Street Conversation IV
I was always curious what people like about Romania and today I found out.
Sergiu: Îţi place România?
Do you like Romania?
Market Girl: Da.
Yes.
Sergiu: Ce-ţi place?
What do you like.
Market Girl: Cluju’*
Cluj.
Sergiu: Mersi. Da, Cluju’-i** foarte fain***.
Thanks. Yes, Cluj is very beautiful.
*Regional version of ‘Clujul’.
**Regional version of ‘este’.
***Regional version of ‘frumos’.
In Transylvania there are a few differences to how we conjugate the verb ‘to be’ .
Instead of Eu/ei/ele sunt, we can say Io/ei/ele îs.
Instead of El/ea este, we can say El/ea îi.
Suntem, sunteți can be pronounced as sânteți and sântem.
But they look ugly, do NOT talk like that! 😉
Grammar IV
Personal Pronouns
Today we will have to learn the dative personal pronouns as they will allow us to express ourselves when talking about things we like. These have 2 forms, long and short.
| Mie, îmi | To me |
| Ție, îți | To you |
| Lui, îi and ei, îi | To him, to her |
| Nouă, ne | To us |
| Vouă, vă | To you |
| Lor, le | To them |
Verbs
The verb a plăcea (to like) heavily uses what you just learned a second ago.
| (Mie) îmi place | I like |
| (Ție) îți place | You like |
Homework: Fill in the blanks for the missing rows (Hint: the word place does not change).
Adjectives
The main rule you need to know for adjectives is that they change according to gender and number.
In English you say that you are strong no matter if you are two guys, two girls, one guy one girl or one guy and one girl. In Romanian we have the following forms:
One guy can say: Sunt puternic. (Masculine singular form)
One girl can say: Sunt puternică. (Feminine singular form)
One or more guys along with 0 or more girls can say: Suntem puternici. (Masculine plural form)
Two or more girls can say: Suntem puternice. (Feminine plural form)
Ă, i and e are the main additions when you need to change the adjective. So whenever you see an adjective it’s most likely going to add ă to form feminine singular, i to form masculine plural and e to form feminine plural.
In the key vocabulary section, you can find the masculine singular form of the adjective first and in the parenthesis you will find the other three forms.
Dialogue IV
Sergiu: Îți place România?
Do you like Romania?
Daniela: Da. Îmi place.
Yes. I like it.
Sergiu: Ce îți place?
What do you like?
Daniela: Mâncarea românească.
Romanian food.
Sergiu: Da, e* gustoasă.
Yes, it’s tasty.
*E is the short form of the present tense third person of the verb to be, the Romanian este (is).
Key Vocabulary IV
Da – Yes
Foarte – Very
Mersi – Thanks
Fain – Beautiful (Fem. Sg. Faină) (Masc. Pl. Faini) (Fem. Pl. Faine) (Transylvanian word)
Ce – What
Mâncare – Food (mâncarea means the food)
Românesc – Romanian (Românească is the feminine form)(Românești is the plural form used both for feminine and masculine objects)
Gustos – Tasty (Fem. Sg. Gustoasă) (Masc. Pl. Gustoși) (Fem.Pl. Gustoase)
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Merci beaucoup pour votre site. J’apprécie le concept :
– les dialogues de rue permettent d’avoir la vraie vitesse d’emblée, la diction naturelle, et je peux le repasser autant que désiré, si j’entends mal.
– les bandes-sons sont placées avant les textes : c’est appréciable, car il est très souhaitable d’entrer dans une langue par le son uniquement : en effet, la lecture imprime des plis dans la mémoire, liés à la langue d’origine, qui gênent ensuite durablement la perception du son comme il est (surtout s’il est inhabituel dans la langue d’origine), et la lecture fausse la mémoire du mot.
Il faudrait pour l’éviter que, les premières semaines, on s’interdise complètement la lecture ; les enfants apprennent sans ce handicap. Mais c’est presque impossible sur la plupart des méthodes de langues. Merci donc.
À ce sujet, je voudrais suggérer pour la suite que les textes des bandes-son soient offerts d’abord dans leur seule traduction. Idéalement, le texte roumain pourrait être caché dans une boite de dialogue : un clic ouvrirait la boite de dialogue dans la page.
– Les insertions de grammaire sont précieuses ; personnellement je n’utilise pas les rappels de vocabulaire (qui doivent vous demander un certain travail pourtant) car les mémoriser dans les phrases est bien plus économique et les renforce.
J’espère que ce retour vous conviendra, et merci encore pour cette vitrine très réussie.
Thanks a lot for your website, which I found through a Reddit advice. I do appreciate the concept:
– street dialogues give us immediately the real speed of talking, the natural way ; and we can hear it as many times as desired if we like to.
– audios come first in the page, before transcriptions: this is precious, because we should take contact with a new language through sound only at first. The fact is, reading mobilizes remembrance of our native language (or most uses languages habits), and thereafter this remains as an obstacle to hear really the sound as it is, especially if it is a new sound for us; if the writing differs from our native language, having seen it before sound gets strongly memorized “in the mind”, this leaves marks, which are activated everytime you try to remind the word, after some days: durable distortions are thus installed simply because we have read it before being ready for it. To read makes it seem more easy at first, but… False gain of time then.
To avoid this, we should be able the very first weeks to forbid reading to ourselves and only rely on sounds : but that is almost impossible with the very wide majority of methods. Thank you, so. That’s a nice beginning.
If you’re open to this, I’d might suggest (for what you’ll do next) that the transcription of audio may really be given first in english only. The romanian text (or romanian + english again) could be hidden in a pop up window opening as desired on-clic in the page.
– your grammars tips are great too: I do not use, personally, the reminds of vocabulary (even if I guess they must be asking some working, for you) because memorising them within sentences is much more efficient and for the same effort, gives back more.
Hope this feedback will be suitable, and thanks again a lot for your website, seducing gate toward you.
Super lectie! Apreciez! 😉