Dialogue

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Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

Intro
Antoni: Do adjectives have a gender in Romanian?
Anna: And does noun gender influence adjectives?
Antoni: At RomanianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Mark Lee and Bianca Balan are walking past a car dealership. Mark Lee says, "I want a new car."
Mark Lee: Vreau o mașină nouă.
Dialogue
Mark Lee: Vreau o mașină nouă.
Bianca Bălan: Și eu. Vreau o mașină roșie.
Antoni: Once more with the English translation.
Mark Lee: Vreau o mașină nouă.
Antoni: "I want a new car."
Bianca Bălan: Și eu. Vreau o mașină roșie.
Antoni: "Me too. I want a red car."

Lesson focus
Antoni: The question we are looking at in this lesson is: Do adjectives have a gender in Romanian? And the answer is a very definite yes! In fact, adjectives in Romanian can change according to gender, number, and case. In this lesson, though, we will be focusing exclusively on how adjectives change in accordance with gender. Adjectives must always agree with the noun in gender and number! In this lesson's starting dialogue, for instance, the speakers talk about a car. In Romanian, the noun for "car" is feminine and it sounds like this:
Anna: [NORMAL] o mașină [SLOWLY] o mașină
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: When the noun is feminine, the adjective must be too. In this case, let's look at the adjective meaning "red." This is what the feminine inflection sounds like in Romanian:
Anna: [NORMAL] roșie [SLOWLY] roșie
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: Therefore, when we talk about a red car in Romanian, we say:
Anna: [NORMAL] o mașină roșie [SLOWLY] o mașină roșie
[PAUSE 4 SECONDS]
Antoni: Now, let's change the noun and use a masculine noun instead. The Romanian word for "pen" is:
Anna: [NORMAL] un stilou [SLOWLY] un stilou
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: and it is masculine. What happens, then, if we want to add an adjective? Well, we have to change the adjective to the masculine inflection, of course. Let's try the adjective for "red." The masculine inflection for "red" in Romanian is:
Anna: [NORMAL] roșu [SLOWLY] roșu
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: This means that, if we want to talk about a red pen in Romanian, we say:
Anna: [NORMAL] un stilou roșu [SLOWLY] un stilou roșu
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: Not too difficult! There is still one gender we have not yet discussed and that is the neuter. Fortunately, it's also rather easy to learn because the neuter always takes the masculine form in the singular. Look at the word "red" in Romanian, for instance. The neuter form is the same as the masculine form and sounds like this:
Anna: roșu.
Antoni: We can see then that the Romanian adjective for "red" has two endings. These are:
Anna: roșu
Antoni: for the masculine and neuter genders and
Anna: roșie
Antoni: for the feminine ending. This is true of most Romanian adjectives, but there are also many that only have one ending for both masculine and feminine. Consider the Romanian word for "green," which sounds like this:
Anna: [NORMAL] verde [SLOWLY] verde
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: Because it only has one ending, we can talk about a green car by saying:
Anna: [NORMAL] o mașină verde [SLOWLY] o mașină verde
[PAUSE 4 SECONDS]
Antoni: or we can talk about a green pen by saying:
Anna: [NORMAL] un stilou verde [SLOWLY] un stilou verde
[PAUSE 4 SECONDS]
Antoni: Could you hear how we didn't have to change the ending of the adjective at all? Pretty simple, right?
Let's look at a few other examples that clearly show the distinction between masculine and feminine adjectives. For instance, the masculine adjective for "round" is:
Anna: [NORMAL] rotund [SLOWLY] rotund
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: whereas the feminine is:
Anna: [NORMAL] rotundă [SLOWLY] rotundă
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: The masculine for "tall" is:
Anna: [NORMAL] înalt [SLOWLY] înalt
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: while the feminine inflection is:
Anna: [NORMAL] înaltă [SLOWLY] înaltă
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: Similarly the masculine for "black" is:
Anna: [NORMAL] negru [SLOWLY] negru
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: while the feminine form is:
Anna: [NORMAL] neagră [SLOWLY] neagră
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: All of these feminine inflections ended with the sound:
Anna: ă
Antoni: This is very often the case with the feminine inflection of adjectives. However, if the masculine adjective ends in:
Anna: i
Antoni: Then, the feminine inflection of the adjective ends with:
Anna: e
Antoni: Consider the masculine adjective for "old," which is:
Anna: [NORMAL] vechi [SLOWLY]vechi
Antoni: The feminine inflection of this adjective is:
Anna: [NORMAL] veche [SLOWLY] veche
Antoni: This is the general rule for feminine adjective endings, but sometimes the endings are a little bit more complicated. Consider the masculine adjective for "heavy," for instance. It sounds like this:
Anna: [NORMAL] greoi [SLOWLY] greoi
Antoni: And you spell it G-R-E-O-I. But the feminine inflection is this:
Anna: [NORMAL] greoaie [SLOWLY] greoaie
Antoni: You spell that G-R-E-O-A-I-E. So, the rule is still true that the feminine ending changes to:
Anna: e
Antoni: from the masculine
Anna: i
Antoni: but there are a few extra letters you have to add in before it! Don't worry, these aren't very common and you will soon learn which adjectives are like this.
Antoni: Let's end this focus with something simple. In the case of an adjective like:
Anna: mare
Antoni: which means "big," if you recall, you will not have to worry about the feminine ending because it is the same as the masculine! Phew. There are quite a few of those, luckily.
[Summary]
Antoni: In summary, then, we talked about how adjectives in Romanian have a gender. They can either have two endings or one ending. Most adjectives have two endings: one for the masculine and one for the feminine. The neuter follows the same patterns as the masculine in the singular. It behaves the same way as the feminine form in the plural, but we are now talking about numbers and that is a lesson for another day!
Practice Section
Antoni: Let's review. Respond to the prompts by speaking aloud. Then, repeat after the native speaker, focusing on pronunciation. Do you remember how Mark Lee says "I want a new car?"
[BEEP. PAUSE 3 SECONDS.]
Anna as Mark Lee: Vreau o mașină nouă.
Antoni: Listen again and repeat.
Anna as Mark Lee: Vreau o mașină nouă.
[BEEP. PAUSE 5 SECONDS.]
Anna as Mark Lee: Vreau o mașină nouă.
Antoni: And do you remember how Bianca Balan says "Me too. I want a red car?"
[BEEP. PAUSE 5 SECONDS.]
Anna as Bianca Balan: Și eu. Vreau o mașină roșie.
Antoni: Listen again and repeat.
Anna as Bianca Balan: Și eu. Vreau o mașină roșie.
[BEEP. PAUSE 5 SECONDS.]
Anna as Bianca Balan: Și eu. Vreau o mașină roșie.
Expansion/Contrast (Optional)
Antoni: As you continue with your study of Romanian, you will find that there are many inflections of adjectives. They inflect for gender, case, and number, after all! In this lesson, we have only talked about gender. What you will notice with the inflections as you learn more and more is that they do follow a pattern. You will become more familiar with these patterns and they will soon begin to feel quite natural. In the meantime, if you are starting out, it is also very easy to look up the declensions of an adjective in the dictionary. In Romanian, the word for "declensions" is:
Anna: declinări.
Antoni: One last thing to keep in mind is that adjectives in Romanian always come after the noun. If you place an adjective in front of a noun, it is because you want to emphasize that noun. For instance, if we talk about a big car in Romanian, we say:
Anna: [NORMAL] o mașină mare [SLOWLY] o mașină mare
[PAUSE 4 SECONDS]
Antoni: But if we want to say, "What a big car!," the adjective must come first, like this:
Anna: [NORMAL] Mare mașină! [SLOWLY] Mare mașină!
[PAUSE 3 SECONDS]
Antoni: Remember—the adjective for "big" in Romanian has the same ending for all the genders, by the way. It's one of the easier ones! Keep at it and you will start to recognize all the patterns, guaranteed!

Outro
Antoni: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them!
Anna: La revedere.
Antoni: See you soon!
Credits: Anna (Romanian, Romania), Antoni (English, synthetic voice)

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