Introduction and how to learn Romanian
Welcome to our website! Here you will find plenty of lessons to learn Romanian online. With our Romanian language lessons you can find yourself fluent in no-time!
Before we begin with the lessons, you will need to know how each lesson is structured. Let’s explain it in a few words! Basically, each lesson is split into four categories: Street Conversation, Grammar, Dialogue and Key Vocabulary.
The grammar part will be kept simple as the emphasis we place is on speaking and understanding the language. With time, you will know all of the rules, by intuition, so you won’t have to learn one million of them.
Dialogue and Street Conversation differ because Dialogue is just a script I wrote which I record with close friends in slow speech, while the other is a recording I made with real natives on the street. What I say is scripted, however the replies I get are not.
Finally, Key Vocabulary will have all the words used in the dialogue, conversation and grammar sections. We also add a few extra words that you can implement in your studies.
How to use the website
For a lot of people, the first time coming to a website like this can be very confusing. There are a lot of lessons right now, so we completely understand how it is. Because of this, we want to support you and we want you to know that we’re here for you in your language learning journey.
You can learn one lesson a day, however it really depends on your needs. If you think you can learn 2 lessons a day, then go ahead. We actually encourage you not to just stop at one lesson a day. We also encourage you to learn based on your own needs.
Maybe you don’t need to learn how to say your name and just want to be understood in a restaurant. That means you should start with lesson 5 and continue with lessons 13, 14 and so on. You can go back later and learn how to say your name, but the key thing to remember is that only you know your priorities, how much you want to learn and how fast you want to do it.
We also have a search function on the menu, so anytime you are looking for something specific, click on the yellow button next to “Search”, type what you need and hit the Enter button.
We hope you enjoy your stay here! 🙂
Street Conversation I
For my first lesson, I decided to go to the market and say hi to a woman who was obviously waiting for someone to come talk to her.
Sergiu: Bună dimineaţa!
Good morning!
Market girl: Bună dimineaţa!
Good morning!
Sergiu: Cum eşti?
How are you?
Market Girl: Bine.
Fine.
Sergiu: Ok. Şi eu sunt bine.
Ok. I’m fine too.
Grammar I
Verbs and personal pronouns
Everything hard starts somewere and your journey starts with the simplest of verbs. The verb a fi (to be)
| Eu sunt | I am |
| Tu eşti | You are |
| El, ea este | He, she is |
| Noi suntem | We are |
| Voi sunteţi | You are |
| Ei, ele sunt | They are |
Ei and ele for they? That’s because we make the distinction between “they” when we are talking about boys and “they” when we are talking about girls.
Now you know your first verb and the personal pronouns we use. In Romanian you don’t have to put the personal pronoun before the verb, it’s usually omitted and should only be used to show stress on the person doing the action.
Dialogue I
Sergiu: Bună dimineaţa!
Good morning!
Daniela (Simple Romanian Host): Bună dimineaţa! Cum eşti?
Good morning! How are you?
Sergiu: Sunt bine, tu?
I’m fine, you?
Daniela: Şi eu sunt bine.
I’m fine too. (Şi means “too” here, but it usually means “and” ).
Key Vocabulary I
Mulțumesc – Thank you
Sunt foarte bine, mulțumesc – I am very fine, thank you
Salut – Hi
Bună ziua – Good day
Bună seara – Good evening
Noapte bună – Good night
„Good day” when not used as a greeting would in fact be zi bună in Romanian. “Good evening” would be seară bună and lastly “good night” would be noapte bună.
[wpi_designer_button text=’Next Lesson’ link=’http://simpleromanian.com/learn-romanian-2′ target=’self’]
Poll
Before you go on to the next lessons, please take the time to cast a vote on this very important question 😉
[democracy id=”1″]
🙂
i want to learn more Romanian languages.
I only know one Romanian language. Romanian 😛
Well, there are also Aromanian (sometimes called Macedo-Romanian),Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian
I understand. For further information, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian are extinct while Aromanian is a rare language that I personally don’t speak or teach.
My guess is she meant “Romance languages.”
Very good. There was only a small amount to absorb which is a good thing.
Lots of material is interesting but hard to take in at once.
Salut!
Sunt fericit. Limba română este foarte frumoasa. Învățat și vreau să vorbesc bine.
Salut! The correct way to say your last sentence is: “Vreau să o învăț și să o vorbesc bine”.
We are also happy that you stopped by 🙂
Ce mai faci?
Bine, tu? 🙂
Sunt foarte bine, multumesc
Progress is further helped firstly as Romanian and English historically derive many words from a common Latin source and secondly they both employ an expanding modern vocabulary of terms, many of which have their origin in contemporary English.
cool stuff, thanks for the effort, I wish you have audio with the sentences, that would be perfect. Romanian language has those tough to pronounce letters ….. English E= A and english I=E etc.
thanks again
Thank you! I used to have pronunciation files on each lesson and I deleted them because I wasn’t content with the quality. Plus it sounded odd just reading dialogues by myself. However, I am currently on the lookout for Romanian natives that will help me with reading the lines…so I would say that in two weeks tops there are going to be 29 or 30 lessons and all of them will be equipped with audio.
I am confused about correct pronunciation of words beginning with e. I have heard on some sites they are pronounced with a y sound. For example “este” sounds like “yeste”. On this site there is no y sound. Which is correct ? Or are both correct depending on region ?
Good that you noticed! They are actually both correct, in fact in these pronunciation files you are hearing the ultra-correct pronunciation of the words. But because everybody say yeste and not este, I will soon update the audio to reflect normal speech.
Thank you
Is the use of “y” before “e” a dialectal thing? I listen to a lot of Elena Gheorge and I don’t recall her using y before e. Or does the standard Romanian pronunciation use y before e?
Can you show us an example of Elena Gheorghe’s work? The use of “y” before “e” is standard.
Are the sound clips above supposed to work? They don’t for me.
They work for me in Mozilla Firefox.
For some reason they don’t work in Internet Explorer 11.
i want to learn Romanian
I want to learn Romanian, however I’m very scared because I’m already learning many Latin languages and I keep on confusing them all the time. I think I’ll wait a little bit more before starting Romanian! 🙂
i love the romanian language its just hard to learn to spell
Thanks for the lesson
Simple and clear
Buna !
I’m french and I started learning romanian a few months ago when I had a romanian girlfriend, butI stopped.
I started again like 10 days ago and your website is a very good ressource to go along with my current method, especially the videos.
Mersi !
Bună seră
Învăț limba română dar e greu pentru mine. Mă bucur să ai facut aceste lecții.
My first contact with Romania was in 1967 when I was reading a book of a romanian author, it was “The 25 hour” by Constantin Virgil Georgiu; then I thought that I would like it to learn the romanian language, but I could not get any material to learn it at that time, I only got a travel- phrases book. Now this website seems very interesting and useful!
For the poll “Why do YOU want to learn Romanian?” please add:
Because my wife is Romanian!
Great site, thanks for your hard work and dedication.
I would choose “I have Romanian friends” in that case :))
Thanks for commenting, Mark. I’m glad I could help out.
Hi all, new to the website.
I’m italian and my wife is romanian, I’m looking around to learn some Romanian to better understand her and her relatives.
I really appreciate the hard work and effots you guys put into this, I’m going to dig more and try to learn from this resource.
I’ll make sure to give you some feedback too!.
Have a nice day, and Merry Xmas from Italy!
Thank you Marco, have a happy New Year as well!!
Looking forward for your critique.
Sergiu
It’s hard to find Romanian learning assets on the Internet. (At least for English speakers.) Your site is a stroke of good fortune! Well-organized and thought-out.
thank you for the website. I am engaged with a romanian so I would like to be able to converse with my in laws. Your website is very helpful. Multumesc!
I live near Govanhill, the Roumanian quarter of Glasgow. I would like to learn the language so that I can understand what my new neighbours are saying.
Merci