Romanian has a lot of personal pronouns.

Significantly more, in fact, than other related languages in Europe.

Nobody knows who came up with this system, but it’s not going away anytime soon. Are you ready to rise to the challenge?

You should be, because although the Romanian pronoun system is complex, native speakers use it without thinking. If it was too unwieldy, it would have been pared down and simplified over time.

We’ll be here to guide you as well. We’ll provide a couple of tricks and links that you might not find in other resources.And besides, it’s not like you can just ignore this. You already know quite a bit of it from just a few simple introductory phrases! Pronouns are so integral to the Romanian language that you’ll soon integrate them perfectly into your own speech and writing without breaking a sweat.

Table of Contents

1. How to Talk About Pronouns in Romanian
2. Romanian Personal Pronouns: Case by Case
3. Romanian Possessive Pronouns
4. Pronouns in Questions
5. Conclusion

1. How to Talk About Pronouns in Romanian

First, you should know about cases. Did you ever take Latin, German, or Russian?

If so, don’t panic! Romanian cases are significantly simpler than cases in those three languages. But they’re still there, and we’ll be describing its cases here in this article. Yes, Romanian has three cases (which are an inheritance from Latin), but truly, there are a lot of words that don’t change.

Romanian has a bit of terminology here that’s pretty unique among European languages, namely the terms “stressed” and “unstressed.” These refer to two different forms of the pronoun in each case.

“Unstressed” is a simpler way to say “clitic,” which is a technical term that pretty much nobody needs to know (but if you’re interested, you can look it up).

All it means is that the pronoun accompanies a verb. In most cases, it’s actually folded into the verb. In English, we contract “I am” into “I’m.” That same process happens quite a bit more in Romanian, and you’ll learn all about it!

In contrast, “stressed” pronouns appear by themselves, always with a preposition. One of the most common prepositions is pe, which is used when talking about people. You’ll see this a lot in emphatic sentences.

• Te iubesc pe tine.

I love you (and nobody else).

Here, te is an unstressed form (matching with the verb iubesc), and pe tine is the stressed form to add emphasis.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves!

Let’s start from the beginning and learn each form of Romanian pronouns.

2. Romanian Personal Pronouns: Case by Case

Learning the pronouns all at once is going to be pretty confusing. We’ll definitely have a good selection of example sentences for you to look at, but count on re-reading this as a reference page in the future.

1. The Nominative 

The nominative case is the “basic” case for all nouns and pronouns. This is what you use for the subject of a sentence, and what you’ll see in a dictionary.We’ll start with the informal Romanian nominative pronouns. This is what you’re likely to hear the most in songs and on TV, though when you actually go to Romania, you’ll want to crank up the politeness factor a little bit.

English	Romanian
I	tu
you	tu
he	el
she	ea
we	noi
you (plural)	voi
they (men; men and women)	ei
they (only women)	ele

Here you can note that Romanian distinguishes between men and women when referring to a group of people, and indeed between masculine and feminine when referring to a group of nouns.

• Fără ele ești pierdut.

Without them (women) you would be lost.

• Eu sunt la magazin.

I’m at the store.

• Ea este cea mai bună.

She’s the best there is.

Also, in English we say “It’s him!” but in Romanian the literal equivalent would be “It is he!”

• El este!

It’s him!

And now for some formal pronouns. Romanian has formal versions of everything except the first-person “I’ and “we” pronouns.

What’s more, there are actually several levels of politeness for all this. We’ll go with the most commonly used variants in speech first.

English	Romanian (polite)	Romanian (polite and formal)
you	dumneata	dumneavoastră
he	dânsul	dumnealui
she	dânsa	dumneaei
you (plural)	dumneavoastră	dumneavoastră
they (men; men and women)	dânşii	dumnealor
they (women)	dânsele	dânsele

The “polite” category is slowly falling out of use, as many people feel that it’s actually just about the same as the “informal” category anyway. However, among people who still use it, the difference is subtle yet apparent.

“Polite” pronouns are for people you know but aren’t very well-acquainted with, like coworkers or people you meet up with for classes. “Polite and formal” indicates not only an absence of friendship, but also a difference in societal ranking, for example a professor and students.

Note that the formal “you” is conjugated the same way in singular and plural form—in fact, it’s always the plural form, following the pattern in German, Spanish, and other languages with this distinction.

• Dumneavoastră aveți timp?

Do you have time?

That’s a long word! And that’s why you’ll much more commonly see it dropped entirely, using only the verb to connote politeness.

• Aveți timp?

Do you have time?

So for the subject of a sentence, as you can see, Romanian usually drops the pronoun entirely.

But that doesn’t mean pronouns in Romanian are useless. Far from it.

2. The Accusative

The accusative case refers to the direct object of a verb. Now we’ll start breaking things up into stressed and unstressed variants. Here’s a table of the Romanian accusative pronouns.

English	Romanian accusative (stressed)	Romanian accusative (unstressed)
I	mine	mă
he	el	te
he	el	îl
she	ea	o
we	noi	ne
you (plural)	voi	vă
they (men; men and women)	ei	îi
they (women)	ele	le

Oh man.

Remember, though, that only mine and tine actually changed in the stressed form. And yes, you do have to learn new unstressed forms, but it’s not so bad because the consonant remains the same for all the words that have consonants.

There’s more logic, too: The vowel î is a relatively hard sound to make, and so you’ll see in a moment how it disappears when our unstressed (connected) forms start getting slapped onto verbs.

The hard part is that the unstressed forms combine in different ways. Since this is already a lot to swallow, we won’t go into detail about the rules for the unstressed forms. Many learners pick it up from lots of examples, and if you end up reading and listening to a lot of Romanian, you will too!

• I-ai anunţat?

Did you tell them?

Here we’ve combined îi with the helping verb ai. We’ll use the easier vowel, so the î drops away and leaves us with a combining i-. Romanian is nice enough to keep the hyphens for our reference!

Now some more examples of combined pronouns.

• Daniela mi-a telefonat.

Daniela telephoned me.

• Îi voi da cartea mâine.

I will give him the book tomorrow.

• Ni s-a spus că putem pleca acasă.

We were told that we could go home.

3. The Dative

We’re on the home stretch now with the last of the three cases in Romanian. The dative case usually translates pretty well with the pronoun “to” in English. For example: “I sent a letter to her.” It’s also called the indirect object. Here are the Romanian dative pronouns:

English	Romanian dative (stressed)	Romanian dative (unstressed)
I	mie	îmi
you	ție	îți
he	lui	îi
she	ei	îi
we	nouă	ne
you (plural)	vouă	vă
they (men; men and women)	lor	le
they (women)	lor	le

Oh jeez.

Again, it’s not as bad as you might think. These dative pronouns are so common in the words and phrases that beginners learn most, that you probably already recognize one very important one.

• Îmi pare rău.

I’m sorry.

In this example, one of the first phrases that everybody learns in Romanian is a dative pronoun. Specifically “to me,” because what you’re literally saying with this expression is “It is bad to me.”

3. Romanian Possessive Pronouns

In continuing the theme of Romanian grammar being at once alike and different from other European languages, there’s a subtle yet tricky difference in the matter of possessive pronouns.

First, the pronoun comes after the noun. That’s relatively normal, though, occurring also in Spanish and Italian.

• Pisica mea.

My cat.

What’s unusual is that the word for “my” changes depending on gender and number of the object.

• Pisicile mele.

My cats.

Let’s have a look at another Romanian pronouns table:

	Singular masc./ntr.	Singular fem.	Plural masc.	Plural fem./ntr.
my	meu	mea	mei	mele
our	nostru	noastră	noștri	noastre
your (singular)	tău	ta	tăi	tale
your (plural)	vostru	voastră	voștri	voastre
his/her	său	sa	săi	sale

Wow.

But wait! There’s still a pattern. Look carefully and you can see that the same consonant roots hold true from the Romanian nominative pronoun chart. Furthermore, the plural first-person (our) and second-person (your) share the same pattern, as do singular second-person (your) and singular third-person (his/her).

It’s a lot to take in, no doubt about it.

Remember to pay special attention to how, in the singular, masculine and neuter nouns are grouped together. In the plural, it’s feminine and neuter.

We’re definitely going to need some examples here.

• Fraţii noştri sunt studenţi.

Our brothers are students.

• Pe masă sunt cărţile mele.

My books are on the table.

In fact, this chart could be significantly more complicated if we added all of the formal forms. 

We will, however, include the most common: dumneavoastră. As the formal “you,” this gets used very often in Romanian, and it’s also dead simple to understand.

It doesn’t change at all!

• Prietenii dumneavoastră.

Your friends.

• Prietenul dumneavoastră.

Your friend.

Ironically, if you happen to study in a way that makes you used to applying rules for meu, mea, mei, and so on, you might look at an example sentence with dumneavoastră and think that something’s missing. Nope, it’s just the Romanian language cutting you a break.

4. Pronouns in Questions

The last major thing we need to cover here is when we ask questions with pronouns. This is an incredibly common situation, as you probably know.

Right now, we’re only going to cover the nominative case. They do change for case, but questions outside the nominative are relatively rare and we all know that you’ve seen a lot of charts today.

1. Who? – Cine?

• Cine este acolo?

Who’s there?

• Cine este responsabil?

Who is in charge?

2. What? – Ce?

• Ce i-ai spus?

What did you say?

• Ce este asta?

What is that?

3. Which? – Care?

• Pe care o vrei?

Which do you want?

• Care e al vostru?

Which one is yours?

4. Whose? – A cui?

• A cui pantofi sunt aia?

Whose shoes are these?

• A cui idee a fost?

Whose idea was it?

As you can see, learning only the nominative case for these question pronouns is definitely enough to get you going on your road to Romanian fluency!

5. Conclusion

So throughout this article, we’ve mentioned that there’s more.

More pronouns to learn, more cases in which pronouns might or might not change, and so on.

How can you get a handle on it? How can you ever commit all of this to memory?

One of the best ways is seriously to copy down these charts. Even better is if you copy down our charts, and then go find another one, then copy down that one too. By copying information down in your notes from two different sources, you’ll get to actually see the relationships between these words and their functions, and through that you’ll boost your memory.

The other way is to rely on immersion.

Mix a little bit of grammar study (such as reading these articles) with immersive, interesting content in Romanian. That’s going to make a lot of these pronoun tricks fall into place.

And what better place for interesting and immersive content than RomanianPod101? You’ll get access to all of our lessons on vocabulary, grammar, conversations, and more, in an easy format for you to take wherever you need to!

There’s no reason to delay. Get your free access to RomanianPod101 today and start taking charge of Romanian pronouns!

In the meantime, let us know in the comments how you feel about Romanian pronouns after going through this Romanian pronoun list. Are there any questions you still have? We’ll do our best to help you out.

Happy Romanian learning!

Do you remember the moment you fell in love with languages?

Do you desire to learn or advance in Romanian quickly and effectively?

Then you need a Romanian tutor.

A common question that first-time language-learners ask is “Where do I begin?” The answer? Guidance.

For native English-speakers who want to learn Asian languages, for example, timelines provided by the U.S. Foreign Service Institute can appear discouraging. However, defeating these odds is not unheard of. If you want to beat the odds yourself, one of the best learning options is a subscription to Premium PLUS from Innovative Language.

As an active Premium PLUS member of JapanesePod101.com and KoreanClass101.com myself, I have an enjoyable experience learning at an accelerated pace with at least thirty minutes of study daily. The following Premium PLUS features contribute to my success:

• Access to thousands of lessons
• A voice recorder 
• Spaced-repetition system (SRS) flashcards
• Weekly homework assignments
• A personal language instructor

As someone who decided to make Japanese her second language one year ago, I am extremely grateful for Premium PLUS.

Allow me to emphasize on how these Premium PLUS features strengthen my language studies.

Gain Unlimited Access to Audio and Video Lessons!

As a Premium PLUS member, I have full access to the lesson library and other Premium features. Best of all, I’m not limited to one level; I can learn to my heart’s content with upper-level courses.

There are lessons on various topics that tackle crucial language-learning elements, such as:

• Reading
• Writing
• Listening
• Speaking
• Conversation

Specifically, there are pathways. Pathways are collections of lessons that center on a specific topic. Some Innovative Language sites, like JapanesePod101.com, even have pathways geared toward proficiency tests. For example, the JLPT N3 Master Course pathway.

Because of the abundance of lessons, I’ve found pathways in the lesson library to help me prepare for certain events. Thanks to the “Speaking Perfect Japanese at a Restaurant” pathway, I spoke fully in Japanese while dining in Japan. Additionally, I participated in conversations at language exchange meetups in South Korea after completing the “Top 25 Korean Questions You Need to Know” pathway.

Each lesson has lesson notes, which I read while simultaneously listening to the audio lesson. This strategy enables me to follow along on key points. Lesson notes generally contain the following:

• Dialogue
• Vocabulary
• Grammar points
• Cultural insights

As someone who’s constantly on-the-go, I heavily benefit from mobile access to lessons. Podcasts and lesson notes are available on the Innovative Language app and/or Podcasts app for iOS.

All lessons and their contents are downloadable. Prior to my flights to Japan and South Korea, I downloaded lessons on my iPhone. The apps make learning more convenient for me during my commutes.

Practice Speaking with the Voice Recording Tool!

Pronunciation is an essential ingredient in language-learning. Proper pronunciation prompts clear understanding during conversations with native speakers.

Prior to learning full Korean sentences, my online Korean language tutor assigned the “Hana Hana Hangul” pathway to me. It demonstrated the writing and pronunciation of Hangul, the Korean alphabet. Throughout this pathway, I submitted recordings of my Hangul character pronunciations to my language teacher for review.

I was given a similar task on JapanesePod101.com with the “Ultimate Japanese Pronunciation Guide” pathway. My Japanese language teacher tested my pronunciation of the Japanese characters kana. My completion of the two pathways boosted my confidence in speaking.

Speaking is one of the more challenging components of learning a language. The voice recording tool in particular was a great way for me to improve my speaking skills. Further, because the lesson dialogues are spoken by native speakers, I’m able to practice speaking naturally.

This feature is also available for vocabulary words and sample sentences. Being able to hear these recordings improves my pronunciation skills for languages like Japanese, where intonation can change the meaning of a word entirely. The voice recorder examines my speed and tone. I also follow up by sending a recording to my online language tutor for feedback.

A great way to boost one’s speaking confidence is to shadow native speakers. During the vocabulary reviews, it’s helpful for me to hear the breakdown of each word; doing so makes a word that was originally difficult to even read a breeze to say!

Some lessons create opportunities to speak your own sentences. For example, the “Top 25 Korean Questions You Need to Know” pathway presents opportunities to answer questions personally. This helps you gain the ability to give answers as the unique individual you are.

Example Scenario:

The host asks the following question:

어디에 살고 있습니까?

eodieseo salgo isseumnikka

“Where do you live?”

If you live in Tokyo, you would readily say the following:

도쿄에 살고 있습니다.

Tokyo-e salgo isseumnida.

“I live in Tokyo.”

Increase Your Vocab with Spaced-Repetition Flashcards and More!

Imagine having a conversation with a native speaker and hesitating because you lack a solid vocabulary base.

Premium PLUS offers various features to expand learners’ vocabulary, including Free Gifts of the Month. RomanianPod101’s free gifts for April 2020 included an e-book with “400 Everyday Phrases for Beginners,” and the content is updated every month. When I download free resources like this, I find opportunities to use them with co-teachers, friends, or my language tutors.

An effective way to learn vocabulary is with SRS flashcards. SRS is a system designed for learning a new word and reviewing it in varying time intervals.

You can create and study flashcard decks, whether it’s your Word Bank or a certain vocabulary list. For example, if you need to visit a post office, the “Post Office” vocabulary list for your target language would be beneficial to study prior to your visit.

In addition to the SRS flashcards, each lesson has a vocabulary slideshow and quiz to review the lesson’s vocabulary.

There’s also the 2000 Core Word List, which includes the most commonly used words in your target language. Starting from the 100 Core Word List, you’ll gradually build up your knowledge of useful vocabulary. These lists can be studied with SRS flashcards, too.

With the SRS flashcards, you can change the settings to your liking. The settings range from different card types to number of new cards per deck. Personally, I give myself vocabulary tests by changing the settings.

After studying a number of flashcards, I change the card types to listening comprehension and/or production. Then I test myself by writing the translation of the word or the spoken word or phrase.

The change in settings allow me to remember vocabulary and learn how to identify the words. This is especially helpful with Japanese kanji!

Complete Homework Assignments!

Homework assignments are advantageous to my language studies. There are homework assignments auto-generated weekly. They range from multiple-choice quizzes to writing assignments.

Language tutors are readily available for homework help. Some writing assignments, for instance, require use of unfamiliar vocabulary. In such cases, my language teachers assist me by forwarding related lessons or vocabulary lists.

In addition to these auto-generated homework tasks, language tutors customize daily assignments. My daily homework assignments include submitting three written sentences that apply the target grammar point of that lesson, and then blindly audio-recording those sentences. My personal language tutor follows up with feedback and corrections, if needed.

Your language tutors also provide assignments upon requests. When I wanted to review grammar, my Korean teacher sent related quizzes and assignments. Thus, you are not only limited to the auto-generated assignments.

Every weekend, I review by re-reading those written sentences. It helps me remember sentence structures, grammar points, and vocabulary to apply in real-world contexts.

Furthermore, I can track my progress with language portfolios every trimester. It’s like a midterm exam that tests my listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.

Get Your Own Personal Language Teacher!

My language teachers cater to my goals with personalized and achievable learning programs. The tangible support of my online language teachers makes it evident that we share common goals.

Once I share a short-term or long-term goal with my teacher, we establish a plan or pathway that will ultimately result in success. I coordinate with my teachers regularly to ensure the personalized learning programs are prosperous. For example, during my JLPT studies, my Japanese language tutor assigned me practice tests.

Your language tutor is available for outside help as well. When I bought drama CDs in Japan, I had difficulty transliterating the dialogue. My Japanese teacher forwarded me the script to read along as I listened.

Additionally, I often practice Korean and Japanese with music. I memorize one line of the lyrics daily. Every time, I learn a new grammar point and new vocabulary. I add the vocabulary to my SRS flashcards, locate the grammar in the Grammar Bank, and study the associated lessons online.

I send my teachers the name of the songs, making them aware of my new goal. One time, my song for Korean was “If You Do” by GOT7. My Korean teacher revealed that she was a huge fan of GOT7 like me! For Japanese, it was “CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA,” also known as the Dragonball Z theme song. My Japanese teacher excitedly told me that she sang the song a lot as a kid!

A remarkable thing happened to me in South Korea. I was stressed about opening a bank account with limited Korean. I sought help from my Korean teacher. She forwarded me a script of a bank conversation.

After two days, I visited the local bank. It all started with my opening sentence:

은행 계좌를 만들고 싶어요

eunhaeng gyejwaleul mandeulgo sip-eoyo.

I want to open a bank account.

Everything went smoothly, and I exited the bank with a new account!

The MyTeacher Messenger allows me to share visuals with my teachers for regular interaction, including videos to critique my pronunciation mechanisms. I improve my listening and speaking skills by exchanging audio with my teachers. In addition to my written homework assignments, I exchange messages with my language teachers in my target language. This connection with my teachers enables me to experience the culture as well as the language.

Why You Should Subscribe to Premium PLUS

It’s impossible for me to imagine my continuous progress with Japanese and Korean without Premium PLUS. Everything—from the SRS flashcards to my language teachers—makes learning languages enjoyable and clear-cut.

You’re assured to undergo the same experience with Premium PLUS. You’ll gain access to the aforementioned features as well as all of the Premium features.

Complete lessons and assignments to advance in your target language. Increase your vocabulary with the “2000 Core Word List” for that language and SRS flashcards. Learn on-the-go with the Innovative Language app and/or Podcasts app for iOS users.

Learning a new language takes dedication and commitment. The Premium PLUS features make learning irresistibly exciting. You’ll look forward to learning daily with your language tutor.

As of right now, your challenge is to subscribe to Premium PLUS! Complete your assessment, and meet your new Romanian teacher.

Have fun learning your target language in the fastest and easiest way!

Subscribe to Posted by RomanianPod101.com in Feature Spotlight, Learn Romanian, Romanian Language, Romanian Online, Site Features, Team RomanianPod101 | Comment

You can think of language as being composed of LEGO blocks.

Imagine you’re building a skyscraper, for instance. Since you have the advantage of working with toys instead of real steel, one strategy would be to build each floor individually and then stick them all together.

It turns out you can do the same thing in language learning. 

Before you ever get into a situation in which you have to speak Romanian “in the wild,” you can piece together a lot of different patterns and chunks and learn them individually. Here enters Romanian word order and a host of other crucial Romanian grammar elements. 

When it’s time to speak or write, you can then draw on these stored memories to quickly and efficiently speak correct Romanian without a second thought.

Word order in Romanian can sometimes appear more flexible than English word order, but don’t be fooled. It has its own rules that lead to very odd-sounding Romanian if broken. Do you know them?

Table of Contents

1. Word Order in Basic Sentences
2. Adjectives and Nouns
3. Making Questions in Romanian
4. Dealing with Prepositions
5. Giving Commands
6. Conclusion

1. Word Order in Basic Sentences

Ordinary declarative sentences in Romanian function just as they do in English, syntactically speaking.

We start with the subject, or the thing in the sentence that actually does something. Let’s use a name,

Elena.

Then we add the verb, or what the subject actually does. If Elena writes, then we simply say that.

• Elena scrie.

“Elena writes.”

Suppose Elena isn’t just writing, but she’s writing a book. That’s an object, and we’d place that after the verb. Linguistically, this makes Romanian a Subject-Verb-Object language. Other languages from around the world order these three elements differently, but most European languages fit this SVO mold.

• Elena scrie o carte.

“Elena is writing a book.”

Here’s where the word order can seem a little flexible compared to English. It’s perfectly reasonable for us to say scrie Elena and even O carte scrie Elena.

The meaning is clear from the context, instead of gibberish like it might be in English (“a book is writing Elena?”).

Let’s have a look at some other very basic sentences in Romanian.

• Vremea este frumoasă.

“The weather is nice.”

• Eu am două pisici.

“I have two cats.”

Remember that when we’re dealing with pronouns instead of people’s names, standard Romanian practice is to completely drop the pronoun and just use the conjugated verb instead. Keeping the pronoun intact is a mark of slightly more formal Romanian, but it can often feel unnecessary. 

Sometimes there’s an exception for the third person singular (he/she). To be more clear and to be sure that everyone knows who you’re talking about, you’ll keep the pronoun. This way, everyone can identify the gender of the person as well. 

• Scrie o carte.

“(She) is writing a book.”

• Ei vorbesc engleza.

“They speak English.”

• Sunt din Londra.

“I am from London.”

That inverted word order from before comes up a lot in songs. However, since in real Romanian you won’t really come across simple two-word sentences very much, you don’t need to worry about the differences between one word order and the other.

One last thing to note is that Romanian makes heavy use of contractions. Glance at a Romanian text and you’ll see words with dashes all over the place.

This is just the standard way to show that a pronoun has combined with a certain verb partway, meaning it’s still there and hasn’t been dropped.

By far, the most common contraction is n-am, shortened from nu am and meaning “I don’t have” or “I haven’t.” There are many more, though, so check out a handy chart like this one!

2. Adjectives and Nouns 

The big difference in Romanian word order with adjectives compared to English is simply that adjectives come after the nouns they modify, instead of before them as in English.

This doesn’t happen when a verb is between the adjective and noun, as you can see in the example sentences above. It only applies to noun-adjective phrases.

• Ești un om inteligent.

“You are a smart man.”

• Ești un câine bun.

“You’re a good dog.”

One major difference to note in Romanian is how the article works with nouns. In most other European languages (the Scandinavian languages are an exception), the article comes before the noun.

In Romanian, it fixes onto the end of the noun.

There are various rules that you have to follow to know exactly which nouns take what kind of connected article, but it’s all consistent and just takes a bit of time to memorize.

• Nu văd câinele.

“I can’t see the dog.”

• Văd un câine.

“I see a dog.”

In these examples, you can contrast the word câinele with câine to see how “the dog” is different from “a dog.” If this is your first time seeing this happen, then definitely go through an article or two to learn the different ways this can show up in your reading. It’s very easy to overlook a grammatical article that’s barely there!

3. Making Questions in Romanian

English is relatively unusual among European languages in that it uses the auxiliary verb “do” to act as a “dummy verb” at the beginning of question sentences.

Romanian has no such thing, and so there are two main additional ways to make questions in Romanian.

The first is to simply invert the order of the subject and the verb.

• Scrie Elena o carte?

“Is Elena writing a book?”

• Scrie Elena?

“Does Elena write?”

The second is to keep everything normal and simply change the intonation. A lot of people might describe Romanian question intonation as “rising,” but in reality, it’s only rising in the middle and at the end. It’s pretty much the same as English question intonation, so just go with your instincts at first and you’ll be most of the way there.

• Ei vorbesc engleza?

“They speak English?”

• El doarme?

“Is he sleeping?”

There is a third way, grammatically speaking. Instead of changing the word order, you can just add the word nu to the end of a sentence to act as a tag question. In this case, you’ll speak with the same question intonation discussed above.

Naturally, Romanian has the same question words as English does. Just as in English, these question words go at the beginning of the sentence.

• Ce oră este?

“What time is it?”

• Unde trăiţi?

“Where do you live?”

If you’re using a helping or auxiliary verb (like “can,” “should,” “may,” and so on) then it appears at the beginning as well (most of the time).

• Poți vorbi engleza?

“Can you speak English?”

What’s the exception? When you’re not talking about the noun “English,” but instead a pronoun. When the object of the question is a pronoun, then you’ll move the pronoun to the front and shift everything over one place. The verb ends up last.

• Îl poți ajuta?

“Can you help him?”

The answers to the questions will start with the answer word first, and then continue with the regular subject-predicate word order.

• Nu, nu pot.

“No, no I can’t.”

4. Dealing with Prepositions

Prepositions in Romanian look and feel like they do in English and other European languages.

• Lucrez în oraș.

“I work in the city.”

In this example, oraș is the noun “city” and în is the preposition.

Anybody that’s learned even a little bit of another Romance language is likely to get tripped up by the preposition la. It’s not the feminine definite article like it is in French or Spanish. It means “to.”

• Să mergem la hotel.

“Let’s go to the hotel.”

How about turning a sentence with a prepositional phrase into a question? There’s really nothing to it. Simply invert the word order as shown before.

• Merge acest drum la aeroport?

“Does this road go to the airport?”

• Nu, acest drum merge la oraș.

“No, this road goes to the city.”

5. Giving Commands

Why include commands here? Simple: They’re the most common “difficult grammar” that you might encounter in Romanian. It’s actually much easier than you’d think.

First, the super-easy stuff is literally just a different verb form. That’s called the “imperative” and it’s made with the second person plural verb form. To negate it, add nu.

• Cântați!

“Sing!”

• Nu cântați!

“Don’t sing!”

What we’re talking about is something a little more in-depth, namely “I want you to…” It requires a compound verb.

• Vreau să cânți.

“I want you to sing.”

• Vreau să pleci.

“I want you to go.”

The pattern is immediately obvious. All you have to do is swap in the verb that you want somebody to do, and you’re all good to go!

6. Conclusion

It’s entirely possible for you to get so used to Romanian word order that you can spot grammatical errors a mile away. Don’t believe anyone who says you can’t learn a language that well.

Of course, it’s also possible for you to end up stuck in a rut and never know why exactly you keep making the same kinds of mistakes.

As long as you keep paying attention to word order and training with real, authentic Romanian (not just isolated words or example sentences from the dictionary), you’ll be able to notice the word order differences quite naturally and accurately.

That can happen with ease when you sign up for RomanianPod101, the best place to learn Romanian online. Follow along with transcripts in English and Romanian for dozens of episodes, and enjoy your journey to Romanian success!

Before you go, be sure to let us know if you learned anything new today. Also feel free to reach out with any questions you still have about Romanian word order. We look forward to hearing from you.

Happy Romanian learning!

The number-one piece of advice most people have for those considering a trip to Romania is to learn some of the language.

Check that one off the list.

You’re already interested in Romanian, we know that. But here’s our number-one piece of advice for learning Romanian for travel:

Learn about the time in Romanian.

Learning some numbers in Romanian, and the dates, is a great accomplishment, but they only get you so far. Time covers all kinds of situations at once: bus schedules, airport departures, check-in times…everything you’re likely to do as a tourist!

This article won’t stop there, either. This is your one-stop solution to learning everything you need to know about time in Romanian, from stopping someone on the street to discussing international time zones.

Get ready—it’s time to learn.

Table of Contents

1. General Times Throughout the Day
2. Inquiring about the Time
3. How to Talk about Hours
4. Dividing Hours into Minutes and Seconds
5. The Finer Points of “When” and “What Time”
6. These Things Take Time
7. Times in Different Places
8. Phrases and Idioms about Time
9. Conclusion

1. General Times Throughout the Day

Since Romanian belongs to the European cultural tradition, they divide time up just as we do in English—into key sections of the day that we can use as markers.

Dimineaţă means “morning.” This is the time from just before the sun appears to around twelve o’clock noon.

Ziua is “day,” in the same way that you could have “one day,” “two days,” and so on. “Good day” sounds a little old-fashioned in English, but not in Romanian. It’s usually from about noon to six o’clock p.m.

Seară is “evening,” the time period from about six o’clock p.m. to when the sun actually sets.

And when the stars are bright in the sky, it’s definitely noaptea, or “nighttime.”

Like  in English, these are integral parts of the standard “time of day greetings,” which you can see here:

• Bună dimineaţa!

Good morning!

• Bună ziua!

Good afternoon! 

• Bună seara!

Good evening!

We don’t usually wish others “good night” in either Romanian or English.

Just two more words before we get into the real business of telling time in Romanian: miezul nopții is literally “the middle of the night” and refers to midnight, while amiază is the opposite, namely “noon.”

2. Inquiring about the Time

Sure, knowing the words for the different times of day is great. But you’re probably not going to ask “Is it morning?” unless you were pretty out of it the night before.

Just as English has several ways to rephrase the question, there are a couple of different ways you can ask for the time in Romanian.

This is a polite version that’s appropriate for asking strangers on the street:

• Mă scuzați, cât este ceasul?

Excuse me, what time is it?

If the only stranger nearby is an older gentleman, try this more formal version:

• Mă scuzați, cât este ora, domnule?

Excuse me, what time is it, sir?

Note that it was only formal because we added vă rog and domnule. The two phrases cât este ceasul and cât este ora are interchangeable.

Here are some more phrases you can use to vary your speech:

• Cât este ceasul acum?

What’s the time now?

• Știți cât este ceasul?

Do you know what time it is now? 

There’s not really a right or wrong variant of these. In fact, on rare occasions you might see yet another version: ce oră este. In any case, let’s get to the answers.

3. How to Talk about Hours

Okay, let’s answer those questions as best as we can.

We’ll start by talking about the hours. In Romanian, an hour is oră. Be very careful, because this is where pronunciation could trip you up. When you use it for actually telling the time in Romanian, though, you change ă into a!

You probably won’t run into any trouble if you confuse the two, but if you want to speak clearly and always be understood, this is a great pair of words to practice.

In any case, the format for saying the hour is: (It is) (hour) (number). Let’s have a look.

• Este ora două.

It’s two o’clock.

• Este ora unsprezece.

It’s eleven o’clock.

Romanians are generally familiar with both the twenty-four-hour and the twelve-hour clocks. You could hear the same time in the evening expressed two ways:

• Este ora optsprezece.

It’s eighteen o’clock.

• Este ora șase P.M.

It’s six P.M.

Simply read the letters “P.M.” out as if you were saying the Romanian alphabet.

Most people, if you ask them the time and they don’t have a watch or a phone at the ready, will round things to the nearest hour or section of an hour. You may hear a phrase like aproximativ, which sounds very formal in English but means “about” in Romanian. Or perhaps you’ll hear aproape, which means “almost.” Have a look:

• Este aproximativ ora cinci.

It’s around five o’clock.

• Este aproape ora cinci.

It’s almost five o’clock.

For saying the exact hour, we say “sharp” in English, but fix or “exact” in Romanian. We’ll use the same example sentence to show that, in casual speech, you don’t absolutely need to say ora every time.

• Este cinci fix.

It’s five sharp.

Okay, enough beating around the bush. Let’s learn how to tell time in Romanian as accurately as possible.

4. Dividing Hours into Minutes and Seconds

It turns out, it’s extremely easy.

Using the same sentence pattern above, we simply add the equivalent of “… and (number).”

• Este ora cincisprezece și opt.

It’s fifteen oh eight (3:08 P.M.).

• Este ora patru și douăzeci și trei.

It’s four twenty-three.

Yes, it can get a little strange to an English-speaking ear that there are two uses of și in the same phrase. But Romanians simply parse the last și as being an inseparable part of the number, so it doesn’t sound weird.

Can we be more exact?

Of course we can, and again the pattern follows English perfectly.

Este ora două și nouă minute și douăzeci și unu secunde.

It’s two oh nine minutes and twenty-one seconds.

We can also get less exact. In Romanian, the hour is divided into halves and quarters. A “half” as in “half past” is jumătate, and a “quarter” is un sfert. The only difference is that you’ve got to use the article un with sfert to specify that it’s exactly one—no reason for you to talk about two quarters when you’ve got a word for “half!”

• Este unu și un sfert.

It’s a quarter past one. (It’s one and a quarter.)

5. The Finer Points of “When” and “What Time”

One of the next steps you can take to raise your language level just a little bit is to start asking what time things happen. Learning this serves several purposes: It gets you to try out new sentence structures, it impresses others, and it usually gives you very valuable information.

In Romanian, just as in English, there’s a difference between “at what time” and “when.” The former is translated as la ce oră. Again, look out for the pronunciation. We ask with the word oră, but always answer with ora.

• La ce oră e acel film?

What time is that movie?

• La ce oră se închide barul?

What time does the bar close?

• Când va fi asta?

When will that happen?

Some answers for you now. Remember that, like in English, sometimes the answer is vague, and sometimes you’ll hear the exact time in Romanian.

• Între ora patru și cinci.

Between four and five.

• Apusul e la ora cinci și patruzeci și șapte.

Sunrise is at five forty-seven.

You should be aware that a Romanian being vague about the time isn’t an unusual thing. It’s not considered rude to be a few minutes late in Romania, except for the most formal situations.

6. These Things Take Time

First you asked about the time in Romanian, then you asked when things happen, and now your next task is to ask about how long certain things might take.

As Romanian is a Latin language, some of these phrases will be pretty transparent to you. You can see roots related to “duration” and “time” if you look carefully.

The first two phrases are pretty standard and interchangeable.

• Cât va dura?

How long will it take?

• Cât timp va dura?

How much time will it take?

But there’s an informal variant that’s more idiomatic—it’s hard to translate exactly what each word here is doing.

• Știi cât îți ia?

Do you know how long it takes?

Now here are some examples of more complicated questions you could ask:

• Cât durează să ajungi acolo?

How long does it take to get there?

• În cât timp se face de obicei?

How long does it generally take?

Literally, you’re asking “In how much time is it done?” That phrase de obicei can be used in a lot of different places. Here’s just one example:

• Eu de obicei nu fac asta.

Normally I don’t do that.

7. Times in Different Places

Romania has just one time zone (fus orar), and there aren’t any well-known overseas Romanian communities that would call for different Romanian time zones to be established. That means you won’t have to worry about different time zones when traveling in Romania—one less thing, right?

Romania does have a Daylight Savings Time, which is called ora de vară and generally lasts from the end of March to the end of October.

Când începe ora de vară?

When does Daylight Savings Time start?

Even though Romania has just one time zone to worry about, that doesn’t mean they don’t have to be cognizant of time zones elsewhere. Imagine you’re a Romanian executive in high power and you want to know about another branch of your company. 

• Cât e ceasul în New York?

What’s the time in New York?

Of course you could add acum to express the meaning of “now” as well. Some more phrases to fill in the gaps:

• Există o diferență de timp?

Is there a time difference?

• Este în un alt fus orar.

It’s in a different time zone.

8. Phrases and Idioms about Time

You may not have noticed before, but English has a hefty number of idioms and turns of phrase to describe time. You can’t get through a single book chapter or news article without stumbling across things like: “in time,” “out of time,” “over time,” and so on.

Here’s what those sound like in Romanian.

in a little while (în scurt timp)

• Va ajunge aici în scurt timp.

He’ll arrive here in a little while.

in just a moment (într-o clipă)

• Profesorul va vorbi cu voi într-o clipă.

The professor will speak to you in just a moment.

right on time (chiar la timp)

• Ai ajuns chiar la timp.

You’re right on time.

the perfect/ideal time for… (momentul ideal pentru…)

• E momentul ideal pentru cineva să se furișeze înăuntru.

It’s the perfect time for someone to sneak inside.

as time goes by (pe măsură ce trece timpul)

• Pe măsură ce trece timpul o să devină o amintire.

As time goes by, it will become a memory.

spend time (petrece timp)

• Mi-ar plăcea să petrec timp cu tine.

I’d like to spend time with you.

And to end with another of those evocative Romanian expressions, here’s an idiom about what some might call “making the wrong choices.”

waste time (a freca menta)

• Voi sta aici și voi freca menta.

I’m sitting here and I’m going to while away my time.

Literally, you’re saying “rub mint.” Have you ever rubbed mint? It has a nice texture and a pleasant smell. But hopefully you didn’t have anything pressing to do with your time at that point!

9. Conclusion

Now you’re equipped to do quite a bit in Romanian!

Not only can you tell the time, but you can also use your knowledge of Romanian sentence patterns and idioms to speak quite freely about it—saying when things happen, how long they’ll take, and more.

Pay attention to some TV shows or the dialogue in some Romanian books next time you get a chance. You’ll quickly find out just how valuable that skill is.

But of course, you’re not finished yet.

Your next step is to review this article and become familiar once more with all of the new vocabulary and structures that you learned in it.

After that, the best thing for you to do is check out the other lessons here at RomanianPod101. If you liked this article, you’ll love our helpful, in-depth podcasts about all aspects of Romanian learning and usage.

So don’t wait—now is the time. 

Before you go, are there any points we covered that you need clarity on? Feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns, and we’ll do our best to help you out!

Being outside in Romania is great—except when you’re lost.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could ask somebody for help? Or even just ask where the McDonald’s is?

That, of course, is the obvious benefit of knowing how to talk about directions in Romanian. (Not the McDonald’s part, the not-getting-lost part.)

Did you know, though, that mastering directions in Romanian can level-up your whole command of the language? Think about it: you’ve got new vocabulary, new sentence patterns, and even new conversation starters, just from one topic.

How much do you know already about directions in Romanian?

Table of Contents

1. Basic Cultural Notes and Phrases
2. Learn the Romanian Compass Points
3. City Vocabulary and Reference Points
4. Phrases for Directions in Romanian, Part 1: Asking Others
5. Part 2: Giving Directions in Romanian
6. Travel Time
7. Directions Can Lead You to a Wealth of Language Practice
8. Conclusion

1. Basic Cultural Notes and Phrases

A lot of Romanians are quite good at English, and they’re all very polite and friendly. If you ask for directions in English, you’re likely to be understood by young people in any city.

However, if you can show them that you’ve put some real effort into your Romanian (that means having correct pronunciation), then they’ll be impressed and quite happy not to switch to English on you.

To politely get somebody’s attention on the street, simply say:

• Scuzați-mă!

Excuse me!

Or maybe:

• Mă puteți ajuta?

Could you help me?

These two phrases will help you lead into actually asking them for directions, which we’ll cover in a little while.

Romanian towns and cities are old, and people usually grew up on the same streets that are there now. During the various changes in government in the twentieth century, though, many street names did change in Romania to honor political figures.

Therefore, older people and younger people may remember streets by different names. If you can’t find a certain street that you heard mentioned, you can ask someone like this:

• Scuzați-mă, unde e strada asta?

Excuse me, where is this street?

2. Learn the Romanian Compass Points

If you happen to have studied any German in the past, these compass points in Romanian are going to seem very familiar to you.

English	Romanian
north	nord
south	sud
east	est
west	vest
northwest	nord-vest
northeast	nord-est
southwest	sud-vest
southeast	sud-est

Nord-Vest, Nord-Est, Sud-Est, Sud-Vest, and Vest are all also names of development regions of Romania, by the way. They’re not often used in daily conversation, but if you read any articles about Romania, particularly its economy, you may be confused by this.

To make it clear, it’s better to be specific about the fact that you’re talking about the parts of a country or city. This is done in two ways: using the phrase partea de and a cardinal direction, or using the adjective form of that direction.

• Este în partea de vest a UE.

It’s in the western part of the EU.

• E din partea sudică a Albei.

It’s from the southern part of Alba.

In addition to these absolute directions, you’ll also need to know four very useful relative directions for talking to drivers, and really just describing things in general.

English	Romanian
left	stânga
right	dreapta
forward	înainte
back	înapoi

When you talk about turning, you’ll need to add la in front of the direction to speak grammatically correct. Take a look at this example now, and we’ve got more coming up.

• După intersecție, ia-o la stânga.

At the intersection, turn left.

3. City Vocabulary and Reference Points

Now we come to the actual studying: the vocabulary. You simply can’t speak accurately about Romanian cities without having a good set of words and phrases. In this section, we’ll give you helpful phrases that you can use to practice prepositions as well. Remember, it’s always good to learn a language in chunks!

centru — city center

• Restaurantul este situat în centrul oraşului.

The restaurant is located in the city center.

cartier de afaceri — business district

• Suntem în mijlocul unui cartier de afaceri.

We’re in the middle of a business district.

marginea orașului — the edge of town

• Locuiește la marginea orașului.

She lives on the edge of town.

centru comercial — shopping center

• De ce ești în spatele unui centru comercial?

Why are you behind a shopping center?

Make sure that you not only have these words memorized, but you also know how to talk about the basics, like landmarks and streets. Cities in Romania tend to have an abundance of statues and churches, so these are good words to know as well.

statuie — statue

• Ne întâlnim la hotel de lângă statuie.

We’ll meet in the hotel next to the statue.

piață — square

• Este o biserică drăguță în piața orașului.

There’s a pretty church in the town square.

stradă — street

• Te uiți în ambele părți când traversezi strada.

Look both ways when you cross the street.

semafor — traffic light / traffic signal

• Fă dreapta la semafor.

Turn right at the traffic light.

oficiu poștal — post office

• Magazinul de bijuterii este chiar lângă oficiul poștal.

The jewelry store is right next to the post office.

bancă — bank

• Nu se află nimic în apropierea băncii.

It’s nowhere near the bank.

biserică — church

• În spatele acelor copaci este o biserică mică.

Behind those trees is a little church.

4. Phrases for Directions in Romanian, Part 1: Asking Others

Two words in Romanian, and you’re most of the way there to asking people for directions: unde este. This literally means “where is,” and you can make hundreds of sentences with these words alone.

I just said that there were only two words, but you’ve doubtlessly also seen unde e, meaning the same thing. What gives?

Actually, nothing. In Romanian, the verb a fi, or “to be,” has a short form (e) and a long form (este). Este is simply considered more formal than e alone.

• Unde e biblioteca?

Where is the library?

• Scuză-mă, dar unde e oficiul poștal?

Excuse me, but where is the post office?

This is good, but you should also be aware that it implies the definite existence of a library or post office. If there’s no library or post office in that area of town, it might be confusing for everybody involved.

That’s why you can also use this sentence pattern:

• E vreun restaurant prin apropiere?

Is there a restaurant nearby?

• E vreun hotel pe aici?

Is there a hotel around here?

Vreun actually means “some” or “any”—the root verb is simply a fi meaning “to be.” However, vreun is only singular, making it a little awkward to try and translate directly into English.

You can also ask about what you’d like to do, and hopefully somebody nearby knows where you can accomplish that task.

• De unde pot cumpăra ceva de băut?

Where can I get something to drink?

• De unde pot lua niște apă, vă rog?

Where can I get some water, please?

5. Part 2: Giving Directions in Romanian

The longer you live or travel in a foreign country, the more your body language will show that you’re comfortable there. At some point, locals may ask you for directions! Let me tell you, that’s a wonderful feeling, and even better when you can give them the correct answer quickly and easily in Romanian.

Of course, these are also phrases that you might get as answers to the questions we went over in the previous section, but it’s a lot more fun to pretend that you’re the expert in Romania.

You should first give them a general idea of the distance they’re dealing with.

• Este foarte aproape.

It’s very close by.

Or:

• Este departe. Doi, poate trei kilometri.

It’s far away. Two, maybe three kilometers.

This will at least give them a ballpark of what to expect.

You should know that there are two ways to tell someone “to turn” in Romanian: luați-o and faceți. There’s no difference, but you’ll probably hear both of them if you travel through the country.

Here are some more phrases you can use:

• Nu este pe strada asta.

It’s not on this street.

• Trebuie să mergeți pe această stradă și apoi faceți la dreapta.

You need to go down this road and then turn right.

• După 100 de metri, faceți la stânga.

After 100 meters, turn left.

• La semafor, faceți la dreapta.

Turn right at the traffic light.

One very important word for you to know is înainte, which means “straight” or “straight ahead.” If you’ve forgotten all else, you can guide a taxi by simply pointing and saying înainte! over and over until you arrive at your destination.

This kind of “Tarzan Romanian,” by the way, can get you far if your mind goes blank and you can’t remember any of your verbs. In a pinch, you can point at a map and say Unde? and it still counts as Romanian practice!

6. Travel Time

Now, a quick section on travel time. This isn’t directions specifically, but it’s used to add extra detail to your question or answer, and really start to stretch your abilities. It’s also very useful information!

Romanians usually get around with buses, taxis, or even by hitching a ride from passing drivers. Therefore, if you’re traveling by foot, they might not be sure about how long it really takes to get to a certain place.

For that reason, it’s a good idea to ask questions like the ones below that can help you get a better idea of the time investment you’re putting in.

• Este departe?

Is it far?

• Cât timp fac dacă merg pe jos?

How long does it take to walk?

• Cât de departe este Piața Victoriei?

How far is Victory Square?

And the answers could be anything. For example: 

• E la 5 minute de mers pe jos.

It’s a five-minute walk.

• Poate dura o oră sau mai mult.

It could take an hour or more.

7. Directions Can Lead You to a Wealth of Language Practice

Whether you’re taking a taxi or hitchhiking, you’ll probably come to a point in your travels when you have the chance to speak to a driver. Obviously, this is a great opportunity to practice your Romanian, but it’s super-easy to be lost for words here.

It turns out that one of the best things you can talk about is how much the city has changed.

Anybody loves talking about the changes in their hometown, and with as much change as Romania has gone through in the last few decades, you’re never going to run out of topics to discuss.

You can start with something like this:

• Cum s-a schimbat orașul de-a lungul anilor?

How has the city changed over the years?

• S-a schimbat foarte mult?

Has it changed a lot?

You don’t need to rely on drivers, either. Ordinary people and business owners likely have a lot to say on the topic, too.

• Ce era aici înainte să faceți hotelul?

What was here before you built the hotel?

They’ll give you plenty of opportunity to practice what you’ve learned so far.

And perhaps talking about past changes seems a little intimidating for your level of Romanian. Not a problem—we can still start conversations with others in an easy way.

All you have to do is ask for directions to places that you already know. Go right out of your hotel and go to a grocery store, and ask how to get to your hotel. They don’t know where you came from! Since you already know the way, you’ll be able to understand more easily.

Then another day, ask at your hotel about how to get to that grocery store! The repetition over multiple days, plus the different approaches to the same topic, will absolutely help you get the material in your memory.

8. Conclusion

What should you do if you’re not in Romania yet?

You’re already doing one of the best things—visiting RomanianPod101.com and reading through the lessons and articles right here.

Another super-easy way to practice directions is to go to Google Maps and switch the interface language to Romanian in the settings. Try this on an incognito tab if you’re worried you won’t be able to change it back afterward.

Challenge yourself, as well. Ask yourself where things are in your own town and see if you can answer in Romanian. 

The more you work on this material, the easier it will be to bring to mind when you need it—and the slower it will fade over time. 

Do you still have questions about directions in Romanian, or are things pretty crystal-clear? Feel free to drop us a comment with any questions or concerns you have on this topic! We look forward to hearing from you.

Happy Romanian learning!

If you know any Romanians, then you might have asked them to teach you a couple of Romanian words in the past.

Most people jump straight to the curse words, which are always good for a laugh.

But there’s another class of words that can have a much better effect. Those are Romanian compliments.

A foreigner who knows how to speak a little Romanian is not a rarity anymore. But someone who knows how to speak Romanian well is hard to come across. How about someone who can pay natural, beautiful compliments in Romanian?

Nearly impossible to find.

However, that can be you. All you have to do is read this article.

Because you can’t just rush into Romanian. It’s different enough from English that some things you’d expect to transfer over simply don’t. This guide is going to help you through those difficulties and toward some truly high-level Romanian.

Table of Contents

1. Don’t Be Perfunctory
2. You Look Great!
3. Nice Work Today!
4. Congratulations!
5. You’re Amazing!
6. Conclusion

1. Don’t Be Perfunctory

First, we’ve got to get real.

It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for romance or if you’re just generally interested in saying something nice.

People can tell when you’re being fake. In fact, many Romanians think that Americans, for example, are superficial for their endless compliments. It’s just a difference in culture, really; in American culture, compliments are sort of a signal of friendship and good faith.

In Romanian, it would come across as strange to compliment people left and right every time you see them.

For that reason, you’ve got to be genuine and mention specific details about the person you wish to compliment. This isn’t difficult to learn—in fact, it just requires that you learn a little bit more advanced vocabulary. That can be a fun challenge in itself!

And what should you expect people to say after you’ve complimented them?

Romanians tend to accept compliments with mersi or mulțumesc, but just as soon might downplay what you’re saying.

You can try the same thing. If someone should happen to tell you this:

• Vorbiți bine limba română.
  “You speak Romanian well!”

Then you can smile and say something polite like this:

• Încă mai fac greșeli.
  “I still make mistakes.”

That’s your Romanian home run. Now, what other types of compliments in Romanian are there?

2. You Look Great!

All right, the first thing that many people want to know is how to give compliments in a flirty situation.

You’re hanging out at a local bar, it’s a sultry summer evening, and someone catches your eye. But they’ve probably gotten a number of come-ons from foreigners that evening. Wouldn’t it be better to open up in Romanian?

First let’s talk about first impressions. When giving romantic compliments, Romanians often start with a general description, if you will.

• Ești frumoasă.
  “You’re beautiful.”
• Ești chipeș.
  “You’re handsome.”
• Ești drăguț.
  “You’re cute.”
• Arăți minunat.
  “You look gorgeous.”

Nothing too crazy, just some simple statements of beauty. The last one can be gender-neutral, though the first two are gender-coded like their English translations.

In our imaginary scenario, we’re of course using the informal tu form. It would sound kind of weird to use the formal dumneavoastră, unless everyone present is middle-aged or older.

Remember, it’s important to be specific when you’re paying compliments, even more so when love may hang in the balance. You don’t want to say what they’ve already been hearing for the entire evening.

• Zâmbești foarte frumos.
  “Your smile is beautiful.”
• Îți stă bine cu jacheta aceea.
  “That jacket looks nice on you.”
• Miroși bine.
  “You smell good.”

We’ll keep this an all-ages article and draw the line there.

If things happen to go well with the person you’re meeting at the bar, romantic phrases in Romanian pretty much all take the form of compliments as well. Here are just two to get your imagination going.

• Eşti cel mai bun lucru din viaţa mea.
  “You’re the best thing in my life.”
• Tu ești totul pentru mine.
  “You’re everything to me.”

It looks like finding a Romanian partner might be the best way to get yourself interested in Romanian compliments!

3. Nice Work Today!

Romanian employers welcome foreign talent, particularly skilled talent. Given that many old Romanians don’t speak very good English, one of the skills you might need is good Romanian!

Should you happen to end up on a Romanian team or overseeing work at the Romanian branch of your company, a couple of well-placed compliments can go a very long way, even if the working language in the office is English.

• Foarte bine!
  “Well done!”
• Bună treabă!
  “Great job!”
• Performanța ta a depășit așteptările mele.
  “Your performance exceeded my expectations.”

After doing business in Romania for a long time, you might be left in charge of the interview process, where you can throw out compliments like this one:

• CV-ul tău este impresionant.
  “Your resume is impressive.”

Using this compliment in Romanian is also a good way to test people, even in your home country. If they put “Romanian” on their CV and don’t know how to react to that phrase, then perhaps it’s time to end the interview!

Sometimes the best compliments come from people who rarely give them. In those cases, a compliment may not even seem like a compliment at first:

• Ține-o tot așa!
  “Keep this up!”

If you hear that one at work, though, it means you’re very much on the right track to success.

How about in a business meeting? With a lot on the line, you may want to stick with English for the first few years at the job. However, if you work on your business Romanian, someday soon you may find yourself coming up with phrases like these:

• Sunt foarte impresionat de produsul vostru, dar avem nevoie de o soluție mai bună.
  “I’m very impressed with your product, but we need a better solution.”

4. Congratulations!

When you’re out with your Romanian friends, they may not be expecting compliments from you.

For one thing, they might not expect you to speak Romanian! Having learned their language is a compliment in itself.

For another, friends generally don’t give each other honest and deep compliments. It’s often more surface-level stuff like the appearance phrases at the beginning of the article. You’ll find more phrases like that in this section, by the way.

First, we’ll look at two that are easy since they’re exactly the same as in English. When you learn cognates like this, though, remember to pronounce them the Romanian way.

• Super!
  “Super!”
• Bravo!
  “Bravo!”
• Minunat!
  “Outstanding!”

When someone’s really been working hard on something, it’s good to let them know that you see it. Imagine you have a friend who’s been in his room writing page after page of essays until late into the night. What might you say to him?

• Lucrezi din greu!
  “You’re working really hard!”
• Știu că va fi minunat.
  “I know it’s going to be great.”

And then, one day, he’s all finished and his essays have been published. It looks like congratulations are in order!

• Felicitări! O meriți.
  “Congratulations! You deserve it.”

5. You’re Amazing!

Everybody has a special skill of some kind. Some people call their skills useless or just hobbies, but no hobby is useless if it brings you enjoyment.

Perhaps your friends or acquaintances are showing off their hobbies, like salsa dancing, poetry writing, or guitar. Romanians tend to be shy performers, so some encouraging compliments are exactly what some people need to step out of their shells.

• Extraordinar!
  “Amazing!”
• Ai talent la scris.
  “You have a way with words.”

Literally, this last sentence translates to “You have talent in writing.” Switch out the hobby as needed!
Now imagine that you’ve stopped in a small restaurant in a small town somewhere in Transylvania. Wouldn’t it be nice to compliment the chef?

• Îmi place ce ați gătit.
  “I love your cooking.”
• E delicios!
  “It’s delicious!”

Finally, you can tell your friends that you simply like hanging out with them. No matter how infrequently it comes up, people like to hear from their friends that they’re appreciated.

• Ești un prieten bun.
  “You’re a good friend.” (to a man)
• Ești o prietenă bună.
  “You’re a good friend.” (to a woman)
• Eu chiar te admir.
  “I really admire you.”

6. Conclusion

There’s something to be said for studying Romanian in the sink-or-swim way. The faster you’re thrown into real situations where you’ve got to speak Romanian to get by, the faster you’ll start speaking something.

But if you get tossed into Romania tomorrow and have to pick up everything as fast as you can, you’ll more than likely form some bad habits and ignore some of the finer points of the Romanian language and culture.

The culture aspect, especially, is going to take a hit as you’ll be mostly focused on language.

The way to avoid overlooking all of the details of culture in Romania is to do your best to consume content tailor-made to show you the grammar, vocabulary, and culture points that you need to know.

Maybe you see it coming already—that’s exactly what you get with RomanianPod101.com. Your language-learning journey has never been easier, so create your free basic lifetime account today and enjoy the fast-track to Romanian success.

In the meantime, did we miss any important compliments or occasions? Don’t hesitate to reach out in the comments section with any questions you still have about Romanian compliments, and we’ll do our best to help you out!

Are you having a bad day in Bucharest? Crabby in Cluj? Testy in Timișoara?

You might want to take a deep breath and let it out.

Or not.

Because sometimes it’s really necessary to put your anger into words and tell others how you really feel.

Or suppose somebody’s harassing you. You don’t want to give them any kind of leeway—you want them gone, and pronto.

So now is the perfect time for you to review (or learn for the first time) how to express your anger in Romanian with some angry words and phrases you can use.

We’re not going to get too explicit here. Learning some mild insults, sentence patterns about anger, and maybe some more serious insults is good enough. Anything you want to express with these phrases is going to come across crystal-clear, guaranteed.

And in this article, in particular, you’ll get to begin exploring the very rich world of Romanian idioms and creative language. Trust us, there’s a whole universe out there!

Table of Contents

1. Discussing Your Angry Feelings
2. Get Out of My Face
3. Don’t Look for Trouble
4. Shut Your Trap
5. Look What You’ve Done
6. Let it All Go
7. Let’s Take This Outside
8. Say You’re Sorry
9. Conclusion

1. Discussing Your Angry Feelings

Let’s begin by talking about emotions. Romanians are quite open and forthright about their emotions, finding it easy to express anger, happiness, and fear. Here are a few perfect phrases for letting someone know you’re angry in Romanian:

• Sunt foarte nervos.
  I feel really angry.
• Sunt atât de nervos pe tine!
  I’m so angry at you!
• Sunt supărat.
  I’m upset.
• Acest lucru este atât de frustrant.
  This is so frustrating.

You may or may not already know that Romanian is an extremely rich language. We mentioned above that there are some great idioms out there, and here are two fantastic examples.

• Îmi sare muștarul!
  My mustard is gonna jump off! (from annoyance)

There’s pretty much no explanation for this one, except that it certainly means you’re very annoyed with the world!

• Mă freci la icre!
  That really rubs my caviar!

“Caviar” is a loose translation; really, we’re talking about fish eggs in general. Imagine that you’re about to dig into a tasty bowl of caviar (a very typical feature at Romanian dinners, by the way), and then somebody puts their bare hand in and rubs it all around.

That would be awful! And what you’re feeling now, imagining such an injustice, is the feeling evoked by this idiom in Romanian.

2. Get Out of My Face

Sometimes politely saying “no” or turning away isn’t enough to get somebody to stop bothering you. If you’ve got an annoying co-worker or you’re being harassed on the street, there are a couple of great things you can say to send a message.

First, another classic Romanian phrase.

• Ura și la gara!
  Hurray! To the train station!

What’s the deal with this non-sequitur? It shows that you don’t care at all, like “Whoopee, now let’s get going.” It’s very important to say it in a sarcastic tone of voice!

• Mă scoți din pepeni.
  You’re taking me out of my watermelons.

And another! This is silly and idiomatic, but the meaning is clear to any Romanian: “You’re making me annoyed and you’d better stop it.” Imagine a watermelon on the vine suddenly very cross with the world when a farmer starts to pick it, and you’ve got some idea of the sentiment.

Of course, there are plenty of other phrases that are less funny, less idiomatic, but still good Romanian—and more importantly, communicate the message in a bitingly clear way.

• Nu vreau să te mai văd pe-aici.
  I don’t want to see you here again.
• Mi-e indiferent.
  I don’t care.

You might think that this translates as “I am indifferent,” but look at the pronouns again. The literal translation is “It is to me all the same.”

• Termină!
  That’s enough!

Termină literally means “End (it)!” This is great for situations where somebody is doing something small and annoying to you, or as we say in English, really “pushing your buttons,” with stupid, repetitive behavior.

• Nu vreau să vorbesc cu tine.
  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

3. Don’t Look for Trouble

If you’re the physically imposing type, you may not have to ever use these phrases. These are for when your “back off” words didn’t quite have the desired effect. The rudeness is turned up here, and when spoken in a harsh tone, the other person is quite likely to understand with haste that they’re making the wrong life decisions.

• Mișcă-te.
  Beat it.

Because of the reflexive verb here, this first phrase has a sense of “get yourself completely out of here.” Unfortunately, that sense can only come across in the crudest of ways in translation.

• Cu mine vorbești?
  Are you talking to me?
• Cine te crezi?
  Who do you think you are?

4. Shut Your Trap

Have you been in an argument recently? If you have, you probably wanted to say things in your own defense, but the other party probably wasn’t having it.

What a terrible, frustrating feeling! You can turn that around on others, though, by simply telling them directly that you don’t want to hear a single thing they have to say.

• Vreau să nu mai vorbești.
  I want you to stop talking.

Starting off here, we have what could be a polite request, but we all know that it probably won’t be. By saying this one in a commanding tone, you’re asserting your authority, and more importantly, your importance in the context of the situation.

• Dispari!
  Get away!

This is actually the same root word as “to shoot,” and so it has the sense of “fly away from here.” That said, it’s actually considered one of the ruder ways to express this particular sentiment in Romanian.

Here a couple more ways to express your anger in Romanian:

• Lasă-mă în pace!
  Leave me alone!
• Taci!
  Shut up!

You may recognize the Latin root here from taciturn. There’s only the barest of similarities here with what English speakers associate that root with. In Romanian, this is a short, terse order, and woe betide anyone who keeps talking afterward.

• Stai jos și taci.
  Sit down and shut up.

5. Look What You’ve Done

Blaming people is always a sure-fire way to get them riled up, so you shouldn’t blame people for things you know they didn’t do unless you’re the one looking for trouble.

• Mă minți.
  You’re lying to me.

Romanian society, in addition to a stronger tie with emotions, also has a lot of honor attached to it. If someone is caught lying, they’re normally not trusted for a while, even within their circle of friends. And if you call someone a liar, then—whether or not they were actually lying—they’re liable to get heated.

• Nu mă asculți.
  You’re not listening to me.
• Ești dus cu pluta.
  You’ve gone on a raft.

6. Let it All Go

Insults and fighting are fun to think about, but nobody really wants things to go that direction. You can do your best here to calm everybody down with some soothing words.

When you’re de-escalating a situation, you should try to make people feel respected and listened to. This is huge with customers—maybe you’re working in a hotel or restaurant with Romanian guests and they’re upset over the service.

• În regulă, las-o mai moale.
  Alright, take it easy.
• Am greșit amândoi.
  We made a mistake.
• Înțeleg, dar trebuie să te calmezi.
  I understand, but you’ve got to calm down.

Remember that telling somebody else to calm down, in most cases, has the opposite effect! You have to really lean into this one, and show them that there’s really no need to be upset.

• Hai să nu ne certăm.
  Let’s not fight.
• Ai dreptate, îmi pare rău.
  You’re right, I’m sorry.
• Hai să uităm totul, bine?
  Let’s forget about it, okay?

7. Let’s Take This Outside

Diplomacy can only really go so far. Even people with the most saintlike patience have a breaking point where they just have to let out their feelings and lash out at the world.

You should, however, be careful. There’s such a huge number of YouTube videos and articles out there about cursing in other languages that it can seem really fun to go and do it yourself once you know how.

But there are few things more dangerous for your social standing. Imagine you’re trying to accept a foreign learner into your social circle but they always take jokes and insults too far. It’ll get very old very fast.

And you didn’t grow up hearing and feeling insults in Romanian! You don’t have that innate sense of what they really mean—so be very careful when using them, and even when joking around with them.

• Pe mă-ta!
  Your mother!

This is an insult all around the world, even though it doesn’t really mean anything literally. The implications, though, are vast and serious. Romanian actually takes things to an entirely different plane of vulgarity and obscenity, particularly with regard to mothers. In the interest of decency, we’re not going to print the really bad stuff.

• Porcule!
  You swine!
• Du-te dracu’!
  Go to hell!
• Rahat ambulant!
  You walking turd!
• Țăranule!
  Peasant!

The divide between city and country is felt rather strongly in Romania, and so to call somebody a peasant implies a great deal of backwardness and lack of education. Few people in Romania are pining for a quiet rural life, that’s for sure.

• Ești un laș.
  You’re a coward.

A couple of sections ago, we mentioned that honesty is important in Romanian society. So is bravery, of course. Calling somebody a coward can never end well, as even people who don’t care much for older notions of “honor” are going to feel that sting.

8. Say You’re Sorry

After walking away from the situation, thinking about it for a while, and calming down, you might have a sinking feeling of dread.

What if you were in the wrong, after all?

You probably were a little bit too forceful with your words, and so the best thing to do here is to be the bigger person and apologize.

Note that this is slightly different than trying to de-escalate a situation because here the bad stuff has already happened. However, a lot of the sentiments are the same.

The basic way to say “I’m sorry” in Romanian is Îmi pare rău. Let’s assume, though, that your foul deeds included all of the awful insults just discussed above. That’s not very forgivable very quickly, and so you’d better up the ante a little bit with sincerity.

• Îmi pare foarte rău.
  I’m very sorry.

Apologies only go so far, of course. Making promises is the next step, where you admit your own wrongs and explain why you’re going to do better in the future.

• Nu trebuia să spun asta.
  I shouldn’t have said that.
• Nu trebuia să țip la tine.
  I shouldn’t have yelled at you.
• Am greșit că am făcut asta.
  I was wrong to do that.
• Nu vreau să fac asta din nou.
  I won’t do that again.
• Am făcut o greșeală teribilă.
  I made a terrible mistake.

Will anybody believe you after the terrible things you said? Maybe. Only time will tell.

9. Conclusion

Here we’ve seen just how many ways there are to start trouble with angry words in Romanian. Even more, we’ve seen that it can lead to scary situations and call for desperate apologies if you overdo it.

Why do that at all?

With RomanianPod101, you can learn to do better. Our lessons teach you the words you really need, in the way that makes the most sense to you.

From articles like this one to our video series and flagship podcast, you’ll get to know the subtle cues in Romanian culture so that you can use language like this on purpose, not by accident.

All of those articles about making cultural faux pas and having natives be offended simply assume that you don’t know the language. By learning to speak Romanian well, you’ll avoid ever causing any trouble with your words.

So really, there’s nothing to be angry about. Try out RomanianPod101 and see what it can bring to you!

What’s your favorite Romanian angry phrase from this article? What are the most common angry phrases in your native language? We look forward to hearing from you in the comments below!

There’s a lot to be said for being able to make good small talk in another language. Conversations can start up and keep going indefinitely with the right people.

But what can you talk about? Perhaps you’ve tried talking about something like the weather, or food, but didn’t get terribly far.

Or perhaps you’ve already met someone in Romania and gotten along with them, but you don’t know what to talk about whenever you hang out.

The truth is, all you really need is this list. For starters, anyway, as you begin learning how to wish someone a happy birthday in Romanian and similar best wishes in Romanian.

Take a look at these different situations. They all represent life events, big or small, that can be the topic of a great conversation. All you need to do is take the initiative and start chatting!

Table of Contents

1. Birthdays
2. Holidays
3. Weddings and Anniversaries
4. Babies
5. Graduation or Academic Success
6. Workplace Success
7. Bad News in General
8. Good News in General
9. Conclusion

1. Birthdays

We can’t pretend for a moment that Romanians don’t celebrate birthdays. They do, and in style. Families celebrate birthdays for their young children as soon as they’re able to, and even into adulthood most people stick with the tradition of getting together and spending time with good friends.

• La mulţi ani!
  Happy Birthday! (Literally: To many years!)

You can also say happy birthday in Romanian this way (it’s something you’ll mostly see on cards):

• Toate urările de bine!
  A Happy Birthday to you!

Or perhaps:

• Zâmbeşte, iubeşte, trăieşte!
  Smile, love, live!

Another way to wish all the best in a very friendly way in Romanian is: să ai un an bun, which literally means “I hope you’ll have a good year.” It refers to all 365 days of the year until that person’s next birthday!

How about a birthday song? Well, to be honest, most young people see English as so trendy that they’d rather just sing Happy Birthday to You in English. And yet, as Romanians, there’s still something much more special about la mulţi ani, and that one’s not going away soon.

For a true Romanian birthday song, check out Cine să trăiască, which means “Who is to live?” Hint: It’s the one who’s having the birthday.

2. Holidays

In this section, you’ll learn holiday greetings in Romanian for the most popular Romanian holidays.

Romania is a relatively religious country, specifically when it comes to Christianity. Other religions don’t get nearly as much prominence in general Romanian culture. And so as part of the classical Western European cultural tradition, Christmas is perhaps the number-one Romanian holiday.

So, ready to learn how to say Merry Christmas in Romanian? Just like in English, there’s one very useful phrase that you can use to say Merry Christmas in Romanian. It might be a little hard to say, but everyone will appreciate your attempt!

• Crăciun fericit!
  Merry Christmas!

And what comes after Christmas?

Why, it’s New Year’s Day, of course! In Romania, despite the cold, people gather together on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day to sing and dance and make merry. You can wish your Romanian friends a happy new year in Romanian with this phrase:

• Să ai un An Nou fericit!
  Happy New Year!

Next is Easter, another popular holiday in Romania that’s often celebrated in a festive way. The tradition of Easter egg hunting is alive and well in Romania, as well as Easter Mass in the churches. To wish someone a Happy Easter, simply say Paşte fericit!

Valentine’s Day is actually celebrated slightly differently in Romania compared to in other countries. It only really entered the cultural consciousness in the last few years as an “international” holiday. Before that, there was a much older cultural holiday known as Dragobete, celebrated on February 24 to mark a day of togetherness as spring arrives.

As for appropriate Valentine’s Day wishes, this is one place where you’d better personalize it! You’ll see the English phrase “Happy Valentine’s Day” out and about (particularly in advertisements), but if you’re dating a Romanian, try to put a little more effort into it than that. There are no set phrases here—just love from the heart.

3. Weddings and Anniversaries

Before a wedding can happen, there’s obviously got to be a proposal and an engagement. Let’s say you’ve found out about the engagement of one of your friends from a post on social media. You can message them and say:

• Felicitări pentru logodnă!
  Congratulations on your engagement!

After that, it’s anyone’s guess as to when the actual wedding ceremony will occur. In Romania, many weddings typically occur in churches, as very formal events. Or at least, for part of it. The rest of the ceremony is almost certain to last well into the night, and you’d better have a good excuse if you want to get any sleep!

Accordingly, one of the “strongest” forms of congratulations in Romanian you can give is usually found at weddings, whether in speeches, in cards, or over a firm handshake.

• • Casă de piatră şi felicitări!
    Warm wishes and congratulations!

• Felicitări mirelui şi miresei pentru fericitul eveniment!
  Congratulations to the bride and groom on their happy union!

If you’ve been invited to the wedding, that’s great. But if you can’t make it, and you’d still like to send the happy couple your greetings, you can use this Romanian wedding congratulations phrase.

• Felicitări pentru unirea destinelor!
  Congratulations on tying the knot!

After a wedding, there’s just one more thing that people tend to celebrate—at least in this realm of life. That’s the anniversary, and the way people say “happy anniversary” in Romanian isn’t much different from how it’s done in English.

• Aniversare frumoasă!
  Happy anniversary!

The concept of the “silver” (argint), or 25-year, and the “gold” (aur), or 50-year, anniversaries are recognized in Romania too.

• Felicitări cu ocazia nunţii de aur!
  Congratulations on your golden anniversary!

4. Babies

A new baby means a lot. It’s a new member of the family, a new mind exploring the world, and a whole new stage of life for the parents.

In contrast to some of the other well-wishes we’ve looked at before, Romanian congratulations for new parents is rather different from English. The typical message of congratulations is more like a little poem or wish.

• Să vă trăiască și să fie sănătos!
  May they live for you, may they be healthy!

That covers it pretty well for talking to people in person. The following two phrases are a little bit less personal, and so they’d be good for cards or emails.

• • Felicitări pentru noul sosit!
    Congratulations on your new arrival!

• Am fost încântaţi să aflăm despre naşterea bebelușului/ bebelușei vostru / voastre.
  We were so happy to hear of the birth of your new baby boy / girl.

5. Graduation or Academic Success

Romania might not have the international prestige of other countries when it comes to universities, but nevertheless, every year thousands of brilliant graduates throw their caps in the air and embark on the next stage of their development.

When it comes to graduates, the type of things you say and the way you say them are likely to be quite different, depending on whether you’re graduating in the same class or if you’re just talking to someone who’s finished their school.

For the first case, you can use this phrase for lightly teasing someone who did really well in their classes.

• Cine este geniul nostru?
  Who’s this genius?

Now, here are some phrases you can include in more formal or less personal messages.

• • Felicitări cu ocazia absolvirii!
    Congratulations on your graduation!

• Felicitări pentru master şi mult noroc în viitor!
  Congratulations on the Master’s degree, and lots of luck in the future!

6. Workplace Success

Do you know anyone who’s up for a promotion? Or maybe looking to switch careers? Generally, in Romania most companies try to maintain a culture of friendship, especially if you’ve been working with the same people for a long time.

If someone you know is going to take a big leap in their professional life, encourage them with these phrases.

• • Îţi urăm noroc şi succes.
    We wish you luck and success.

• O poți face!
  You can do it!

And then, assuming everything all worked out for them, congratulations are in order!

• • Felicitări pentru obţinerea postului!
    Congratulations on your new job!

• Mult noroc pe viitor!
  Best of luck for the future!

7. Bad News in General

We’ll take a brief detour here into something a little less upbeat.

It’s important to know how to appropriately offer condolences in Romanian to others when they’ve met with misfortune in their lives. If you know someone who’s going through a rough patch, you should definitely reach out to them.

However, be careful here. Make sure you mean what you say. Romanians take friendships seriously, and that means you can’t just shoot off a quick text and expect it to be received the same as if you had visited in person with flowers.

In short, be genuine, and if your Romanian isn’t very strong, perhaps stick to English or another shared language if you don’t feel very confident with these phrases yet.

Below are some best wishes in Romanian for when a friend is going through a rough time, to get you started.

1- Funerals

You might think that a Romanian funeral would be an extremely somber occasion. And it’s true; there’s certainly a place for serious formality. However, Romanian funeral traditions can be quite diverse.

At such an occasion, you’ll certainly hear this phrase:

• Dumnezeu să-l odihnească în pace!
  May God rest him in peace!

Although there may be celebrations of life, it’s far, far better to err on the side of being too formal when you give your condoleanţe or “condolences.” Here are some elegant Romanian condolences you can use to comfort others in their time of loss.

• • Gândurile noastre sunt alături de tine în aceste momente dificile.
    Our thoughts are with you during this difficult time.

• • Ne pare foarte rău pentru pierderea suferită.
    We are very sorry to hear of your loss.

• În aceste clipe grele prin care treci să nu uiţi că suntem alături de tine.
  Do not forget that we are with you in this difficult time.

2- Poor Health

Nowadays, it seems like people rarely send get-well cards. But that doesn’t mean they go unappreciated. Whether you’re suffering from a really bad cold or spending a couple of days in the hospital, it always feels great to know if you’re on somebody’s mind.

• • Însănătoşire grabnică!
    Get well soon!

• • Însănătoşirea are nevoie de timp. Îţi doresc tot binele din lume.
    Healing takes time. I wish you all the best.

• • Mă gândesc la tine tot timpul!
    Thinking of you!

• Nu pot să-ți iau suferința, dar sufăr alături de tine.
  I can’t take your pain, but I suffer with you.

Any of these might sound a little cheesy, especially if you show up with a card and a huge bouquet when somebody’s just down with the sniffles. Again, though, it’s better to be thought of as somebody who cares too much than somebody who cares too little.

8. Good News in General

And in order to end on a happy note, let’s look at just a few more phrases you can use for any kind of catch-all good stuff. Becoming familiar with these congratulations in Romanian means that you’ll be able to quickly and fluently praise or encourage people, no matter what they’re facing in life.

• • Minunat!
    Awesome!

• Să fie într-un ceas bun!
  Have a great time!

And finally, here are two more general phrases that are more fitting for a congratulatory email or social media post—they just sound a little stiff when spoken aloud to a close friend.

• • Bine lucrat cu …
    Well done on…

• Îţi urez succes în…
  I wish you success in…

9. Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed learning about Romanian life event messages, and other best wishes in Romanian, with RomanianPod101. Did you learn anything new today? Are there still some life events you want messages for? Let us know in the comments!

It may seem that we’ve covered just about all there is in a person’s life, but as it turns out, the human experience is so much more than just a series of important events.

These represent points where you can hopefully spark a conversation or make some contact with somebody else. What ends up happening a lot of the time is that you’re aware a friend or colleague of yours has something important coming up, and then you try out one of these phrases.

Pleasantly surprised, they start asking you (in Romanian) how you know that saying, and the ball keeps rolling from there. Maybe after that, you’re invited to a wedding or a graduation party. You never know!

After that, will your Romanian be up to the task? Better take a look at the rest of our materials here on RomanianPod101.

Happy studying!

Are you stuck in a Romanian loop? Do you keep learning a little then sliding back down, unable to really understand what people are saying?

Chances are, your vocabulary just isn’t quite there yet.

Vocabulary actually makes a big difference when it comes to comprehension. It may sound obvious, but the truth is that no matter how you’re learning, if you don’t know the words, you don’t know the words.

In this article, just for you, we’ve got one-hundred fantastic Romanian adjectives that you can use to spice up your Romanian. And these are the real deal, complete with real-life example sentences.

One quick read-through of our top Romanian adjectives list and your Romanian will never be the same. Let’s go!

Table of Contents

1. A Very Fast Overview of Romanian Adjectives
2. List of Adjectives in Romanian: Top 100+ Romanian Adjectives
3. Conclusion

1. A Very Fast Overview of Romanian Adjectives

In principle, Romanian adjectives have challenging aspects and easier aspects.

On the one hand, almost all of them do change for gender and number. That means in order to speak grammatically, the adjective form has to “match” with the verb form.

In Romanian grammar, adjectives typically come after the noun they modify. Sometimes you’ll see them in front of the noun, and that means that they’re being emphasized.

Aside from those two Romanian adjectives rules, you don’t have to worry about the crazy case changes that you’d deal with in Slavic languages, and a lot of the most popular Romanian adjectives are already very easy to understand for English speakers!

2. List of Adjectives in Romanian: Top 100+ Romanian Adjectives

Here’s our top Romanian adjectives list; prepare to expand your knowledge of descriptive words in Romanian and speak like a creative native!

1- Describing Colors

To ease you in here, some Romanian color words don’t change for gender or number. Besides, colors are easy stuff. It’s just like kindergarten again!

1. gri – gray

Mi-am luat paltonul gri.
I took my gray overcoat.

2. bleu – light blue

El purta o cravată bleu, foarte draguță.
He was wearing a very nice blue tie.

3. maro – brown; maroon

Este într-o geantă maro, de piele.
It’s in a brown leather bag.

4. lila – light purple; lilac

Rochiile domnișoarelor de onoare sunt lila.
The bridesmaids’ dresses are light purple.

5. vernil – light green; vermilion

De asemenea, aveau și varianta pe vernil.
They also have it in light green.

However, the following adjectives do change.

6. roșu – red

Apasă butonul roșu.
Press the red button.

7. albastru – blue

Nimic altceva decât o mare calmă și un orizont albastru.
Nothing but calm seas and blue horizons.

8. verde – green

Ea vrea doar legume verzi și supă.
She only wants green vegetables and broth.

9. portocaliu – orange

El are tenul portocaliu.
He has an orange tan.

10. violet – purple

Ești îmbrăcată în violet.
You’re wearing purple.

11. alb –­ white

Vin alb, te rog.
White wine, please.

12. negru – black

Am nevoie de o rochie neagră de seară.
I need a black evening dress.

2- Describing Taste

Anybody who doesn’t know about Romanian cuisine is missing out big time. It’s hearty, healthy, and more importantly, runs a whole gamut of flavors—and these are the words you need to describe them.

13. iute – spicy (often used for non-Western food)

Wasabi e cam iute.
Wasabi is pretty spicy.

14. picant – spicy

Acest sos picant este cel mai bine vândut.
This spicy sauce is a bestseller.

15. sărat – salty

Aerul sărat de ocean e foarte coroziv.
The salty ocean air is very corrosive.

16. dulce – sweet

De asemenea și ștrudelul este dulce.
Also, strudel is sweet too.

17. amar – bitter

Laptele de aici e prea amar.
The milk here is too bitter.

18. proaspăt – fresh

Îmi place aerul proaspăt când dorm.
I like fresh air when I sleep.

19. acru– sour

Vreau orez dulce-acrișor.
I want the sweet-and-sour rice.

3- Describing Personality or Traits

Romania isn’t that big of a country, but you’ll find all kinds of people there. Particularly because of its history, the demographics can sometimes be diverse, especially when you contrast the countryside with the city.

20. inteligent – smart; intelligent

Ai procedat inteligent că nu ai zis nimic.
You were smart to keep quiet.

21. tânăr – young

Ești foarte tânăr ca să fii căpitan.
You’re very young to be a captain.

Check this out, though: In Romanian, we don’t say “younger sibling.” We actually say “smaller sibling!”

Mary este sora mai mică a lui Tom.
Mary is Tom’s younger sister.

Eu sunt fratele tău mai mare.
I’m your older brother.

Like any language, Romanian has set phrasal adjectives as well. Several of the most common ones are about people.

22. cu nasul pe sus – full of oneself; stuck-up

Ești prea cu nasul pe sus.
You’re getting a little full of yourself.

23. de încredere – trustworthy

El e omul cel mai de încredere din lume.
He is the most reliable (trustworthy) man in the world.

24. cu capul pe umeri – level-headed

Sunt un tip cu capul pe umeri.
I’m a very level-headed guy.

25. vioi – lively; nimble; brisk; alert

El este foarte vioi după somnul de după-amiază.
He’s very alert after his afternoon nap.

26. amabil – kind

N-am fost prea amabil cu tine.
I haven’t been very kind to you.

27. liniștit – quiet

Eu sunt doar aparent liniștit.
I’m only quiet on the outside.

28. zgomotos – noisy

Sper că gongul meu nu a fost prea zgomotos pentru tine.
I hope my gong wasn’t too loud for you.

29. punctual – punctual

Încearcă să fii mai punctual dimineața.
Try to be more punctual in the morning.

30. harnic – hardworking

Tatăl meu nu era prea harnic.
My father wasn’t very hardworking.

31. dinamic – dynamic; flexible

El e un jucător dinamic și puternic.
He’s a dynamic and powerful player.

32. tăcut – quiet

El a fost tăcut toată ziua.
He was quiet all day long.

4- Describing Appearance (People)

People think differently, and people look different. These are some of the hardest words to circumlocute, since they’re specific concepts that we don’t often say in other ways. Study up!

33. bătrân – old

Sunt prea bătrân pentru treaba asta.
I’m getting too old for this stuff.

We can only use bătrân to refer to old people. Check out the next section for how to describe old things.

34. frumoasă – beautiful

Ești o femeie inteligentă și frumoasă.
You’re a smart and beautiful woman.

35. puternic – strong

Cred că este genul tăcut și puternic.
I think he’s the strong silent type.

36. slab – weak; scrawny

Era slab și avea o mustață mică, blondă.
He was skinny and had a little blonde mustache.

37. urât – ugly

Ai crezut că sunt urât?
Did you think I was ugly?

38. înalt – tall

Tipul înalt este inginer.
The tall guy is an engineer.

39. scurt – short

Ei îi stătea foarte bine cu părul scurt.
She looked great with short hair.

40. străin – foreign

Nu poți să conduci cu un permis de conducere străin.
You can’t drive with a foreign driving license.

5- Describing Appearance (Things)

As mentioned before, you can’t use the same adjectives for people as you do for things. Sometimes, it sounds endearingly mistaken, but other times it sounds insulting!

41. nou – new

Este un pepene galben nou în frigider.
There’s a new melon in the fridge.

42. vechi – old

Nu-ți pierde timpul cu povești vechi.
Don’t waste your time on ancient history.

43. mare – big; great

Prietenul tău e în mare pericol.
Your friend is in great danger.

44. mic – small

Am un mic anunț pentru toată lumea.
I have a little announcement for everyone.

45. îngust – narrow

Patul e îngust, dar nu este nicio problemă.
The bed is narrow, but it’s alright.

46. lung – long

Ai bătut drum lung pentru nimic.
You came a long way for nothing.

47. jos – low

Aici, plafonul este prea jos.
The ceiling here is too low.

48. înalt – high

Purta pantofi roșii cu toc înalt.
She was wearing red high heel shoes.

49. subţire – thin

E o carte destul de subțire.
That’s a pretty thin book.

50. gros – thick

Mașina a fost acoperită de un strat gros de zăpadă.
The car was covered with a thick layer of snow.

51. adânc – deep

Am crezut că e adânc aici.
I thought it was deep here.

52. luminos – bright

Este la fel de luminos ca soarele.
It’s as bright as the sun.

53. întunecos – dim; dark

E un loc singuratic și întunecos.
It’s a dark and lonely place.

54. draguță – nice; lovely

Trebuie să fii drăguță tot timpul.
You have to be nice all the time.

6- Describing Feelings

Do you know enough about feelings in Romanian to be accurate when someone asks you how you are?

55. rușinat – ashamed; embarrassed

El este incredibil de rușinat din cauza acelui lucru.
He’s incredibly ashamed about that thing.

56. fericit – happy

Sunt fericit pentru tine.
I’m happy for you.

57. trist – sad

M-am enervat pentru că eram trist.
I got angry because I was sad.

58. dezamăgit – disappointed

Nu vei fi dezamăgit.
You won’t be disappointed.

59. flămând – hungry

El s-a rătăcit și e obosit și flămând.
He’s lost, tired, and hungry.

60. sete – thirsty

Cred că îți este atât de sete.
You must be so thirsty.

61. speriat – scared

M-am speriat foarte tare când te-am văzut.
I was really scared when I saw you.

62. confuz – confused

Dintr-o dată sunt foarte confuz.
Suddenly I’m very confused.

63. supărat – angry

Eu nu sunt supărat pe nimeni.
I’m not angry with anyone.

64. obosit – sleepy; tired

De ce sunt atât de obosit?
Why am I so sleepy?

7- Describing Weather

This section is just a teaser. To learn much more about describing the weather in Romanian, head over to our separate vocabulary resource page!

65. cald – hot

Pun pariu că o să fie foarte cald.
I bet it’s going to be hot.

66. frig – cold

Este frig și toate ferestrele sunt deschise.
It’s cold and all the windows are open.

67. ploios – rainy

Era prima zi a sezonului ploios.
It was the first day of the rainy season.

68. noros – cloudy

Vremea va fi noroasă, fără precipitații.
The weather will be cloudy, without precipitation.

69. însorit – sunny

În Praga e însorit și sunt 28 de grade.
It’s sunny and 28 degrees in Prague.

70. cețos – foggy; misty

Muntele e mereu cețos.
The mountain is always misty.

8- Describing Touch and Other Qualities

It’s tough to categorize these words. They mostly refer to things, but here they’re about an object’s general attributes, whether permanent or temporary.

71. scump – expensive

E prea scump pentru tine.
It’s too expensive for you.

72. ieftin – cheap

Este mai ieftin decât s-a așteptat.
It is cheaper than he was expecting.

73. umed – wet

E un pic umed iarna.
It’s a little damp (wet) in winter.

74. uscat – dry

Aerul devine uscat din cauza căldurii.
The air gets dry because of the heater.

75. drept – straight

Am mers în linie dreaptă în tot acest timp.
We’ve been walking straight this whole time.

76. pătrat – square

Ataşaţi conectorul mic și pătrat, la imprimantă.
Attach the small square connector to the printer.

77. rotund – circular

Pământul nu e plat, ci rotund.
The earth isn’t flat, it’s round.

78. stricat – broken

Am crezut că televizorul era stricat.
I thought the TV was broken.

79. gol – empty

Biroul era descuiat și gol.
The office was open and empty.

80. plin – full

Frigiderul e deja plin.
The fridge is already full.

9- Describing Quantities

And now just a few words to talk about quantities. Really, knowing these words can go a very long way toward making your speech sound perfectly natural.

81. câteva – a few

Am timp doar pentru câteva întrebări.
I have time for just a few questions.

82. unele – some

Am făcut unele modificări.
I’ve made some changes.

83. multe – many

Acolo sunt multe drumuri și multe mlaștini.
There are lots of roads and lots of swamps there.

84. întreg – whole

Mi-a luat un an întreg să învăț cuvintele.
I spent a whole year learning the words.

10- Describing Time

We’re going to sidestep around all the adverbs here (keep an eye out for a future article) and deal solely with the adjectives related to time. Again, just a small number of words can really help here. Practically every conversation has something to do with time!

85. târziu – later

Nu se va întoarce decât după-amiază, târziu.
He won’t be back until later this afternoon.

86. lent – slow

Te rog, vorbește lent.
Please, speak slowly.

87. rapid – fast

M-am maturizat prea rapid.
I grew up too fast.

88. la timp – on time

Plătești mereu chiria la timp.
You always pay your rent on time.

89. întârziat – delayed

Zborul nostru a fost întârziat.
Our flight has been delayed.

11- Describing Concepts

Rounding out our list here, we have ten more adjectives to describe concepts in the world around us. Don’t try explaining anything in Romanian without knowing these!

90. bun – good

O spun într-un sens bun.
I mean in a good sense.

91. pe cinste – great

Cred că vei fi o mamă pe cinste.
I think you’re going to be a great mom.

92. rău – bad

Alcoolul are un efect rău asupra mea.
Alcohol has a bad effect on me.

93. important – important

Este important să celebrezi cultura strămoșilor tăi.
It’s important that you celebrate the culture of your ancestors.

94. faimoasă – famous

E faimos pentru băuturile lui fine.
It’s famous for its fine liquor.

95. diferit – different

E ceva diferit la camera asta.
There’s something different about this room.

96. dificil – difficult

Va fi mai dificil decât credeai.
It’s going to be more difficult than you thought.

97. uşor – easy

Este ușor să treacă frontiera.
It’s easy to cross the border.

98. identic – identical

El poartă o cămașă identică.
He is wearing an identical shirt.

99. greşit – wrong

M-am săturat să fac toate lucrurile greșit.
I’m tired of doing everything wrong.

100. interesat – interesting

Am primit un telefon interesant.
I got an interesting phone call.

3. Conclusion

So yeah, vocabulary is important. But memorizing huge word lists by themselves isn’t the best choice.

The best way is to read lots of examples for the words you learn, and pay attention to how they’re really used in real Romanian.

You might have heard that you can get really far on only a few-hundred words—but the crucial thing is that you know them really well. If you can recognize all of them, but can’t use them in a speaking situation, it’ll be really frustrating!

It also helps a lot if you learn words in one format first, like an article, and then encounter them again naturally in another context, like a podcast. So study this list and the other resources at RomanianPod101.com, and wait for fluency to be yours!

Before you go, let us know in the comments what new popular Romanian adjectives you learned today from our list of the best Romanian adjectives! Are there any Romanian adjectives you still want to know? We look forward to hearing from you!

Author: Yassir Sahnoun is a HubSpot certified content strategist, copywriter and polyglot who works with language learning companies. He helps companies attract sales using content strategy, copywriting, blogging, email marketing & more.

Some people doubted that Netflix would ever come to Romania. Not a lot of people in the “international media” market think of that European country too much, sadly.

But Netflix made a calculated decision when it finally created Netflix Romania.

First, Romanians have some of the fastest and cheapest internet in the world. They’ve been streaming high-definition videos for years.

Second, they love to watch TV and movies from all over the world. It’s not uncommon to find young Romanians speaking perfect English that they learned from the Cartoon Network and, more recently, the Disney Channel. All in all, the decision to make the program Netflix Romania seems like a smart decision.

Romania, though, isn’t an English-speaking country yet. And you can use Netflix as it exists in Romania right now to help you take major steps toward using Romanian just as well as locals do, both with Netflix Romania subtitles and without. After reading more about some of the best shows on Netflix, we think you’ll be interested in downloading the Romanian Netflix app to improve your language skills!

Table of Contents

1. Why You Need to Watch Kids’ Romanian Shows on Netflix
2. Ten Wonderful Things on Netflix and What They Can Do for Your Romanian
3. American Films in Romanian – Just for You
4. Conclusion

1. Why You Need to Watch Kids’ Romanian Shows on Netflix

When you’re a worldwide company with as many things to take care of as Netflix, you end up with a lot of responsibility to everyone. You’ve got to balance the demands of the consumers with what the media companies are actually willing to offer you – and those don’t always line up.

So we’re gonna come right out and say it. Right now, there are no original Netflix Romanian shows; there’s nothing on Netflix originally produced in Romania for Romanians.

If that’s the case, why do a Romanian Netflix download at all?

Because it’s better than you can imagine.

It’s not always easy to get immersed in the media of another culture. Different people have different tastes when it comes to movies and shows.

If you watch a show dubbed in Romanian, you get a couple of perks. First, the sound is often clearer, since the dubs were recorded under controlled studio conditions instead of on set. Second, the narrative structure itself might be a little more clear to you—with cultural references coming from your own background, instead of somebody else’s.

Truth be told, when I began to write about these Romanian Netflix shows, I expected to have to paint them in an unnaturally good light. But the truth is, there really is a lot of great stuff for younger audiences dubbed in Romanian, and I found myself actually getting into the story of Llama Llama by the end!

That said, let’s take a look at some of the best Romanian Netflix shows, as well as the older stuff. Read through our list to find the perfect Romanian series on Netflix for you, and begin to learn Romanian on Netflix!

2. Ten Wonderful Things on Netflix and What They Can Do for Your Romanian

1- Carmen Sandiego

Immediately attention-grabbing as one of the most beautifully drawn animations on this list of Romanian shows on Netflix, Carmen Sandiego is as close as you can get to a kids’ crime thriller.

The titular master thief Carmen is a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing only from the evil villains’ association V.I.L.E. The show is whip-smart, with enough nifty spy gadgets to make anybody want to start sneaking around museums at night.

One interesting thing is that a main supporting character speaks Romanian with a heavy French accent, providing a unique listening challenge.

And there are awfully few young adult shows dealing with crime and police investigations—so if you want vocabulary that prepares you for native Romanian cop shows, this is a perfect stepping stone for you.

Interested? Give this Romanian Netflix series a try!

2- My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Unless you’ve been totally oblivious to media trends in the last few years, you’ve heard about this show (which we’ll abbreviate, as the fans do, to MLP:FiM here). It’s about a kingdom of magical ponies, their friendships, and their struggles.

As a firmly fantasy-based genre, MLP:FiM will expose you to exactly the right amount of “fantasy” and “medieval” words. You never realize how much people still talk about queens, castles, and magic these days until you find yourself in a conversation where those are the only things you don’t know how to say. Add some flair to your Romanian conversations with this Netflix Romanian-dubbed show.

3- Young Justice

The DC superhero universe has always had a huge number of heroes that seem to get about the same level of screen time—less than the A-listers, but still enough to get comic books and shows. That’s exactly what’s going on in Young Justice, one of the most-loved Romanian TV shows on Netflix that originally came out in 2010. These younger sidekick-type folks do their best to establish themselves as real heroes, while at the same time balancing their crime-fighting and secret-identity lives.

Superheroes love to quip at one another, especially when they’re all teaming up for the same goal. The fast-paced wordplay here is a great way to hone your Romanian listening speed, especially because the voice actors speak fast in order to match up with the animation. Watch this Romanian Netflix series without subtitles and see how much you pick up!

4- Alexa & Katie

Netflix does a lot of unconventional TV shows, particularly when it comes to shows revolving around younger people. So that’s why in early 2018, their next big “groundbreaking” show followed a format that caused some people to double-take.

Alexa & Katie is a classic high school sitcom aimed at kids who haven’t quite made it to high school yet themselves. The overarching plot is that Alexa has cancer—but it’s not a sad show by any means. She and her best friend Katie are relentlessly optimistic and goofy about life in general. A high school sitcom is the perfect thing for understanding how Romanian teenagers talk. It must be said, though, that this Romanian Netflix series is squeaky-clean and won’t teach you any of the words that they don’t say around their parents.

5- Free Rein (Frâu liber)

Wouldn’t you know it, the pun in the title translates well into Romanian too!

This Netflix Romania 2017 show features a heartwarming story of a young American girl who visits England and becomes enamored with a local horse barn and riding school. While there, she learns to ride well, to get over her disagreements with other girls her age, and even to conquer her feelings for a boy at the school.

Most people really like this show for its positive moral messages, diverse cast, and strong female leads. If you’re seriously into horse riding yourself, you may have a couple of quibbles about the way the sport is depicted, but overall you’ll still definitely enjoy this Netflix Romanian-dubbed show.

As for the vocabulary, well, equestrianism isn’t something most people talk about every day. Just by watching a couple episodes of this, though, you’ll pick up enough to be able to hold your own in a conversation with any Romanian horse enthusiast.

Horse-lovers, make your way to the Romanian Netflix sign in now and start bingeing!

6- LEGO Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu

Are you looking for action? Go no further than LEGO Ninjago, where you can awaken your inner eight-year-old and enter a world of ninjas, snakes, and ancient butt-kicking martial arts.

You might shy away at first from a show based on toys, but the characters and the surprisingly heavy plotlines are guaranteed to hold your interest. And with six seasons of material to work with, you won’t run out of action for a long time.

Language-wise, this series contains a little less dialogue and a little more action than others. But even so, you’ll get exposed to words and phrases related to fighting, winning, and knowing when to pick your battles.

7- The Dragon Prince (Prințul Dragon)

Similar to My Little Pony, The Dragon Prince also takes place in a magical fantasy world. However, that’s where the similarities end. One of the showrunners, Aaron Ehasz, also worked on the critically acclaimed Avatar: The Last Airbender, so that should give you a bit of a feeling about what to expect from this Romanian TV Netflix series.

It takes place in a world of strange creatures, epic lore backstories, and continents waging war via the elements. A band of two princes and an assassin join forces to bring peace to the world—but is that possible, or even desirable? Nothing is black and white.

Since it’s a show for more mature audiences (think ages 11+ as opposed to 8+), you’ll get a different level of “high-fantasy” vocabulary from The Dragon Prince.

8- Prince of Peoria (Prințul Peoriei)

You won’t be able to watch both Alexa & Katie and Prince of Peoria without drawing comparisons. Both are about ordinary American high school life, and one is dominated by female friendships while the other is dominated by male friendships.

The unique twist with Prince of Peoria, though, is that a rich foreign prince from a fictional land can’t wait to experience real American teenage life in Peoria, Illinois.

You might think that two high school sitcoms would be too many—but really, watching both of them means you actually have to study less.

Both have totally different characters, but similar situations. That means the “ordinary American high school” vocabulary in Romanian will end up repeating itself naturally, soaking into your mind without you having to do anything but watch. For easy Romanian language practice, head to the Romanian Netflix sign in and start watching!

9- The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants (Marile Aventuri ale Căpitanului Chilot)

Whether you loved the book series in the early 2000s or got started with the movie a few years ago, fans of the Captain Underpants franchise will find that this TV series adaptation fits perfectly into the universe.

For those who aren’t familiar, it’s an irreverent slapstick comedy about two boys who use a hypnosis ring to turn their principal into a superhero known as Captain Underpants, named for his outfit consisting entirely of tighty-whities and a red cape.

The short runtime of each episode means that the jokes never get stale, and the animation team does a fantastic job showing just how creative kids can be with their own imaginations. And as you might have guessed, there’s a lot of toilet humor. Ever wanted to learn how to talk about farts in Romanian? Now’s your chance.

10- Llama Llama (Lama Lama)

Maybe the high-fantasy adventures or fast-talking quips from the other series on this list aren’t quite doing it for you. Or perhaps you’d like to ease yourself into the Romanian language with something simple, structured, and yet still entertaining. Enter Llama Llama.

Every episode has an important lesson for the young Llama Llama (first name Llama, last name Llama) as well as his friends. But it’s not preachy at all.

It’s a simple show with good characters and honest discussions about how to be a better person—or animal—by respecting others and taking care of yourself. The lessons are given in straightforward language, while at the same time being natural enough to keep even intermediate learners on their toes linguistically.

3. American Films in Romanian – Just for You

One quick note to give you yet another reason to check out Romanian Netflix: The movie catalog.

So far we’ve talked exclusively about TV shows, which is all fine and dandy.

But this very moment, Netflix has classic Dreamworks films with Romanian audio tracks available in many different regions. Puss in Boots, How to Train your Dragon, Megamind, Kung Fu Panda, and more—they’re all there. And if you grew up watching these movies, watching them again with Romanian dubbing is a fantastic way to associate long-term meaning with the new Romanian words.

By the way, you may ask yourself, “What about using Netflix Romania subtitles?” Well, they can be useful, but on the whole it’s a lot better to just use dubbing. Sometimes the Netflix Romania subtitles are poorly translated, and they usually omit a lot of the nuance of the actual dialogue in order to fit on the screen.

The one good way to study with subtitles is to simply turn off the sound and see how well you can follow. That way, you really get your reading speed into gear and probably end up picking up new words and phrases along the way.

Netflix Audio Descriptions: A Secret Sauce for the Future

Well, it’s not that secret. There’s a button right down at the bottom of the screen. An audio description is just another audio track where there’s a narrator talking about what’s happening on-screen.

Why would you want that when watching Romanian movies on Netflix? First off, if you’re vision-impaired in some way, it’s a great way to follow more of the action.

But even if you’re not, the extra audio is amazing for learning (as long as the audio is in Romanian). You get to hear a native speaker describe what’s going on, from the smallest details to the biggest plot twists. That’s amazing for getting a native-like sense of how to talk about different events as they happen.

Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, there are no such audio tracks in Romanian on Netflix—just ordinary dialogue tracks.

And yet there’s an option to search for them. That indicates that Netflix’s Romanian branch is interested in offering them in the future (remember that Netflix in Romania only launched in mid-2017). When they do, hopefully you’ll be the first to use them to turbocharge your Romanian listening.

4. Conclusion

You can get a lot of mileage out of studying Romanian with Romanian Netflix series, especially considering the relatively low Romanian Netflix price. But it can’t be a magic bullet.

Ideally, you’d have a mix of solid study time and “chill-out” time while watching movies and TV both on and off Netflix.

Because seeing words and sentence structures in a natural context that you studied already is a great way to really remember them for the future. Haven’t you ever learned the name of some actor and then suddenly heard about him everywhere? Not easy to forget after that.

As long as you keep up your Romanian studies, that feeling never has to go away.

So, reader, which of these Netflix Romania shows do you want to start watching first, and why? What about Romanian movies on Netflix? Let us know in the comments!

Author: Yassir Sahnoun is a HubSpot certified content strategist, copywriter and polyglot who works with language learning companies. He helps companies attract sales using content strategy, copywriting, blogging, email marketing & more.