter will be pronounced like the YE in yes

I is the I in machine

O is the O in floor

U is the U in group.

Second, the consonants in English:

B is the B in ball

C is the C in scan, but if it’s before the letters E or I it’s pronounced like the CH in chimpanzee

D is the D in door

F is the F in flag

G is the G in goat, but if it’s before the letters E or I it’s pronounced like the G in general

H is the H in ha! but if it’s in between either C or G and E and I (the letter combos CHE, CHI, GHE, GHI), it is not pronounced

J is the S in treasure

L is the L in limp

M is the M in mouth

N is the N in north

P is the P in spot

R is the sound you make while you vibrate your tongue against your teeth or close to your teeth, you know you make the right sound when you can feel your tongue vibrating and it sounds almost like an engine

S is the S in song

T is the T in stone

V is the V in vision

X has two possible pronunciations: it’s either the X in six or the X in example. You can find the list of words that are pronounced with the latter X right here

Z is the Z in zipper

Third, the vowels in Romanian:

Ă is A in above

 and Î share the same sound, but it does not exist in English, therefore I will link here the file from Wikipedia. The only rule about their usage is that  is used inside of words (pâine, câine, mână, cântec), while Î is used on at the beginnings or ends of words (înainte, înger, coborî, urî)

Fourth, the consonants in Romanian:

Ș is the SH in share

Ț is the TS in tsunami

Before we will get into the hard grammar, we should know how to respond to questions, greet other people and respond to other’s greets.

The first words I would like you to know is the basic responses to questions: da (yes), nu (no), poate (maybe), știu (I know) and nu știu (I don’t know).

Now, let’s get friendly and say hello! For a casual greeting, both Salut and Bună can be translated as Hello. Bună dimineața (Good morning), Bună ziua/după-amiaza (Good day/afternoon) and Bună seara can be used when you greet someone, but in a more formal way. Noapte bună (Good night) is more of a phrase that is said before you go to sleep, like “Sweet dreams” in English.

To introduce yourself, you can say Numele meu este (My name is), Mă cheamă (I’m called), Mă numesc (I’m named) or Eu sunt (I am), followed by your name.

If someone asks you Ce mai faci? (How are you doing?), You can answer with Fac bine/rău (I’m doing well/badly). We say Mulțumesc (Thank you) or Mersi (Thanks) to thank people for their help.

If you are in need of help, shout Ajutor! (Help!), but if you are a beginner or a tourist that came in Romania, make sure to say Nu știu română (I don’t know Romanian) or Nu vorbesc română (I don’t speak Romanian), since people may assume you can speak the language.

When you say finish talking to a person, say La revedere (Goodbye), O zi bună (Have a good day) or Ne auzim (See ya), before ending the conversation.

Well, this will be our first look at Romanian grammar. Let’s just get into it.

So, nouns. As you will learn Romanian, you will learn a lot of nouns, especially in the beginning, so, I thought, why not make a post about what I consider the hardest basic things for a foreigner?

As you guys may know, Romanian is a Romance language, and like its siblings, Romanian is a gendered language. However, we have a particularity, which we kept from Latin: we have not two, but three genders, just like German: masculine, feminine and neuter. Now, you might be wondering, “how can I tell what gender a noun is?“

First, you should know that some nouns have a gender that makes sense with the word, like bărbat (man), which is masculine, and femeie (woman), which is feminine, but then you have words like dulap (wardrobe), which is neuter, câine (dog), which is masculine, and pisică (cat), which is feminine. You can tell the gender of a noun by using its indefinite article, and counting, though this is more of an advanced technique used by native speakers, but I feel like it should still be mentioned.

Now, for masculine and feminine nouns there are two separate indefinite articles: un, for masculine, and o, for feminine. The indefinite article is basically the a or an that you put in English before a noun. For example: un bărbat, o femeie (a man, a woman) you can clearly tell which is masculine and which is feminine. The problem comes with neuter, as the indefinite article is un, the same one that’s used for masculine. How do you tell those two apart? Again, in Romanian, we count the nouns to tell their gender.

We don’t count too much, just up to two, since the word for two, doi, takes different forms depending on the gender of the noun. We use doi for masculine, and două for feminine. For example: doi bărbați, două femei (two men, two women) you can still see which is masculine and which is feminine. Now, neuter nouns are the weird ones, because they use the word două, like feminine nouns. This means that neuter uses masculine for singular, and feminine for plural.

For now, this is what I want you guys to know, as telling nouns’ gender by terminations is trickier and there are exceptions. If you are learning any nouns, I suggest learning or writing down their gender, as it’s important for adjectives and other stuff.

The definite article is the the you place before nouns. This is weirder in Romanian because, for one, it is glued to the end of the word. If you were to do this in English, you wouldn’t say “the man”, but “manthe”. Another weird thing is that it is not only affected by gender, but also by the case of the noun and whether it is singular or plural. And even in the same gender, you can find words with different definite articles. The following words are all masculine:

Bărbat -> Bărbatul (man -> the man)

Frate -> Fratele (brother -> the brother)

Tată -> Tatăl (father -> the father)

Popă -> Popa (priest -> the priest)

As you can see, all the definite articles are different. For now, I want you to know just the basics of how these three things work, because they are quite complicated to explain in one post, and plus, it’s better to present languages with the base idea, then build on that idea with harder concepts.

One of the most basic things in Romanian, and most languages, I believe, is to know how to conjugate to the present tense the verbs to be and to have.

In this week’s lesson, I will show you guys how to conjugate the Romanian versions, starting with the verb a fi :

A fi - To be

Eu sunt - I am

Tu ești - You are

El/Ea este - He/She is

Noi suntem - We are

Voi sunteți - You are

Ei/Ele sunt - They are

Before I get to the the next verb, I want you guys to note a couple of things: First, these verbs are irregular; don’t try to find a pattern to apply to other verbs, as other verbs will not conjugate the same. Second, let’s take a quick look at the pronouns.

I may go more in depth on pronouns in the future, but look at the second person singular and plural. Notice how they are two different words? In Romanian, we use tu for singular, and voi for plural, kinda like how some people say y'all instead of you. You may also notice there is no word for it in Romanian, and there are two words for they, ei for masculine/neuter/combined subjects, and ele for feminine subjects.

In Romanian you may also encounter “el/ea e” instead of “el/ea este”, don’t panic, it’s the same meaning, the e is just a shortened este, like how in English you may say “he’s” instead of “he is”, however the former is considered more proper than the latter.

Now, onto a avea:

A avea - To have

Eu am - I have

Tu ai - You have

El/Ea are - He/She has

Noi avem - We have

Voi aveți - You have

Ei/Ele au - They have

Before I finish the lesson, now that you have both verbs, I should tell you that you don’t have to always use the pronoun that comes with the verb; “el are” can be written as “are”, because are is third person singular, you can deduct that the subject is a third person singular noun, or better said, you are talking about someone. This happens for all verbs, regular or irregular, so I highly recommend learning the verbs with their pronouns.

A fi and a avea are very important, because you will encounter them a lot, especially in the formation other tenses, or in everyday speech; there is no way you won’t use the present tense of a fi at least 10 times a day.

To learn any language, you have to learn a lot of words, so from now, I will pepper in some lists with different words. Today we’ll take a look at family members.

I will note down in paranthesis the gender of each word. Let’s begin:

Familie (fem.) = Family

Fiică (fem.) = Daughter

Fiu (masc.) = Son

Frate (masc.) = Brother

Soră (fem.) = Sister

Mamă (fem.) = Mother

Părinte (masc.) = Parent

Tată (masc.) = Father

Soț (masc.) = Husband

Soție (fem.) = Wife

That’s it for now. I am sorry I wasn’t able to post last week, I was away from home. To make up for it, I’ll post an extra post on Wednesday.

In this post, I will teach you all some animal names in Romanian. One thing to note is that like in English, there are some animal names that apply to either one gender of the animal, species or both (example: hen and rooster, female bear and mape bear, and lion, which is either associated with the whole species, or the male). Some of the other names are made up by adding sufixes (lion-> lioness) or the words are completely different (cow vs bull); we will get to these at a later date, and for now I will only note the words where the names are different depending on the animal’s gender. For now, we have:

Cal (masc.) = Horse

Capră (fem.) = Goat (Note: this refers to the doe or the species in general!)

Câine (masc.) = Dog

Cerb (masc.) = Deer

Găină (fem.) = Chicken (Note: this refers to the hen or the species in general!)

Lup (masc.) = Wolf

Oaie (fem.) = Sheep (Note: this refers to the ewe or the species in general!)

Pasăre (fem.) = Bird

Pește (masc.) = Fish

Pisică (fem.) = Cat

Porc (masc.) = Pig (Note: this refers to the boar or the species in general!)

Rață (fem.) = Duck

Șarpe (masc.) = Snake

Șoarece (masc.) = Mouse

Urs (masc.) = Bear

Vacă (fem.) = Cow (Note: this refers to the female or the species in general!)

It’s time we dive into adjectives. Now, in Romanian, the form of the adjective really depends on the noun it accompanies, the adjective will change form depending on the noun’s gender and plurality. We will get to this later, after we learn how to put nouns to their plural forms, and how to determine a noun’s gender at first glance. For now, I have this small list of basic adjectives, but keep in mind: these forms are the dictionary forms, used mostly for singular masculine nouns:

Greu = Heavy weight (Note: This adjective can also mean hard)

Înalt = Tall

Încet = Slow

Îngust = Narrow

Lat = Wide

Lung = Long

Mare = Big

Mic = Small

Rapid = Fast

Scund = Short of height

Scurt = Short of length

Ușor = Light weight (Note: This adjective can also mean easy)

This is all for now, originally I wanted to give more adjectives, but I felt the list was getting too long, and I don’t want to give too much information at once; I want you guys to be able to process bit by bit the information I provide, and learn slowly.

This is another list of basic adjectives that can be used for objects, people, or other things:

Bătrân = Old (Note: this one is used for people or living things!)

Bun = Good

Fericit = Happy

Frumos = Beautiful

Gros = Thick

Nou = New

Rău = Bad

Subțire = Thin

Tânăr = Young

Trist = Sad

Urât = Ugly

Vechi = Old (Note: this one is used for objects or general things that are old!)