Overview of the Romanian Language

Romanian (also spelled Rumanian) is the official language of Romania, a country on the eastern half of the Balkan Peninsula. It also happens to be the only Romance language in Eastern Europe. Because of its geographical location, Romanian has developed differently from the other Romance languages. Slavic and Hungarian influences on Romanian are particularly apparent. Despite this foreign influence, it is the closest to Latin, in a grammatical sense, of all the Romance languages.

There are four dialects of Romanian: Daco-Romanian, which is the basic standard language; Aromanian or Macedo-Romanian, which is spoken in scattered communities in Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria; Megleno-Romanian, which is a nearly extinct dialect spoken in Northern Greece; and Istro-Romanian, which is spoken on the Istrian Peninsula of Croatia.

Romanian was written in the Cyrillic script until the mid 1900s. Today it is written in the Roman alphabet. The first written documents in Daco-Romanian date from 1521 and the first record of Aromanian dates from 1731. The country of Moldova uses a variation of Daco-Romanian written in the Cyrillic script.

The following Romanian words look enough like English to deceive you into thinking that you know what they mean-- but look out! If you tell someone you are going to sweep the floor with a bruma, their reaction might be surprising. Bruma means frost in Romanian. And the word cine, similar to the English word for cinema, actually means who.

Formal and Informal Address in the Romanian Language

In Romanian, there are two ways to address someone in conversation: the familiar style and the formal style. The familiar form of "you" is tu; verbs used with tu are conjugated in the 2nd person. The formal form of "you" is dumneata; verbs used with dumneata are conjugated in the 3rd person. The plural form of tu is voi and the plural form of dumneata is dumneavoastrã.

The familiar form is used with friends or with people who are younger than you, while the formal style of address is used with elders and with people you don't know very well. Even though you know your mother, you should always address her in the formal, using dumneata. But if you are meeting someone younger than you for the first time, you address them in the familiar, using tu.

Romanian Grammar

Because Romanian is a Romance language, many of the words will seem familiar to English speakers. However, there are several grammatical differences that learners need to watch out for. There are no definite articles (like the English "the"), but there are indefinite articles (like the English "a"). Subject pronouns are usually omitted because the conjugation of the verb indicates the subject. The auxiliary verb a vrea ("to wish") is used in front of a verb to indicate the future tense. The auxiliary verb a avrea ("to have") is used in front of a verb to indicate the past tense.

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