/r/romanian

Photograph via snooOG

Want to learn Romanian, or you are already learning? Do you speak Romanian as a native language and want to help others? Then you found the perfect place to be!

Here on r/romanian, the Romanian language is in focus. The goal is to provide a good center for people who want to learn Romanian. This won't happen by itself, so we need your help! Feel free to share useful resources, ask questions, give tips and tricks and discuss things relevant to the Romanian language with others. Also, consider setting a flair to your username, it can help other people, as well as yourself.

A couple simple rules to follow:

- Posts must be related to learning Romanian: This subreddit is intended for educational talk about the Romanian language: learning, grammar, usage, history, etymology, etc. For Romania-related matters, please try r/Romania or r/CasualRO.
- Be respectful and behave well: We aim for a friendly, encouraging atmosphere. Rudeness and unkindness are unwelcome. Correct mistakes gently and with good intentions. Do not make disparaging remarks about dialects, races, religions, genders, nationalities, etc.

Check out these subreddits, if you want similar content:

r/languagelearning - Language learning in general.
r/Romania - Anything that has to do with Romania, basically.
r/CasualRO - A more discussion-focused hub for Romanian speakers.
r/AskRomania - If you have questions aimed at Romanians, this is likely the best place to ask.
r/Moldova - The subreddit for the country of Moldova.

NOTE: If your post doesn't show up right away, it may have been caught in the spam filter.

/r/romanian

21,622 Subscribers

7

Romanian tutor - Language exchange

Salut!

I am a Brazilian scholar specializing in linguistics and translation sciences with a very specific demand: I want to translate Romanian novels and poetry into Portuguese in order to introduce Brazilian readers to the beautiful world of Romanian literature. It is a sad truth that, even though our languages are closely related, most people here have never had the opportunity to know more about Romanian culture and history, given that very few books have been translated into Portuguese. Asides from being able to read, I would love to speak Romanian fluently, but I couldn’t find a single Romanian tutor in my country. I am looking for someone who would be willing to exchange Romanian classes for X classes (X being English, French, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Greek or Latin, languages I would be able to teach). I have been studying by myself for quite some time, but it is impossible to rely on discord servers for practicing conversation, for my case demands a more systematic and consistent approach. My DMs are open if anyone is interested! Looking forward to hearing from you, and hope I can find a good teacher to help me learn this awesome language I fell in love with!

Wish you all a wonderful day, and to express my gratitude for all the resources you all so carefully gathered in this sub.

0 Comments
2024/12/02
08:26 UTC

2

Hello there

10 Comments
2024/12/02
05:41 UTC

9

Te pot ajuta/pot să te ajut

Hello everyone. I am new to Romanian and have a question. What is the difference with these two and is one better than the other? Still trying to understand when to use “să”.

Thank you! 🙂

4 Comments
2024/12/01
18:50 UTC

8

Romanian Cultural Institute language lessons

Hello all,

I've seen some reference to free romananian cultural institute language lessons- does anyone know where they can be found?

Also there's dated reference to group zoom language classes on their web site, does anyone know if they still do these?

(I will contact them but just curious and thought others might benefit).

0 Comments
2024/12/01
15:38 UTC

8

Syntax question: Driving my mother's older sister's car

Bună ziua tuturor!

am trying to wrap my head around how successions of genitives function: this is the kind of technical details that resources don't seem to really get into.

Could any natives here tell me how you would translate the sentences below?

"I am driving my mother's older sister's car".

"This is the house of the new president of Romania".

9 Comments
2024/11/30
12:27 UTC

6

Help with writing a message for my girlfriend’s mother, who lost her father (and gf’s grandfather) last night

Hello,

Writing this on a new account due to the personal nature.

My girlfriend’s grandfather passed away last night, and I’d like to send a message with some flowers that I’m arranging to be delivered to her mother today, before the funeral on Saturday. (I’m in the UK, they’re in Romania) Can anyone please kindly translate the following message into perfect Romanian for me? (90 character limit):

Sorana,

It was a privilege to have met your wonderful father. Sending you love and strength

Vă mulțumesc

18 Comments
2024/11/29
04:36 UTC

19

What does "don' " in "Hai don' căprar" mean?

I'm currently reading Ițic Ștrul, dezertor, and one of the common phrases in the book is "don' căprar". I can't for the life of me find out what this means. I know that "căprar" means something like "corporal", but I'm not sure what "don'" means. From guessing I think it means something like "my corporal", but I'm not entirely sure.
Archive.org of the novel: https://archive.org/details/liviu-rebreanu-itic-strul-dezertor-1932/page/n5/mode/2up
The example I'm referencing is on the first page of the novel.

7 Comments
2024/11/28
18:29 UTC

6

Question About Romanian Holiday?

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your helpful insight! I’m so grateful for the clarification and can’t wait to celebrate the proper tradition with my family. 😊

Okay, so my dad is from Romania but didn’t include almost any Romanian culture in his kids’ lives. My mom, who is American, wanted us to at least have a Romanian holiday to celebrate, so my dad told her about Mos Craciun. He claimed that the night of December 5th was when the Romanian Santa Claus visited children and gave them treats in their polished shoes. We celebrated this all my growing up years.

Now, however, I am an adult, and I want to start celebrating this holiday with my partner. I was so excited to tell her all about it, but when I looked it up to show her the history, it looks like my dad had it all wrong. I got very confused by Mos Craciun and Mos Nicholae and all the conflicting traditions.

So my question is, what is the Romanian holiday that occurs on December 6th and involves some sort of man putting treats in polished shoes?

14 Comments
2024/11/28
01:36 UTC

12

How can I fix my Romanian?

So Summary of my situation: My Parents were Romanian but I grew up in Birmingham. We rarely went on Holidays to Romania as we had a difficult financial situation.

When it comes to understanding Romanian, I can understand nearly everything no matter the accent. I would say my listening is at c1, However my spoken Romanian would probably be a low B2 and my written Romanian is non existent.

I have received a job offer in Bucharest due to being bilingual at an IT company where the business language is English but will be interacting with alot of Romanians, however I will have to live in the city and want to be fluent in all aspects.

What do you guys recommend?

16 Comments
2024/11/27
22:42 UTC

6

Genitive street language

So im watching a Youtube video (Romanian with Tamy link below) and she explains the genitive case.

I already know how this works with lui,ei,ii and lor but still decided to watch. To my surprise Romanians have a street language for this like o să I guess.

The pencils ink correct: Cerneala pixului The pencils ink street: Cerneala de la pix

So do Romanians really do this on a day to day conversation? And how does this work? Can you no matter the gender and singular/plural use de la?

Sunt din timisoara. Ahh vestul României (Ahh vestul de la România).

Is this correct? Please elaborate on this! I want to sound like a native😅

https://youtu.be/vvGM3jdMgmU?feature=shared

6 Comments
2024/11/27
18:51 UTC

2

Romanian language podcasts focused on English football

Do any of you know of any podcasts spoken in the Romanian language, which is focused on English football? (including, but not limited to the Premier League) I searched and found one called the ‘Tackle Show’, but they seemed to stop uploading around a year ago, linked below:

https://youtube.com/@TACKLERO/streams

https://x.com/TackleRomania

I’ve read here many times that listening to podcasts and similar are good supplementary ways to learn Romanian, and it feel it would be helpful if it was something I have a deep knowledge and interest in.

Thanks!

0 Comments
2024/11/27
11:50 UTC

7

Who is/are the Romanian Equivalent of Hemingway in Terms of Prose?

I want to get some reading practice in, and I'd like to start off with an author that has Hemingway-like prose. For those who don't know, Ernest Hemingway was an American author who was known for writing very short and efficient sentences. Is there a Romanian equivalent to this?

5 Comments
2024/11/27
05:43 UTC

27

It's so hard! (expressing frustration)

I'm really struggling trying to learn Romanian....I'm 55 years old, I know English and passable French, I also took a couple of years of high school Latin... I'm going through Pimsleur, Mondley, Duolingo, Assimil, some news content, I just find it all extremely difficult. My challenges, in no particular order are:

  1. Remembering words. The latin-ish words are not hard to remember, but so many are just very unfamiliar to me - I forget them very quickly, even if they seem obvious in the moment in say a duolingo exercise

  2. I find it VERY difficult to understand the spoken language (except when it's very slow)

  3. I wouldn't say I find pronunciation impossible, but it's pretty darn hard to get it right too

  4. spelling and accents...

  5. grammar- Romanian seems simulataneously simple and difficult, simple because often one leaves out articles etc, difficult because every verb seems irregular, there's the noun declension, and the overall order of words and phrases is sometimes counter intuitive.

Will I ever be able to learn this? Ack...I am so frustrated! If I could just understand Peppa Pig I would be quite happy.

Well, sorry for the vent. I know there's no easy road....

24 Comments
2024/11/27
00:08 UTC

8

Small things to say that mean a lot, polite words/phrases, romantic phrases?

Hey guys I recently started talking and want to date a Romanian girl, shes born in America but her parents are Romanian through and through. She speaks both English and Romanian and shes been teaching me some of the language.

But I want to impress her, and her family. Any tips on what phrases or words I should learn? I plan to learn it through life and become as fluent as I can.

P.S I always say “her name” than baby or honey what could I say that resembles that in Romanian?

8 Comments
2024/11/26
19:27 UTC

0

how do we know if Church Slavonic/Slavic isn't a descendant of Thracian

I had a shower thought, the map of slavic language is basically a circle around the Carpathian Mountains with a big hole where the Hungarians moved in and a small half-marked area where Romania is.

To me is a very weird way for migrations to happen, why would a migrating people settle at the base of a mountain chain instead of say going straight for the plains of Germany or focusing on a single contiguous area like migrating to the large area between Germany and modern day Russia. What if dacian/thracian is actually some sort of precursor to the slavic language.

It almost looks like slavic people emigrated from somewhere inside the Carpathian Basin. And Romanian does have a few slavic words but seemingly no dacic/thracian words. And historically we did have a lot in common to the other slavic nations.

21 Comments
2024/11/26
16:14 UTC

5

Cuvântul "glia"

Ascultam o melodie ce are un vers fraza "Şi Badea Ion să-și are glia", m-am interesat despre ce înseamnă glia dar nu gasesem nimic, mă gândesc că este vreo haină tradițională dar nu sunt singur, niște ajutor?

12 Comments
2024/11/26
10:48 UTC

5

Ajută-mă să înțeleg gramatica din Harry Potter

M-am mutat dina România când am fost mică, deci nu vorbesc română buna, doar cu familia deci vorbesc foarte simplu, ca un copil. Am inceput să învăț prin a citi, și încep cu Harry potter pt ca am văzut toate filmele deci e mai ușor să înțeleg

Dar nu înțeleg în ce conjugare e scrisă

“he felt overwhelmed with fear” e intre primile pagini

Și se scrie ca;

“Se simți copleșit de teamă.”

Dar eu când vorbesc, aș fi zice

“S-a simțit copleșit de teamă.”

În engleză, cartea e scrisă în timpul trecut (nu am citit cartea niciodată până acum) deci îmi pare corect să zic cum am zis eu. E normal dacă aș vorbi cum e scrisă cartea? Ce gramatică e asta?

7 Comments
2024/11/26
01:07 UTC

2

Word List Help

Hi there,

I'm trying to compile a list of "FluentForevers" word list in Romanian, but being a complete beginner I'm struggling to find some of the correct, common translations.

I was wondering if anyone could help me compile the list in Romanian to create my Anki deck :)

Any assistance appreciated, thank you!

9 Comments
2024/11/26
00:32 UTC

4

A nice tool to improve your Romanian pronunciation

Hey guys, we're polyglots who also happen to be software engineers.

We always get annoyed when we speak a language and keep mispronouncing the same words or confusing them for another word. Even though learning a language is being able to speak it, pronunciation is often neglected. Because of that, we decided to create an app whose goal is to improve users' pronunciation - YourBestAccent. Let us tell you about it:

First, it clones your own voice so that you can hear yourself speaking your target language with a native-like accent!

Then, you can practice pronunciation by letting our app give you a text to say out loud OR use a text of your wish - the app provides a real-time feedback so that you know which words you've mispronounced, what is your overall score and what you need to improve.

It's not just for studying though - you can have fun by challenging your friends to pronounce everything you wish and seeing who performs better!

We believe YourBestAccent is a great tool to improve your language skills. By using it, you're sure you're actually making progress instead of making the same mistakes over and over again.

Go to yourbestaccent.com and take your language skills to a completely new level!

0 Comments
2024/11/25
13:07 UTC

15

Im doing presentation about Romanian music for Uni

I dont want it to be boring, so I came here to ask if you guys can help me and give me some interesting and funny recommendations on the topic. I know only few romanian viral songs. Romanian language is just my bonus class in uni so I dnt want to add some old compositors or something like that, but maybe there are some with interesting stories too. Thanks!

18 Comments
2024/11/24
17:43 UTC

10

What is the difference

Hello everyone

Can someone please explain to me the difference between niște and vreun/vreo. they both mean some in Romanian language but nowhere is an explanation about the difference.

Mulțumesc mult!

25 Comments
2024/11/24
13:23 UTC

5

Books for Romanian Language A1 - A2 level

Hello,

Can you please suggest to me some books that I can learn Romanian by reading short stories? Or any kids books that are available for the aforementioned level?

I am currently using an app called Tobo to learn the language but I would love to delve in it's practical use.

It would be best if those books were available in a digital format, too.

Thank you all!

7 Comments
2024/11/24
12:07 UTC

7

Need a fantasy name and wanted to stick to cultural roots

I hope this is the right place for this. I also hope this isn't stereotyping your culture or offensive.

I'm a writer (casually, not professionally) and want to make a vampire character, very much inspired by Dracula. I also want to stick to Romanian naming conventions and not deviate from that to be respectful, as recommended by comments on similar posts such as this one.

I looked up the etymology of the name and learnt that it meant "son of a dragon" with the dragon being associated with the Devil. I've also heard that the suffix -escu in names means "the son of", similar to Jackson in the Western world.

I want to go for something very similar, perhaps "son of sin" or "son of sinners/a sinner" since my character is male. The theme of sin is important to me, but if that doesn't work, anything Devilish/unholy is okay. I don't trust translation sites online, in case I use the wrong form of the word (like a verb form instead of a noun, or the wrong gender form).

I'd appreciate some guidance, and if I'm being insensitive, gentle correction. Multumesc!

22 Comments
2024/11/24
05:39 UTC

9

How to say "thanks for watching" in Romanian?

I need it for a Romanian-related video

20 Comments
2024/11/23
14:44 UTC

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