Nearly every country has a holiday dedicated to dragoste (love) and romance. In the U.S. and other Western nations, this manifests as Valentine’s Day; in South Korea, there are twelve separate love days celebrated each year! And in Romania, there is the traditional celebration of Dragobete Day (often called Romanian Valentine’s Day). This is a unique holiday centered on romance and the beginning of primăvară (spring). In this article, you’ll learn how this holiday got started, what celebrations look like today, and more useful Dragobete information. 1. What is Dragobete? In Romania, February 24 marks the unofficial beginning of spring as well as the annual love celebration called Dragobete. This traditional holiday lost its... Show more

The Romanian language never makes it onto the lists of the world’s easiest languages. Instead, it’s treated as a curiosity because of its rather different grammatical features compared to other languages in the same family. After all, it’s certainly rather different from Spanish and Portuguese! As an English-speaker, you might be wondering: "Is it hard to learn Romanian?"  While aspects of the language may be difficult when you first start out, think of the possibilities that open up if you do learn it. Romania offers more adventure to some people than the more frequently visited countries in Western Europe. It’s a great destination, and since you’ll get Moldovan basically for free, learning Romanian opens a good number of doors. ... Show more

Would you call yourself a perfectionist? Language-learning doesn’t really suit itself to perfectionism. Languages change in so many ways all the time, and there’s really no way to define "perfect" speech. On the flip side, though, you do have to pay attention to some rules in order to avoid the most common mistakes Romanian-learners make. Trying to come up with Romanian—written or spoken—without being aware of the rules of the language is a surefire way to ingrain bad habits and make your communication with natives less effective. In this article, you’ll see an overview of the classic learner mistakes in Romanian, as well as what you can do to stay far away from them. Table of Contents Make the Right Sounds ... Show more

There’s a shortcut to Romanian fluency. Well, not really. But there’s a great framework that can get you having comfortable conversations very quickly. You see, people tend to have the same conversations with language-learners over and over. You introduce yourself, say where you’re from, and then probably ask why they’re learning that particular language. And questions, naturally, are a big part of that. The whole conversation is a big back-and-forth of questions and answers. If you want to get yourself speaking automatically in conversations, then you should take a look at the most common Romanian questions and answers. You’ll impress your conversation partner, and with that comes great motivation to keep pushing yourself to... Show more

Human beings are excellent at noticing patterns. Have you ever seen shapes in the clouds, or noticed "faces" in electrical sockets? That’s your subconscious pattern-matching system working around the clock. That said, if you went and looked at some text in, say, Waray-Waray (a language of the Philippines), you’d probably give up trying to understand it after a short while. In Romanian, though, you start noticing patterns. For example, you may see words that look an awful lot like words in English (or other European languages you might be familiar with). That effect becomes ten times more powerful when you can compare each Romanian sentence structure and pattern to an English translation. You start to quickly see where the... Show more

Are you the type to show off? Maybe you met someone who went to Europe for a trip and you casually ask them, “Did you learn much of the local language?” This is really just an excuse for you to show off your Romanian skills. That’s fine. We get it. There’s always a danger, though, that that person happens to have Romanian grandparents or experience living in a Romanian-speaking environment through an internship or similar. If you want to impress, you need to bring your A-game. And that means using the correct and accurate adverb in Romanian for whatever you need to describe, providing flavor in just the right place. Table of Contents Adverbs In Degrees Telling The Truth and Making Predictions Adverbs of Location ... Show more

Romanian verb conjugations are way, way easier than they might appear to be. That's good, too—because they look pretty bad! If you want to learn to speak good Romanian, you definitely can't ignore the conjugations. English doesn't have a lot of conjugations, but you still notice the mistake if someone says "He go to the library." Multiply that by the numerous Romanian conjugations, and it can seem, at first glance, like the language is a minefield just waiting to trip you up.In reality, though, you just need to learn a couple of key patterns. Quite a few of the conjugations are rarely used these days, and in casual conversations, you'll hear the same conjugations over and over again. Table of Contents What Do You Need to... Show more

A sentence without a verb is like a bird without a nest. It wants to fly around and express itself, but without a foundation to rely upon, it's limited. How's your knowledge of Romanian verbs? We understand—the grammar is no joke. You don't really want to learn verbs when you could be enjoying Romanian TV shows and music. But if you never end up paying attention to Romanian verbs, you'll find yourself lost for words all the time. Advanced learners need to learn the grammatical nuances, as well as just the plain old nuances of the lexicon itself. Beginner learners need to nail down a foundation of basic words for everyday use.Enough chit-chat. In this article, you’re going to learn 100 Romanian verbs, every one of them shown... Show more

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... Show more

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... Show more