Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Notes

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Salut, and welcome to Romanian Survival Phrases, brought to you by RomanianPod101.com
This course is designed to equip you with the language skills and knowledge to enable you to get the most out of your visit to Romania. You'll be surprised at how far a little Romanian will go.
Now before we jump in, remember to stop by RomanianPod101.com.
There, you’ll find the accompanying PDF lesson notes and additional info in the post. If you stop by, be sure to leave us a comment.
Usually Romanians make an effort to speak English with foreigners. Even so, for many different reasons, you might not catch all or any of their words. Either their English is not good enough or, if Romanian is the language they’re using, their native speed might be a problem for you. When this happens, asking the speaker to say it again can make the difference between understanding a crucial piece of information and spending the rest of the day trying to figure out what it was. The following phrase will not only give you a better sense of the language, but will also help you tune your ear!
BODY
In Romanian, "Repeat, please!" is Repetați, vă rog!
Let’s break it down:
(slow) Re-pe-tați vă rog!
Once more:
Repetați vă rog!
The first word repetați is translated as “repeat.”
(slow) Re-pe-tați.
Repetați.
After this comes an expression that we’ve mentioned before, meaning “please.”
(slow) Vă rog.
Vă rog.
All together, that’s
(slow) Re-pe-tați vă rog!
Repetați vă rog!
If you want to address someone informally, just change the last syllable of the word repetați and swap vă with te.
Now the phrase becomes Repetă te rog!
Let’s break it down:
(slow) Re-pe-tă te rog!
Repetă te rog!
You can also say “Say it again, please.”:
Mai spuneți o dată vă rog.
Let’s break it down:
(slow) Mai spu-neți o da-tă vă rog.
Once more:
Mai spuneți o dată vă rog.
The first word, mai, can be translated as “more”or “again.”
Next we have spuneți, a form of the verb that means “to tell” or “to say.”
(slow) Spu-neți.
Spuneți.
After this comes o dată. Literally translated, o means “one” and dată means “date.”But in this sentence, the English equivalent is “one time”.
(slow) O da-tă.
O dată.
And last we have the expression vă rog meaning “please”. Remember that the word vă rog is a form of the verb that in English means “to pray” or “to ask.”
The whole sentence is
(slow) Mai spu-neți o da-tă vă rog.
Mai spuneți o dată vă rog.
If we change the last syllable of the word spuneți and we replace vă with te, the sentence becomes informal.
(slow) Mai spu-ne o da-tă te rog.
Mai spune o dată te rog.
When the reason for not understanding is the speed, you may want to say “Slow down your speech, please”. In Romanian:
Vorbiți mai rar, vă rog.
(slow) Vor-biți mai rar vă rog.
Vorbiți mai rar vă rog.
The first word, vorbiți, is a form of the verb that means “to talk.”
Next we have mai rar,
mai means “again” or “more” and
rar means “rare.”
The two words put together mean “slowly”.
(slow) Mai rar.
Mai rar.
Finally we have vă rog.
Let’s hear the whole phrase one more time:
Vorbiți mai rar vă rog.
Now let’s make it informal by replacing vă with te and by changing the last syllable of the verb vorbiți:
Vorbește mai rar te rog.
(slow) Vor-beș-te mai rar te rog.
Vorbește mai rar te rog.
REVIEW
Okay, to close out this lesson, we'd like you to practice what you've just learned. I'll provide you with the English equivalent of the phrase and you're responsible for saying it aloud. You have a few seconds before I give you the answer, so mult noroc , which means "Good luck!" in Romanian.
“Repeat, please.” (formal)
(3 sec) Repetați, vă rog.
(slow) Re-pe-tați, vă rog.
Repetați, vă rog.
“Repeat, please.” (informal)
(3 sec)Repetă, te rog.
(slow) Re-pe-tă, te rog
Repetă, te rog
“Say again, please.”(formal)
(3 sec) Mai spuneți o dată, vă rog.
(slow) Mai spu-neți o da-tă, vă rog.
Mai spuneți o dată vă rog.
“Say again, please.” (informal)
(3 sec) Mai spune o dată, te rog.
(slow) Mai spu-ne o da-tă, te rog.
Mai spune o dată te rog.
“Slow down your speech, please.” (formal)
(3 sec) Vorbiți mai rar, vă rog.
(slow) Vor-biți mai rar, vă rog.
Vorbiți mai rar, vă rog.
“Slow down your speech, please.” (informal)
(3 sec) Vorbește mai rar, te rog.
(slow) Vor-beș-te mai rar, te rog.
Vorbește mai rar, te rog.

Outro

All right, that's all for this lesson!
Remember to stop by RomanianPod101.com and pick up the accompanying PDF lesson notes.
If you stop by, be sure to leave us a comment.
Pa!

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