Romanian

**Romanian** (or **Daco-Romanian**; obsolete spellings **Rumanian**, **Roumanian**; self-designation: *română*, *limba română* [ˈlimba roˈmɨnə] ([1] listen) ("the Romanian language") or *românește* (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova. It has official status in Romania, Republic of Moldova, the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia and in the autonomous Mount Athos in Greece.

Romanian speakers are scattered across many other countries, notably Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Bulgaria, the United States, Canada, Israel,Russia, Portugal, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

 File:713px-EU-Romania.svg.png

## Resources

1: No official Memrise course, but community-made ones do exist

#### Romanian Frequency Dictionary for Learners

This Romanian frequency dictionary covers about 99% of all spoken Romanian, and 95% of all written Romanian.

In short:

* the 10.000 most used Romanian words listed by frequency
* frequency as part of speech ( most used nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc..)

* Sorted by alphabetical order

## Input Material

### **Podcasts**

* Romanian with Amanda - (A1 -> A2) with transcripts available on patreon
* Podcastul de limba romana - (A2 -> B1) with transcripts freely available
* Romana cu Camelia - (A2 -> B1) over 100 episodes 30 minutes each

### **Movies and TV**

#### Youtube channels

* Imi place sa mananc - The comfiest romania youtube channel
* https://www.youtube.com/@zaiafet - History and variety channel
* https://www.youtube.com/@CatalinMoise - History channel
* https://www.youtube.com/c/HaiHuiindoi - Travel blog channel

#### Subtitles

* Subscene
* Findsubtitles
* Subtitrari

#### TV stations

* Online stream of most Romanian TV stations
* Ce spun românii - Romanian version of family feud

### **Music**

* **O-Zone (Dance, Pop) - They sang the Numa Numa song, oficially named as "Dragostea din Tei" ("The Love from the Linden Tree")**
* **Smiley (Dance)**
* **Hi-Q (Dance)**
* **Angela Similea (Easy listening)**
* **Holograf (Pop-Rock)**
* **Directia 5 (Pop-Rock)**
* **Iris (Classic Rock)**
* **Voltaj (Hard Rock)**
* **Parazitii (Hip hop)**
* **BUG Mafia (Hip hop)**
* **Suie Paparude (Electronic)**
* **Vama Veche (Soft Rock)**
* **Vita de Vie (Alternative Rock)**
* **Negura Bunget (Atmospheric Black Metal)**

### **Brotips**

* Non-english characters: ă (pronounced like the ”uh” in ”uhhmm...”), ș (”sh” in ”shell”), ț ("ts" in "cats"; online, many write tz instead, when not using a Romanian keyboard, but is considered wrong to spell it as such), î â (both sound the same, no english equivalent; try saying English "e", then pull only your tongue back like when saying "ooooh!" - Romanian "u". î is used at the beginning of words, â everywhere else). Most other characters sound similar to the way they sound in Italian or Spanish, and flat.
* Many words are borrowed from English, or from other languages English also borrowed from, with the same spelling and pronunciation (albeit with a different accent sometimes): show (as in "TV show", not "to show"), talk-show, ok, progres, summit, club, fan-club, business, brand, broker, dealer, manager, cash, trend, sponsor, hobby, fast-food, designer etc.
* 3 genders that affect pronouns, agreement and articulation via suffixes: the neuter obeys masculine rules when singular and feminine rules when plural, e.g. focul-focurile (the fire - the fires), caietul-caietele (notebook), pixul-pixurile (pen). This is why words must be learned with their plurals.
* There are different ways to say numbers, with varying formality degrees (especially 11-19): e.g. 15 - cincisprezece ("five towards ten"), cinsprezece, cinșpe' . The latter ones are abbreviations of the first.
* If German, don't say "Prost!" to Romanians (it means "stupid"), unless you actually want to say that someone is stupid.
* Romanians tend to get inventive when swearing. If you want to understand swears don't just learn the translations for "fuck" and "shit". "Să te ia dracu'!" doesn't mean that they want Dracula to marry you or to pick you up and fly you away like a happy gay little bat. It means, "May the devil take you!".
* Talking to Romanians online is very helpful for learning various phrases, but keep in mind that most of them do not use diacritics when typing, which makes figuring out and remembering how some words are spelled harder. Most blogs and news sites use them, though.

### **Others**

* Uz-Translations