According to Dictionary.com, ‘pronunciation’ is: the act or result of producing the sounds of speech, including articulation, stress, and intonation, often with reference to some standard of correctness or acceptability.
Paying attention to your Romanian pronunciation not your own essentially means you’re learning to ditch most of your foreign accent. This is very important if you want to be a successful communicator in any language. Getting Romanian pronunciation right may seem like a daunting task at the onset, but it need not be!
If you want to master the Romanian language and become fluent, you must learn the Romanian alphabet letters first. And you need physical worksheets to practice on.
This eBook is a MUST-HAVE for all Romanian learning beginners!
Download your FREE Romanian practice sheets PDF today and learn the Romanian language in no time!
This is a must-have guide for absolute beginners
It is well known that Romanian pronunciation is one of the easiest aspects of the language. Romanian is a language where words are rarely difficult to pronounce or to hear because the vast majority of Romanian words end in vowels. Proper pronunciation in the Romanian language is important for a number of reasons. You want to be able to sound like a native speaker, and you want others to be able to understand your words.
Just as grammar is important, proper Romanian pronunciation is vital to knowing the language. It also helps you when you are listening to speakers of the language, so you can understand what it is that they are saying and so you can process it more quickly. Because native speakers speak very quickly, understanding pronunciation and being able to hear it will improve your grasp of what is happening with speakers around you.
One thing to note is that Romanian sounds are very similar to Italian, with some slight Slavic influences.
Sounds and Syllables
Romanian sounds are made of a combination of consonants, vowels, and semivowels. The Romanian alphabet has twenty consonants (b, c, d, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, ș, t, ț, v, w, x, y, z) four semivowels (-e, -i, -o, -u) and seven vowels (a, e, i, o, u, ă, î).
Vowels can make syllables by themselves. Consonants need a vowel in order to create a syllable. For example, the word apă (“water”) is made up of two syllables, a- and -pă. The first syllable is a, formed from one vowel and the second syllable is pă, a consonant followed by a vowel.
Semivowels are sounds that form diphthongs and triphthongs together with vowels. Below is a guide to how to pronounce Romanian letters
|
Letter |
Pronunciation |
As in the English word |
| a | ah | father |
| e | eh | bet |
| i | ee | beet |
| o | oh | pole |
| u | oo | pool |
| ă | uh | but |
| î, â | ew | Two letters, but same sound. |
| ţ | ts | Pittsburg |
| ş | sh | shower |
| c | ch before an “i” or “e” | beach |
| ch | k | bike |
| g | j before an “i” or “e” | juice |
| gh | g | bag |
Diphthongs and Triphthongs
Diphthongs are syllables composed of a vowel and a semivowel. There are two types of diphthongs according to the placement of the semivowel in the syllable. The semivowel can come as a first or second sound.
For examples:
(semivowel + vowel)—ea: cafea (“coffee”)
(vowel+ semivowel)- au: auriu (“golden”)
Triphthongs are a succession of sounds. These sounds are two semivowels and a vowel and always come in this order: semivowel + vowel + semivowel
For examples:
- oai: franţuzoaică(“French woman”)
- ioa: creioane (“pencils”)
Stress
The best way to remember the stress mechanism is to listen to native speakers, but aside from that, we could say that comparing the words in English and Romanian could help you find your way through it. If we consider the word naval and “naval,” meaning in both cases “pertaining to ships,” the stress is on the first “-a” in the two-syllable English word. However, in the Romanian word, it falls on the second -a. In Romanian, the stress can fall on any syllable of the word. The stress is important because it can be the only difference between two words spelled identically but with different grammatical forms.
For example:
copii (“copies”) – copii (“children”)
Proper pronunciation is important, very important. Some say it’s even more important than getting the grammar perfectly correct! Why would this be?
If communicating with native speakers matters to you when learning Romanian, you need to be understood when you talk, and you need to be able to understand the native speakers. After all, without understanding, the purpose of language is null and void! In order to be understood, you need to be able to speak the language in a way that is familiar to native speakers, or at least recognizable by them.
When learning to speak a new language, you will learn that the more you progress the more intricate it becomes! For instance, almost every language has vocabulary that may look the same in writing, but because the words are pronounced differently, they have very different meanings. This means that you may say a word in Romanian, and because of a slight change in pronunciation, the meaning of the word changes completely. Understandably, this can make for pretty embarrassing situations! At worst, your mispronounced Romanian will sound garbled to a native speaker.
Knowing the nuances of how a word or letter is pronounced will also help you to understand spoken Romanian better.
No worries if this feels hard; you’re learning, and with our help at RomanianPod101, you will not have a problem with mispronunciation if you follow our advice and examples carefully.
Not pronouncing Romanian or any other language correctly can lead to a lot of frustration because you’re unable to express what you mean, and you will not be understood correctly. Even if you have total knowledge of Romanian grammar, and can write it like a native, not knowing how to speak it properly will only make for very frustrating communication all around.
Even if you’re only a beginner, it is possible to speak any language correctly. This way, you are bound to make a good impression on native speakers, and when you’re more fluent, you will be likely to garner a lot more respect than a fumbling newbie speaker who doesn’t care much for correct pronunciation.
People often have a lot of patience for someone who learns to speak a new language, but native speakers are more likely to address you and engage with you in conversation if you work hard on your accent. This is simply because you’ll be able to understand one another! So, proficiency in pronunciation can mean the difference between having none or plenty of Romanian speaking friends. It will also serve you well in the workplace, and make you popular with your Romanian speaking managers and employers or employees.
Learning to speak Romanian properly is also a sign of respect for not only the language, but also the native speakers and their customs.
RomanianPod101 has plenty of resources to help you with your Romanian pronunciation, so be sure to make thorough use of our recordings with native Romanian speakers. These are available not only to demonstrate to you how you should pronounce Romanian vocabulary, but also sentences and dialogues. Watch and listen to these over and over again to train your ear, and watch the teacher’s mouth as she speaks in the video lessons. Then, copy the speech as best you can. Later, you can record yourself to hear if you sound like a native speaker and compare yourself with native speakers. Great for self-motivation.
And see that you’re copying the correct lip and mouth movements.
Use the Romanian dictionary provided by RomanianPod101 to look up words and listen to the audio pronunciation. This will go a long way towards giving you an idea of how to pronounce a word or letter correctly.
Make an effort to often listen to Romanian music and recorded books, and watch plenty of Romanian movies and/or TV shows in Romanian. This will train your ear to the language, and you’ll be surprised how quickly you pick up the accent. Remember, this is the way we learned to speak when we were young - mostly by listening to the adults talking, and repeating what they say!
Repetition of the same thing may be boring, but in learning a new language, you’re creating new pathways in your brain. For these to remain and become habitual, you will need to repeat the correct pronunciation often.
Don’t be shy to address them in Romanian! Ask them to correct you when you make a pronunciation mistake - this is a wonderful way to practice and learn the language first-hand, and also to make new friends.
If you’re a serious student and don’t know where to meet native Romanian speakers, consider investing in RomanianPod101’s Premium PLUS plan. This means you will have your own native Romanian teacher available to practice your pronunciation with, and much more! Send recordings of yourself speaking Romanian and get feedback from your Romanian teacher.
If you want to master the Romanian language and become fluent, you must learn the Romanian alphabet letters first. And you need physical worksheets to practice on.
This eBook is a MUST-HAVE for all Romanian learning beginners!
Download your FREE Romanian practice sheets PDF today and learn the Romanian language in no time!
This is a must-have guide for absolute beginners
Log in with Your Free Lifetime Account and we’ll give you an instructional Romanian PDF that covers the letters of the alphabet, practice worksheets, and a quiz to test yourself with… — absolutely FREE!
Let’s now take a closer look at how studying Romanian lessons in PDF format can help you reach your dream in up to half the time of normal video or audio lessons!
Learning Romanian through PDF lessons can dramatically reduce your data use. Once a lesson or tool is downloaded, you can then access it offline via your computer or smartphone any time or place regardless of Internet access. And once you’ve downloaded the Romanian lessons in PDF format, you can actually access them faster than logging in and trying to do so via a live site. So not only will learning Romanian using PDF lessons save minutes on your data plan—it will save you some significant time as well as the lessons add up!
Sometimes, a tiny smartphone screen just isn’t adequate, especially when you are trying to learn something new. The great thing about PDF lessons, tools or files is that they can be quickly printed and taken anywhere after you download them. In fact, printing out Romanian lessons in PDF format can actually save you time when compared to going through the material on a smartphone with a small screen—even with the extra printing time!
Studying video or audio lessons online is a great way to learn a language because students can play and rewind sections as many times as needed until the lesson is mastered. But when you review the same Romanian lessons again in PDF format, an incredible thing happens: your retention dramatically improves! Thanks to Time Spaced Repetition, seeing the information again in written format helps reinforce the information in your mind and improves both retention and recall. The benefits of learning Romanian using PDF lessons quickly add up to significant time savings for you, your data plan, and your dream of learning a new language!
Learning to read and write is a must for all beginners. Although you get video lessons on how to write in Romanian at RomanianPod101, you’ll still need physical worksheets to practice on. That’s why you’re getting this printable tutorial PDFs as a gift.
This guide would be more helpful if you had audio files linked to the individual letters, the diphthongs and triphthongs. Without them, students have to resort to other sources in order to listen a proper pronunciation, since English sounds can't quite describe the Romanian ones.
Bună Adrián,
Mulţumesc for your feedback! It is always great to hear our students' opinions about our materials.
We actually have a whole lesson series about pronunciation with audios as well. You can access it here: https://www.romanianpod101.com/lesson-library/how-to-sound-like-a-native-romanian-pronunciation/
Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any questions! 😇
Kind regards,
Levente
Team RomanianPod101.com