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.
Now it’s time for some useful Survival Phrases for when you have time to shop in Romanian stores.
BODY
The first thing you say to a shop clerk is “excuse me”. You can say either mă scuzaţi or îmi cer scuze, which are both apology phrases that we learned in our previous lessons. After that you will want to ask: “How much is this?”
or literally “How much cost this?”
In Romanian, we say
Cât costă acesta? if the thing we are interested in is masculine and
Cât costă aceasta? for feminine.
Let’s break the first question down:
(slow) Cât cos-tă a-ces-ta?
Once more:
Cât costă acesta?
Cât means “how much.”
(slow) Cât.
Cât.
Costă is a present form of the verb that means “to cost”
(slow) Cos-tă.
Costă.
At the end of the question we have acesta, which is translated as “this”. This is used when the item you are asking about is masculine. If the item were feminine, you would use this question instead...
Cât costă aceasta?
(slow) Cât co-stă a-cea-sta?
Once more:
Cât costă aceasta?
Aceasta is the feminine form of “this.”
Imagine that you find a clothing stand in a local market and want to buy a shirt. To attract the attention of the stall keeper, say mă scuzaţi, then ask how much the shirt costs. The question will sound like this:
Mă scuzaţi, cât costă cămaşa aceasta?
Let’s break it down:
(slow) Mă scu-zaţi, cât cos-tă că-ma-şa a-ceas-ta?
And again at natural speed:
Mă scuzaţi cât costă cămaşa aceasta?
After mă scuzaţi, we have cât which means “how much”.
Next comes the word costă, a present tense form of the verb that is translated as “to cost”.
(slow) Cos-tă.
Costă.
After that we have camasa, which is the word for “shirt”
(slow) Cămaşa.
Cămaşa.
The last word is aceasta, which is the feminine form of the word “this”.
(slow) A-ceas-ta.
Aceasta.
The whole question is
Mă scuzaţi cât costă cămaşa aceasta?
As we mentioned in the previous lesson, if the thing you want to buy is masculine, replace the word aceasta with acesta.
Another way of asking the price in Romanian is:
La ce preţ este? translated in English as “What is the price?”
Let’s break that down:
(slow) La ce preţ es-te?
Once more:
La ce preţ este?
In this question, la means “at”.
Ce is translated as “what” and preţ means “price”.
Let’s hear these three words again.
(slow) La ce preţ?
And one more time at natural speed.
La ce preţ?
Este is the present form of the verb that means “to be.”
(slow) Es-te.
Este.
La ce preț este? literally means “At what price is?”
La ce preţ este această cămaşă? means “How much money is this shirt?”.
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.
“How much is this?” (masculine item)
(3 sec)Cât costă acesta?
(slow) Cât cos-tă a-ces-ta?
Cât costă acesta?
“How much is this?” (feminine item)
(3 sec) Cât costă aceasta?
(slow) Cât cos-tă a-ceas-ta?
Cât costă aceasta?
“Excuse me, how much is this shirt?”
(3 sec) Mă scuzaţi cât costă cămaşa aceasta?
(slow) Mă scu-zaţi, cât cos-tă că-ma-şa a-ceas-ta?
Mă scuzaţi cât costă cămaşa aceasta?
“What is the price?”
(3 sec) La ce preţ este?
(slow) La ce preţ es-te?
La ce preţ este?

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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