The Romanian language never makes it onto the lists of the world’s easiest languages.

Instead, it’s treated as a curiosity because of its rather different grammatical features compared to other languages in the same family. After all, it’s certainly rather different from Spanish and Portuguese!

As an English-speaker, you might be wondering: “Is it hard to learn Romanian?” 

While aspects of the language may be difficult when you first start out, think of the possibilities that open up if you do learn it. Romania offers more adventure to some people than the more frequently visited countries in Western Europe. It’s a great destination, and since you’ll get Moldovan basically for free, learning Romanian opens a good number of doors.

Let’s dive into what might make the Romanian language hard to learn, and which things about it are actually easier than its neighboring languages. You might be surprised what you find out!

Table of Contents

1. The Tough Bits of Learning Romanian
2. Romanian’s Easy Street
3. Beginning Romanian – What a Learner Should Look Out For
4. How RomanianPod101 Can Make the Language Even Easier
5. The Quick Foundation to Good Romanian
6. Conclusion

1. The Tough Bits of Learning Romanian

The first thing any linguistics enthusiast will tell you about Romanian is that it’s got cases—and it’s the only one of the family that still has them, since all of its closely related languages lost their cases several centuries ago.

Cases are different forms of words that reveal the grammatical role they play in the sentence. They add a bit of complexity to each word, but they allow you to free up your word order so you can place emphasis on different parts of the sentence.

Look at the phrase “the capital of America,” for instance. In English, we could also express it in another way: “America’s capital.” Here, we’re showing possession by adding an extra ending to the noun. Romanian takes this one step further by changing the noun ending as well as reversing the word order: capitala Americii.

Romanian also has a serious thing for verbs.

The Romanian verb can be, and frequently is, conjugated in seventeen different tenses and moods, allowing for extremely subtle distinctions that English-speakers have to use several words to express. Some of these are only used in certain regions of Romania and Moldova, adding extra fun to the whole situation.

Compare the English “I had done” with the Romanian făcuserăm, and you’ll see what we mean here. Fortunately, it’s actually not all that bad, since the vast majority of the tenses are made with auxiliary verbs like aveți (“to have”) conjugated with the participle of the root.

In fact, the language as a whole would probably fall into the “it’s not that bad” category. 

2. Romanian’s Easy Street

After all that, you’ll be glad to learn that Romanian has some easy parts, too—and depending on how you prefer to learn languages, they might outweigh the hard parts.

First, Romanian has just one new vowel and one new consonant to learn: the â and the rolled R. You’ll find all of the other sounds in English. These two sounds aren’t even that hard to make, since all they require is a shift in tongue position.

The â is made by raising your tongue ever so slightly when you say the neutral vowel in “duh.” Try to keep your tongue flat while raising it up toward the roof of your mouth, and you’ll hear your new Romanian vowel spring to life! 

Rolling your R is a little tricky, but most English-speakers can tap their Rs—say “ladder.” Notice how the “dd” part isn’t a full D like in “dog”?

It’s just a tap on the roof of your mouth, which is precisely the sound made by the Romanian R most of the time. Check out another guide on Romanian pronunciation to learn how to draw out that sound into a long trill.

Second, you’ve got a big leg up on Romanian already because so many words are related to English! (You’ll have an even greater advantage if you’ve studied any Spanish, Italian, or Latin.) Lots of “formal” English words appear in Romanian as everyday vocabulary.

Learning these will also flex your pattern-matching skills. Take saluta for instance. By itself, you might not immediately know what it means (you might guess “salad,” but you’d be wrong). As soon as you learn it means “to greet,” though, you can automatically connect it to the English word “salute” and keep that connection strong for a long time. 

3. Beginning Romanian – What a Learner Should Look Out For

Another factor that will determine whether you find the Romanian language easy or hard is how prepared you are for using it in the real world. Here are some things you need to watch out for and keep in mind:

Romanian spelling has undergone a couple of different reforms over the years, but nowadays, it’s very easy to read and pronounce. In the last century, the Romanian language suffered only five changes, and four of those changes were about the use of the vowels î and â. The rule for determining when to write those vowels and when not to has been pretty off-and-on. It’s such an important thing for Romanians because one of those vowels shows up in the country name: ROMÂNIA.

Although you’ll have an advantage if you know another Romance language, when it comes to speaking, you may be misled by other languages’ orthography.

In everyday, informal conversation, you’ll notice that a lot of Romanians have the tendency to cut words short or not pronounce them completely. Keep in mind that this is not acceptable when you’re having a formal conversation.

Another thing to note is something that’s totally absent in English. But think about the difference between the two N sounds in “can” and “canyon.” The “ny” letter combination in “canyon” represents a softened sound, where the tongue is placed closer to the front of the mouth.

A beginner should also be careful not to learn too much Romanian from the Internet! It turns out that, unlike French or German, even published articles online in Romanian often come without diacritics, so you don’t know if the “a” you’re seeing is really an ă or an â in disguise. A native Romanian will understand the meaning of the words without diacritics (sometimes from the context, sometimes just guessing), but keep in mind that this is an incorrect way to write (and publish) an article. For that reason, definitely focus on listening. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a heavy accent and it will take a long time to train yourself away from it.

Also, although there are a lot of cognates and connections you can use to make vocabulary learning easier, watch out for the false friends. Plenty of words weren’t borrowed from English; they were borrowed from French or developed separately from Latin, meaning that their definitions won’t match up exactly with English’s.

A gimnaziu in Romanian isn’t a place to work out, it’s a middle school. Also, don’t say that you’re mizerabil if you’re down in the dumps, because that means “dirty” instead! As you can see, it’s much better to know the real definitions for new words than it is to just guess. 

4. How RomanianPod101 Can Make the Language Even Easier

RomanianPod101 is exactly the kind of course you need when you’re stuck without a strong pathway to proficiency.

Assuming you’re following the podcast levels as recommended, you’ll start off with the Absolute Beginner series and slowly work your way up to Advanced.

As you run into difficult concepts along the way, you can look around the website for related articles or supplementary vocab exercises. So let’s say you’re really focused on developing a perfect Romanian accent—you can read through a blog article, then watch a video with clear and accurate pronunciation to get the correct accent in your head.

And let’s not forget the vocabulary lists, either. Each of our vocabulary resources has example sentences so that you can see the context for each word as it comes up. You don’t need to worry about memorizing every word in every sentence, but you should make an effort to link each word to its English meaning. 

5. The Quick Foundation to Good Romanian

Here’s a nice study routine you can follow: 

Attack the difficult grammar memorization from the beginning. Work on memorizing—yes, memorizing—all of the different Romanian verb paradigms. Start with the most common irregular verbs first. Once those are out of the way, you’ll notice how easy it is to pick up the regular verb paradigms.

Don’t put time pressure on yourself, though. Expect that it’ll be hard at first, but that you’ll slowly get reinforcement from your studies and it’ll seem more and more natural. For example, you’ll see a sentence combination like this:

• Am jucat cărți noaptea trecută.
  “I played cards last night.”

That combination of am jucat might seem really tough to memorize at first in a big chart, but soon it will be second nature to think of it as the past tense of a juca (“to play”). Then you’ll be able to consult your mental model of the conjugation chart and be completely certain.

You’ll want to do this from the beginning, because you want it to be absolutely automatic later on. And do you know what else this applies to? Pronunciation!

Although Romanian pronunciation isn’t that challenging, it’s important to start with it early on or else risk misunderstandings and even stigma from a bad accent later on. (Don’t worry if you’ve been learning for a while; any accent can be corrected!)

→ Here are some Simple Strategies for Learning Romanian Comfortably at Home and the Top 10 Learning Strategies!

6. Conclusion

The best way to learn Romanian is to start and never stop. When they need to accomplish something difficult, Romanians will encourage themselves by saying: “Repetition is the mother of learning.” And this can apply to the Romanian language itself! 

Any obstacle that seems to come up when learning a language is never that big of a deal; you can always just put on the brakes for a bit and try learning something else. There’s always more to read, more to watch, and more to hear.

That’s what RomanianPod101 is for, anyway. With one subscription, you can get access to a massive library of texts, audio recordings, and videos that you can learn from anytime, anywhere.

So don’t let anybody tell you that Romanian is too hard to learn. It’s a solid challenge for the right learner with good motivation and good resources—and that sounds like you.

If you’ve already started learning Romanian, which parts are most difficult for you? And which parts do you find the easiest? Let us, and aspiring Romanian-learners, know in the comments!

Would you call yourself a perfectionist?

Language-learning doesn’t really suit itself to perfectionism. Languages change in so many ways all the time, and there’s really no way to define “perfect” speech.

On the flip side, though, you do have to pay attention to some rules in order to avoid the most common mistakes Romanian-learners make.

Trying to come up with Romanian—written or spoken—without being aware of the rules of the language is a surefire way to ingrain bad habits and make your communication with natives less effective.

In this article, you’ll see an overview of the classic learner mistakes in Romanian, as well as what you can do to stay far away from them.

Table of Contents

1. Make the Right Sounds
2. Confusing Words
3. Just How Free is Romanian Word Order?
4. Hit the Grammar Books
5. Miscellaneous Errors
6. The Biggest Mistake in Romanian Learning
7. Conclusion

1. Make the Right Sounds

Romanian is not that bad of a language to pronounce. Even someone who confused the language for “Roman” would probably be able to read off a couple of words if they had to.

However, if you don’t pay attention to a couple of key things, your foreign accent is always going to shine through.

1- Vowels

The most important thing to think about is the vowels.

The five core Romanian vowels are the same pure vowels in Spanish and Italian, but there are also two more.

The first additional vowel is also in English, written as the “uh” in “duh.” That’s the sound represented by the letter ă. Be careful that you don’t pronounce this sound anywhere else! English-speakers have a habit of not stressing vowels in words and reducing the vowel sound to this same ă. But in Romanian, the vowels stay pure.

The second vowel to watch for is, strangely enough, represented by two different letters: î and â. It’s notoriously one of the trickiest sounds in Romanian for foreigners. Because â and î sound the same, sometimes even native speakers make mistakes when writing words that contain those vowels.  

Basically, you want to make the ă sound and then move your tongue vertically so that it’s still flat, but nearly touching the roof of your mouth. It definitely takes some practice to say it smoothly in the middle of words, but pulling that off goes a long way toward getting your Romanian pronunciation up to par! 

2- Consonants

Next is the consonants. 

Romanian doesn’t have particularly difficult consonants, either. Just remember that you should roll your R. 

3- Aspiration

One thing that sometimes escapes English-speakers is that Romanian never aspirates its letters.

When English words begin with the sounds “p,” “t,” or “k,” English-speakers release a small puff of air, without even thinking about it. In Romanian, that sounds odd, almost like the speaker is out of breath. 

Pay attention to this and try softening the “p,” “t,” and “k” sounds at the beginning of Romanian words. Soon, your pronunciation will be indistinguishable from that of a native speaker!

2. Confusing Words

Romanian happens to be one of those languages without a ton of near-homophones, or confusing tongue-twisters that are almost the same but still have different meanings.

That said, there are a couple of words that even native speakers end up using wrong from time to time. The first is kind of funny to learners:

• ceai
  “tea”

• Ce-ai?
  “What do you have?”

This is a mistake that most learners don’t make because they learn to read Romanian at roughly the same pace that they learn to understand it. But native speakers have years of only listening before they learn to read, and that’s how you end up with people unable to remember which one gets the hyphen!

• odată
  “once”

• o dată
  “one time”

Well, that’s a lot more difficult-looking! The secret is in the words around these terms, or the contexts in which they tend to appear. 

O dată is used to mean “one time,” when you’re counting specific instances of events occurring, and contrasting with “twice.” Odată appears in set phrases like A fost odată… (“Once upon a time…”), and it has the meaning of “at some point” or “a moment in time.” 

Romanian also has no shortage of false friends with English and other European languages. Cămin in Romanian refers to a school dormitory, while kamin in Russian means “fireplace.” 

Comercial in Romanian isn’t an English advertisement; instead, it only means “related to business.” And much like French, smoking in Romanian is a noun meaning “tuxedo” in English! 

3. Just How Free is Romanian Word Order?

Romanian is said to have pretty free word order, but there are a couple of things you ought to pay attention to.

First off, in Romanian, the adjective tends to go after the noun, except in certain cases for emphasis. This is something that really has to be learned slowly through lots of exposure—it won’t be a mistake if you switch the order all the time, but it will certainly sound strange to Romanian ears.

Second, Romanian questions don’t usually invert the word order like questions in English or French do. Questions are made like they are in Spanish, with just a change in intonation signifying the difference between a question and a statement.

Another interesting thing about Romanian words is specifically related to talking about your age. For numbers above nineteen, you have to include de when saying the number:

• Am 23 de ani.
  “I am 23 years old.”

However, for ages under twenty, you omit the de.

• Ai 15 ani.
  “You are fifteen.”

You might think that you don’t have to pay attention to this if you’re over twenty, but watch out for it when talking about other people—or indeed, when you’re describing things that happened in the past! 

4. Hit the Grammar Books

As fun as it may be to speak Romanian, there are a lot of different grammar complexities to get stuck in.

Chief among these is probably the verb system, the source of many a mistake in Romanian. Romanian has one of the most complicated verb paradigms of all the Indo-European languages!

Most learners are able to handle the basics of conjugation reliably enough, but then they start looking like a deer in the headlights when asked to handle the rarer tenses.

For instance, ar face is the conjugation for “he/she would do,” while o face is for “he/she might do.” How easily can you keep them straight?

A super-effective way to practice these is with cloze tests, where you take a paragraph of text and blank out the verb endings and try to figure out what they should be. Native speakers can usually do extremely well on these (barring some arbitrary cases) because they have a whole lifetime of language context to draw from.

5. Miscellaneous Errors

There are two final things to cover in this article that don’t really fit anywhere else. These mistakes in Romanian can make a big difference in how you, as a learner, are perceived when you speak or write Romanian.

First is the politeness aspect. Other European languages have formal and informal pronouns as well, but English doesn’t. For that reason, it’s always a little bit tough to get used to.

Another thing that’s pretty unique about Romanian is how it’s written online—people leave out the accents all the time. If you look at writing in German or Swedish online, people always spell the words correctly with the umlauts and accent marks.

For some cultural reason, a sizable portion of the text you see on Romanian websites and Internet comments comes completely without accents!

It kind of makes sense if you think about it. Everyone’s expected to understand, because native Romanian-speakers know the language perfectly in their heads and so they won’t ever get confused. Learners, though, have to deal with an extra step.

Either avoid online writing completely until you’re quite comfortable with Romanian and know exactly where the words should go, or check with a native speaker or dictionary to make sure you don’t learn the wrong form of each word!

6. The Biggest Mistake in Romanian Learning

It might give you pause when you first arrive in Cluj or Bucharest and hear the locals speaking to you in what sounds like absolutely flawless English. Romanian-speakers grow up watching American TV and listening to American pop music, and they tend to speak English quite confidently.

That can be really demotivating as a learner who’s just ready to start having conversations! You might feel like you shouldn’t even try your Romanian.

But that’s actually a pretty bad idea.

You’ll not only have a stressful time in Romania holding yourself to a really high standard, but you’ll also associate Romanian itself with that stress and keep worrying too much to push yourself out of your comfort zone.

7. Conclusion

Remember how the locals learned really good English? They kept at it for years and years growing up, naturally gravitating toward English-language media for their own entertainment. As an English-speaker, you’re actually a bit spoiled in a way, since the hottest TV and music is in English anyway!

But you can do the same with Romanian. You just have to put in the time.

Fortunately, RomanianPod101 offers a wonderful selection of podcasts in Romanian, from beginner to advanced levels. And that’s not even mentioning the vocabulary lists, pronunciation guides, video lessons, and flashcards!

Now that you’re aware of some of the pitfalls that can trip you up in Romanian, you just need to keep an eye out as you fill your hours with Romanian media. Before long, you’ll look back and wonder what you were ever worrying about!

What common Romanian mistakes do you struggle with the most? We look forward to hearing from you!

You asked, so we provided—easy-to-follow instructions on how to set up your electronic devices to write in Romanian! We’ll also give you a few excellent tips on how to use this keyboard, as well as some online and app alternatives if you prefer not to set up a Romanian keyboard.

Table of Contents

1. Why it’s Important to Learn to Type in Romanian
2. Setting up Your Computer and Mobile Devices for Romanian
3. How to Activate an Onscreen Keyboard on Your Computer
4. How to Change the Language Settings to Romanian on Your Computer
5. Activating the Romanian Keyboard on Your Mobile Phone and Tablet
6. Romanian Keyboard Typing Tips
7. How to Practice Typing Romanian

1. Why it’s Important to Learn to Type in Romanian

Learning a new language is made so much easier when you’re able to read and write/type it. This way, you will:

• Get the most out of any dictionary and Romanian language apps on your devices
• Expand your ability to find Romanian websites and use the various search engines
• Be able to communicate much better online with your Romanian teachers and friends, and look super cool in the process! 

2. Setting up Your Computer and Mobile Devices for Romanian

It takes only a few steps to set up any of your devices to read and type in Romanian. It’s super-easy on your mobile phone and tablet, and a simple process on your computer.

On your computer, you’ll first activate the onscreen keyboard to work with. You’ll only be using your mouse or touchpad/pointer for this keyboard. Then, you’ll need to change the language setting to Romanian, so all text will appear in Romanian. You could also opt to use online keyboards instead. Read on for the links!

On your mobile devices, it’s even easier—you only have to change the keyboard. We also provide a few alternatives in the form of online keyboards and downloadable apps.

3. How to Activate an Onscreen Keyboard on Your Computer

1- Mac

1. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard.

2. Check the option “Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in Menu Bar.”

3. You’ll see a new icon on the right side of the main bar; click on it and select “Show Keyboard Viewer.”

2- Windows

1. Go to Start > Settings > Easy Access > Keyboard.

2. Turn on the option for “Onscreen Keyboard.”

3- Online Keyboards

If you don’t want to activate your computer’s onscreen keyboard, you also have the option to use online keyboards. Here are some good options:

• Gate2Home
• Branah

4- Add-ons of Extensions for Browsers

Instead of an online keyboard, you could also choose to download a Google extension to your browser for a language input tool. The Google Input Tools extension allows users to use input tools in Chrome web pages, for example.

4. How to Change the Language Settings to Romanian on Your Computer

Now that you’re all set to work with an onscreen keyboard on your computer, it’s time to download the Romanian language pack for your operating system of choice:

• Windows 8 (and higher)
• Windows 7
• Mac (OS X and higher)

1- Windows 8 (and higher)

1. Go to “Settings” > “Change PC Settings” > “Time & Language” > “Region & Language.”
2. Click on “Add a Language” and select “Romanian.” This will add it to your list of languages. It will appear as Română with the note “language pack available.”
3. Click on “Română” > “Options” > “Download.” It’ll take a few minutes to download and install the language pack.
4. As a keyboard layout, you’ll only need the one marked as “Romanian – Română.” You can ignore other keyboard layouts.

2- Windows 7

1. Go to “Start” > “Control Panel” > “Clock, Language, and Region.”
2. On the “Region and Language” option, click on “Change Keyboards or Other Input Methods.”
3. On the “Keyboards and Languages” tab, click on “Change Keyboards” > “Add” > “Romanian.”
4. Expand the option of “Romanian” and then expand the option “Keyboard.” Select the keyboard layout marked as “Romanian.” You can ignore other keyboard layouts. Click “OK” and then “Apply.”

3- Mac (OS X and higher)

If you can’t see the language listed, please make sure to select the right option from System Preferences > Language and Region

1. From the Apple Menu (top left corner of the screen) go to “System Preferences” > “Keyboard.”
2. Click the “Input Sources” tab and a list of available keyboards and input methods will appear.
3. Click on the plus button, select “Romanian,” and add the “Romanian-Standard” keyboard.

5. Activating the Romanian Keyboard on Your Mobile Phone and Tablet

Texting and searching in Romanian will greatly help you master the language! Adding a Romanian keyboard on your mobile phone and/or tablet is super-easy.

You could also opt to download an app instead of adding a keyboard. Read on for our suggestions.

Below are the instructions for both iOS and Android mobile phones and tablets.

1- iOS

1. Go to “Settings” > “General” > “Keyboard.”
2. Tap “Keyboards” and then “Add New Keyboard.”
3. Select “Romanian” from the list.
4. When typing, you can switch between languages by tapping and holding on the icon to reveal the keyboard language menu.

2- Android

1. Go to “Settings” > “General Management” > “Language and Input” > “On-screen Keyboard” (or “Virtual Keyboard” on some devices) > “Samsung Keyboard.”
2. Tap “Language and Types” or “+ Select Input Languages” depending on the device, and then “MANAGE INPUT LANGUAGES” if available.
3. Select “Română” from the list.
4. When typing, you can switch between languages by swiping the space bar.

3- Applications for Mobile Phones

If you don’t want to add a keyboard on your mobile phone or tablet, these are a few good apps to consider:

• Gboard
• Romanian (Română) Language for AppsTech Keyboards

6. Romanian Keyboard Typing Tips

Typing in Romanian can be very challenging at first! Therefore, we added here a few useful tips to make it easier to use your Romanian keyboard.

1- Computer

• When your keyboard is set to Romanian, to type diacritics, you’ll have to use:
  • [ → ă
  • ] → î
  • → â
  • ; → ș
  • ‘ → ț
• To be able to type the uppercase versions, use “Shift” + the same keys.

2- Mobile Phones

• On mobile keyboards, in order to get access to diacritics, press the selected letter until the desired diacritic mark appears. For example, if you want to find “ă” or “â,” you should press the letter “a” and hold it for two to three seconds. For “ș,”press “s,” for “ț,” use the letter “t,” and for “î,” use “i.”.
• When choosing the diacritic marks, be very careful to get the right ones and not make some common mistakes. For Ă / ă choose the one with grave, not tilde or caron. For Ș /ș please choose the one with a comma below, and NOT the one with cedilla. Same thing for Ț / ț—the correct one is with comma and NOT with cedilla.

7. How to Practice Typing Romanian

As you probably know by now, learning Romanian is all about practice, practice, and more practice! Strengthen your Romanian typing skills by writing comments on any of our lesson pages, and our teacher will answer. If you’re a RomanianPod101 Premium PLUS member, you can directly text our teacher via the My Teacher app—use your Romanian keyboard to do this!

To some people, family means no one gets left behind.

To others, it just means tasty food.

Learning to talk about and understand the different words for family members in other languages can seem like a daunting task. There’s, what, a dozen words you’ve got to learn all at once? Two dozen?

But here’s why it’s worth it to learn about Romanian family traditions and terms in your Romanian studies.

Speaking clearly and correctly about a topic so integral to a culture like family is an important challenge to overcome. There are few things so closely tied to one’s identity as one’s family – just imagine the kind of gut reaction you would have if your sister called you “mom!”

In this article, you’ll learn how to say “family” in Romanian, the most important family vocabulary in Romanian, as well as some information on family members in Romanian culture.

And when it comes to Romania in particular, you have an interesting combination to deal with. For one, the concept of family itself is probably quite similar to your own, if you come from a Western culture. But for another?

Well, you’ll find that out in a moment. Let’s begin.

Table of Contents

1. The Family in Romanian Culture
2. Describing Your Immediate Family
3. Describing Your Extended Family
4. Your Family Through Marriage
5. Patronymics and Matronymics in Romanian
6. The Romanian Royal Family and Their Language
7. How RomanianPod101 Can Help You Master Romanian

1. The Family in Romanian Culture

Generally speaking, families in Romania aren’t very different from families in the rest of Europe and North America.

Marriages tend to be stable, and people living in big cities tend to have fewer kids. Young people are expected to be relatively independent when they reach adulthood, though that does bring us to one minor difference between Romanians and people from other cultures.

Simply put, the family unit is stronger in Romania. You know your cousins well, your parents rely on you for support in their old age, and you’re expected to be a loving and helpful parent to your own children.

Romanians tend to get together in large family reunions for holidays and important celebrations. It’s not unusual for teenage Romanians to travel to other cities or towns to help out their grandparents during the summer, whether that be on the farm, around the house, or at their small business.

Fortunately for someone outside the culture, these subtle differences don’t present huge challenges. And, as you’re about to see, neither does the language.

2. Describing Your Immediate Family

First things first: The words for “family” or familie in Romanian have no surprises. Pretty much every word maps directly onto its English equivalent, so there’s no need to worry that your conception of “brother” somehow doesn’t match up with the Romanians’.

Let’s start with parents, maybe the simplest family terms in Romanian for English speakers:

“Mother” is mamă, which makes plenty of sense. “Father” is tată, also not too far if you think of the English “daddy.” Interestingly, the informal, childlike word for “daddy” is, in fact, tati. And “parent” in general? That would be părinte.

There’s no single word for “sibling,” however, there is one for “twins.” It’s gemeni for “male twins” and gemene for “female twins.”

A “sister” is soră, and a “brother” is frate; you should recognize the Latin root from words like “fraternity” or “fraternize.” If you absolutely must include “brothers and sisters,” say exactly that: fraţi şi surori. Note that soră is irregular in the plural.

Romanian doesn’t have separate words for “older” or “younger.” Instead, you use mai mare after the word to indicate “older” and mai mic/mică for “younger.”

Onto children: The word in Romanian for “child” in a gender-neutral sense is copil, while a “son” is fiu and a “daughter” is fiică.

Remember, when talking about people in Romanian, we use the masculine plural for couples of mixed gender. So fraternal twins would be referred to as gemeni, and when speaking about your parents you’d use the male form părinți.

3. Describing Your Extended Family

And yet we’re just getting started. As mentioned above, the concept of an “extended” family is slightly different in Romania, but only because you’re expected to be closer to those family members.

Moving up a generation, we have your bunic, or your “grandfather,” along with your bunică or “grandmother.” To them, you’re probably a “grandson” or nepot, or a “granddaughter” or nepoată.

Suppose your parents have siblings as well? No problems here. An “aunt” is mătușă, and “uncle” should be a piece of cake for English speakers, as it’s unchi. These words don’t change if someone is an aunt or uncle by marriage or by blood. A “cousin” is văr, another word which is inherently gender-neutral.

Here, we actually can’t shift the perspective like we did with grandparent/grandchild. The word for “nephew” is nepot, the same as “grandson,” and “niece” fits the same pattern. To be specific, we can say something like “nephew of an uncle” which would be nepot de unchi.

And then when it’s time to get really extended, there’s a handy prefix to put on some of these words. The prefix is stră-, cognate to “extra” in English (and Latin, where it ultimately derives from). Take a word like străvechi which means “very old; ancient.” That’s made up of stră– +‎ vechi, or “extra” + “old.”

So in family terms, we can slap that prefix onto a few of the words we learned. So: străbunic, străbunică, strănepot, and strănepoată. Doing so gives us the “great” generation. That is, a “great-grandfather,” “great-grandmother,” “great-grandson,” and “great-granddaughter!”

It even gives us a general word for “ancestor“: străbun.

The only exceptions are when talking about great-aunts and great-uncles. To do that in Romanian, you need the phrase unchi de gradul doi or străunchi for “great-uncle” and mătușă de gradul doi or strămătușă for “great aunt.”

4. Your Family Through Marriage

Like English, Romanian has plenty of words for your family-by-marriage, also known as your in-laws.

Before you get to that stage in your relationship, though, you need some words for love.

One’s “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” is iubit or iubită, respectively. This is, naturally, related to the base verb “to love,” which is a iubi.

After marriage (căsătorie) the happy couple becomes soț or “husband” and soție or “wife.”

And what about their families? Well, here we have a whole new set of words for relatives-in law. Your “parents-in-law” are your socru or “father-in-law” and soacră or “mother-in-law.” Your siblings by marriage? That would be your cumnat or “brother-in-law” and cumnată or “sister-in-law.”

Suppose your own child gets married? Their husband would be your ginere or “son-in-law,” and their wife would be your noră or “daughter-in-law.”

As the saying goes, soon comes a baby in a baby carriage. It turns out that names in Romanian sometimes follow family patterns as well…

5. Patronymics and Matronymics in Romanian

If you think of a “typical Romanian” name, what does it sound like?

Most likely, the last name is going to end in –scu, since that’s a feature of the majority of Romanian names. Why the popularity?

Well, the –escu or –scu suffixes actually mean “son of.” They’re what’s known as patronymics, or names passed down through the male line.

Matronymics aren’t quite so common. The pattern is roughly detectable by noting the preposition a and the genitive case marker –ei around a particular name, all formed into one word thanks to the passage of time. So a child of Maria would be a-Mariă-ei = Amariei.

This tradition doesn’t really happen very much anymore. In some countries—even in Europe—names will change every generation to reflect one’s ancestry. But nowadays, Romanian people tend to keep and pass down their last names.

6. The Romanian Royal Family and Their Language

Here’s an interesting bit of historical, political, and cultural trivia. Romania officially has no Familia Regală or “royal family.” So why does everybody know who they are?

Regele Mihai I, known as King Michael I in English, abdicated the throne in 1947. But he was still around, and although he lived for many years abroad, Romanians still knew who he was. By 2007, he had returned to the country and drafted some suggestions for how the modern parliament should treat the royal family—and they listened to him.

He outlined a line of succession, and that’s where we’ll get our final family-related vocabulary here today.

First, there hasn’t been a “queen” or regina for several hundred years—generally, kings are wed to princesses.

The word for “princess” is principesa, and as Michael had five daughters, there are currently five princesses. Traditionally, the word for “prince” is prinţ; however, Michael’s grandson is usually referred to as principele, a word that means the same thing but is noticeably different. Why’s that? Well, for various reasons, he’s been cut out of the line of succession!

7. How RomanianPod101 Can Help You Master Romanian

Reading this article is one thing. But what’s the best way to actually make sure you’re able to use and understand these words when they come up?

By using them.

Take a moment right now to look over the lesson materials right here on RomanianPod101.com and start locking those memories in. We offer an array of insightful blog posts, free vocabulary lists, and podcasts. Also check out our MyTeacher program for Premium Plus members if you’re interested in a one-on-one learning experience with your own personal Romanian teacher!

Then, the natural next step is to imagine yourself somewhere in Romania—a sunflower field, a friendly hostel, your country’s embassy—describing your own family in Romanian. Now what if somebody else you know was doing it?

And what if you were the king?

This kind of active imagination, combined with your ordinary studies, is a sure-fire way to really anchor new words into your memory. Some people even speak this stuff aloud and record it for later; you don’t have to share it with anyone!

When your Romanian skills have expanded to include any and all family matters, you’ll be prepared. So prepared, in fact, that you can walk right into a family reunion and leave everyone totally blown away.

We hope you found this article helpful. How are you going to practice these new Romanian family names? Let us know in the comments!