LESSON NOTES

All About S1 #3
Painless Romanian Grammar

CONTENTS

Grammar

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GRAMMAR
The Focus of this Lesson is Romanian Grammar

Sentence Order: SVO

To begin, comparing English to Romanian is necessary to clarify that they belong to two different
language families. English is a Germanic language, whereas Romanian is a romance language.
Nevertheless, these two languages have many similarities. To better understand Romanian grammar, it
is useful to make some comparisons to English as well. We call both of these languages SVO languages.
This acronym indicates the main grammar order of the sentences we use in the language, which in this
case is subject/verb/object.

Romanian's language order is relatively unstructured. This means that there are not as many strict rules
as in other foreign languages. We can change the SVO order in some situations, for example, to change
the focus of a sentence.

In general the subject comes first, followed by the verb, and then the object.

For example: Eu mănânc un măr. meaning "I eat an apple."

Eu ("I") is the subject, or the one doing the action. Mănânc ("eat") is the verb, or the action taking place.
And lastly, un măr ("an apple") is the object that receives the action.

We can change the SVO order according to what we want to emphasize.

For example: Mărul pe care îl mănânc."The apple I eat." In this case, the English translation sounds a bit
unnatural. However, in Romanian, it's normal to construct a sentence in this order when we wish to
emphasize the object, here mărul ("the apple").

Tense

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The tense of a sentence is any one of the inflected forms in the conjugation of a verb that indicates the
time, such as past, present, or future, as well as the continuance or completion of the action or state. In
other words, the tense expresses the temporal relationship between the action a sentence reports and
the time of its utterance. Romanian verbs change form according to the tense and the subject.
Consequently, it does not matter if we omit the subject in a sentence because we can easily recognize
who is doing the action from the verb and the way we conjugate it. Romanian verbs, as with those from
all the other new Latin languages, have an infinitive form (dictionary form) that changes its endings
when we conjugate it in a specific tense. Previously Romanian grammar had only four conjugations.
According to the new Romanian grammar published by the Romanian Academy, the Romanian
Language has 11 conjugations.

1 2 3 4 5 6
-a (Ø) -a (ez) - i (Ø) - i (Ø) - i (Ø) -i (esc)

a mânca a accentua a cobori a oferi a fugi a iubi

(“to eat”) (“to accentuate”) (“to go down”) (“to offer”) (“to run”) (“to love”)

eu (“I”) mănânc accentuez cobor ofer fug iubesc

tu (“you”) mănânci accentuezi cobori oferi fugi iubești

el /ea (“he/she”) mănâncă accentuează coboară oferă fuge iubesc

noi (“we”) mâncăm accentuam coborîm oferim fugim iubim

voi (“you”) mâncați accentuați coborîți oferiți fugiți iubiți

ei/ele (“they”) mănâncă accentuează coboară oferă fug iubesc

7 8 9 10 11
-i (esc) -ea (Ø) - e (Ø) -e (Ø) - e (Ø)

a aminti plăcea a face a merge a frige

(“to remember”) (“to like”) (“to make”) (“to walk”) (“to fry”)

eu (“I”) amintesc plac fac merg frig

tu (“you”) amintești placi faci mergi frigi

el /ea amintește plac fac merge frige

(“he/she”)

noi (“we” amintim placem facem mergem frigem

voi (“you”) amintiți placeți faceți mergeți frigeți

ei/ele (“they”) amintesc plac fac merg frig

With some exceptions, every verb of each group is inflected in the same way. Therefore, conjugating
Romanian verbs like a native should be a primary goal of all students, regardless of their level or ability.

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Singulars, Plurals, and Genre

When forming a plural in English, it is usually only necessary to add "-s" at the end of a word, but there
are tons of exceptions (For example: "wolves" and "teeth"). Romanian has many rules for building
plurals. The primary distinction is between masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns.

There are no rules to distinguish whether a noun is feminine, masculine, or neuter but basically we
chose the endings to identify them. Here is a brief explanation. Feminine nouns end respectively in -a, -ă,
-e take the -e or -i in their plural form. Masculine nouns end in a consonant, -e, -u, -l, -ă, -i. Their plural
form ends in -i all the time.

Nevertheless, there are several exceptions, making this general rule only a basic identification guideline.
There are some irregularities and those will be explained in detail in later on.

Neuter nouns are a challenge for Romanian language students. They have a masculine form in singular
and feminine form in plural. Here are some categories of neuter nouns:

neologisms
sports names

materials
human qualities which have no plural form in Romanian (like curaj, "courage")

Also we should keep in mind that Romanian adjectives and articles follow the nouns they refer to, which
means that they change their ending according to the gender of the noun. This is why knowing the
gender of nouns in Romanian is considered one of the first steps to learning the language.

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