Street Conversation X

Looking forward to sing in front of a live audience, I decided to talk to a girl about my hobbies.

 

Sergiu: Înţelegi engleza?

Do you understand English?

Girl: Da, da, da.

Yes, yes, yes.

Sergiu: O vorbeşti?

Do you speak it?

Girl: Da.

Yes.

Sergiu: Cânţi?

Do you sing?

Girl: Să* câ..să cânt?

To si..to sing?

Sergiu: La voce. (I was wrong here, because the correct way is “cu vocea”)

With the voice.

Girl: A, nu, nu, nu, nu. Nu nu nu prea**.

Ah, no, no, no, no. Not not not really.

*Să is a word that you don’t really have in English used to form a verb mood that you don’t really have in English…the subjunctive. Speaking of really…

**Prea is a word that we may translate as “really” here in this context but it more literally means “too” as in “too dumb” (prea prost).

Grammar X

Verbs

 

A înțelege and a cânta are two verbs that we will conjugate today. If you want to work on your Romanian pronunciation, you have to start singing our songs!

Înțeleg	I understand
Înțelegi	You understand
Înțelege	He, she understands
Înțelegem	We understand
Înțelegeți	You understand
Înțeleg	They understand

 

Cânt	I sing
Cânți	You sing
Cântă	He, she sings
Cântăm	We sing
Cântați	You sing
Cântă	They sing

Nouns

 

The gender of nouns (masculine, feminine or neuter) should be learnt by heart and more importantly with the help of exposure. The general rules are that nouns ending in u are masculine and nouns ending in ă are feminine.

Nouns that end in a are always feminine.

There is no real rule for neuter nouns, however it is important to know that neuter nouns are in fact just nouns that are masculine in singular form and feminine in plural form.

Today we will learn how to form the plural in nouns that end with a consonant and nouns that end in the vowel a. The first column has the noun with the gender in parenthesis and the second column will show the plural of this noun.

Domn (m)	Domni
Moment (n)	Momente
Magazin (n)	Magazine
Calculator (n)	Calculatoare
Aeroport (n)	Aeroporturi
Parc (n)	Parcuri

Nouns that end with the vowel a are not that many. This is due to the fact that most of them are recent words borrowed from Turkish. Words like pijama and basma will add a le ending to show the plural. There are a few special words that end in ea, like stea, cafea, saltea. These will remove the a in the end before adding le. So the plural for these words is stele, cafele, saltele.

All of this applies to the nominative and accusative cases of the noun. The nominative case refers to the noun representing the main subject of the sentence while the accusative case refers to the noun being the object of the sentence.

Below I have written two sentences. The noun aeroportul is the subject  of the first sentence, thus we say we are using the nominative case. In the second sentence the optional pronoun eu is in its nominative case while the noun aeroportul this time is the object of the sentence, thus the noun is in its accusative case.

Aeroportul este aici. (Eu) caut aeroportul.

The airport is here. I am looking for the airport.

Dialogue X

 

A: Înțelegi româna?

Do you understand Romanian?

B: Înțeleg puțin.

I understand a little.

A: O vorbești?

Do you speak it?

B: Nu o vorbesc.

I don’t speak it.

A: Cânți?

Do you sing?

B: Da, dar nu pot dansa.

Yes, but I can’t dance.

Key vocabulary X

A dansa – To dance

Voce (f.) – Voice (Pl. Voci)

Nu prea – Not really

Pot – I can

Dar – But

Calculator (n.) – Computer (Pl. Calculatoare)

A se juca pe calculator – To play on the computer

A se juca fotbal, baschet – To play football, basketball

Sport (n.) – Sport (Pl. Sporturi)

A putea – The verb can

Obicei (n.) – Habit (Pl. Obiceiuri)

What’s your talent? Tell us about it in Romanian!

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