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| All About, Lesson 11 - Top 5 Tools for Learning Romanian |
| Eric: Hello, and welcome back to RomanianPod101.com. This is All About, Lesson 11 - Top Five Tools for Learning Romanian. I’m Eric. |
| Raluca: Salut! Sunt Raluca!! Hey Eric, what are we talking about in this lesson? |
| Eric: In this lesson, we’re going to give our listeners a list of tools they can use for their studies! |
| Raluca: Oh, you mean resource books and online dictionaries? |
| Eric: Yeah, but also Romanian folk songs and comics that can be very useful while learning Romanian! |
| Raluca: Okay Eric, let’s start by talking about resource books. |
| Eric: The first step to finding good materials is to recognize your level of Romanian, and to do that, you need to check out the "Common European Framework of Reference." |
| Raluca: It’s issued by the European Union, and here you can find all the levels from A1 to C2 with detailed explanations for what kind of skills are required for each level. |
| Eric: Oh, I wish I had a C2 level of Romanian… |
| Raluca: It’s not impossible, just keep studying! C2 is total fluency, and anyone who has that level can easily understand virtually everything heard or read. |
| Eric: At that level, you can also summarize information from different spoken and written sources, reconstruct arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation, and express yourself spontaneously and fluently. |
| Raluca: Knowing your level will help you whenever you plan to get certification in Romanian. |
| Eric: Now, the second step is finding a good manual and reference aids for Romanian! |
| Raluca: We recommend the manual and exercise books put out by the Rolang schools which are simply called “Learn Romanian.” |
| Eric: Please check www dot rolang dot ro. |
| Raluca: The most important institution and reference point for the Romanian Language since 1897 is Academia Română. |
| Eric: You can visit the Romanian website at www dot acad dot ro/ |
| Raluca: As for grammar books, we recommend “Romanian, an Essential Grammar” by Ramona Gönczöl-Davies |
| Eric: Or “The Grammar of Romanian” edited by Gabriela Panã Dindelegan, which is an Oxford Grammar book with the most comprehensive and sophisticated description of the present day standard Romanian. |
| Raluca: Now onto tool number two, Romanian dictionaries. |
| Eric: When learning Romanian, one of the first things you need to understand are the feminine, masculine, plural and singular forms of nouns. |
| Raluca: The best way to recognize them is to check a good dictionary to find out the right answer. |
| Eric: A good dictionary is not only a tool to understand the meaning of words, but it also gives clarification about spelling and conjugation. |
| Raluca: We recommend wordreference dot com. |
| Eric: Wordreference dot com provides many languages in addition to Romanian, as well as translations from English to Romanian and vice versa. This website also has a very useful forum. |
| Raluca: Another online dictionary you can use is www dot dictionare dot com/ |
| Eric: Besides being a good Romanian-English and English-Romanian translation dictionary this website also provides the conjugation, declination forms, and vocabulary sections. |
| Raluca: The last dictionary we recommend is all in Romanian, with Romanian definitions. |
| Eric: Yes, it is for people who have a more advanced knowledge of the Romanian language, and it also provides a grammar sections. |
| Raluca: Find it at www dot dexonline dot ro |
| Eric: I guess our listeners will really appreciate our next tool… |
| Raluca: What is it? |
| Eric: Tool number three, grammar and verb checkers! |
| Raluca: Oh, grammar and verbs! Almost every student of Romanian will surely say that the most challenging part of the language is verbs and their conjugations. |
| Eric: For this reason, whenever you are in doubt please look at www dot dictionare dot com |
| Raluca: On this site, you type the verb, and the conjugations for all the persons and all the tenses immediately appear. |
| Eric: Great! That’s a very good tool, but for any other grammar clarification, please refer to Essential Grammar by Ramona Gönczöl-Davies or “The Grammar of Romanian”, edited by Gabriela Pană Dindelegan. |
| Raluca: Okay, what’s tool number four? |
| Eric: For tool number four, we chose Romanian Folk Songs and Lyrics and Romanian Comics. |
| Raluca: Learning with songs is a fun way to improve your skills in Romanian. |
| Eric: On the web you can find a lot of sites with Romanian Songs in karaoke form. Reading while you’re singing is amusing, but you should also check the lyrics to better understand the meaning and the usage of words. |
| Raluca: Listeners, be aware that the Romanian language in songs can be very simple but also can be very complicated and poetic. The singers we recommend are Dan Bittman, Horia Brenciu, Smiley, Nicoleta Nuca, Holograf, Mădălina Manole... |
| Eric: These are only a few artists, but you can find anything you like, from pop music to folk, rock, and opera. Also almost all the Disney movies and series have been dubbed in Romanian, too. |
| Raluca: So if you like Disney movies, find ones in Romanian and start practicing. |
| Eric: For those who are more confident with the language and want to practice reading, we recommend watching movies with Romanian subtitles. |
| Raluca: It’s easy to find subtitles because in Romanian, only kids’ movies are dubbed. |
| Eric: A trick is to watch a series in a language that you don’t understand using the Romanian subtitles. |
| Raluca: Yes. This is very useful for those who are advanced enough to understand written Romanian and want to develop their reading. |
| Raluca: And at last, here’s tool number five! |
| Eric: When you’re exposed to new Romanian words, you might want to learn how to pronounce them. |
| Raluca: In this case there’s a useful website you can visit, www dot translate dot google dot com/ |
| Eric: You’ll see that there are only three easy steps. |
| Raluca: First choose Romanian. |
| Eric: Then enter the word or phrase you want to learn how to pronounce in the box. |
| Raluca: Finally, click either the button "speak" to hear the word or phrase or click on the "download" button to listen and save the audio file of the word or phrase |
| Eric: This tool gives you a decent pronunciation of standard Romanian and will surely help you improve your pronunciation. |
| Raluca: Wow, this is a very useful list of tools for learning Romanian! |
| Eric: Listeners, you can see the websites we mentioned in the lesson notes from this lesson. That’s all we have time for now. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time. |
| Raluca: We’ll be waiting for you in our next All About Romanian lesson! La revedere! |
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