Learn how to use many common phrases in Romanian
Now Playing: Lesson Audio
Get a breakdown of the dialogue and translations instantly with the Premium line-by-line Audio. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Basic Bootcamp Season 1, Lesson 3 - Useful Phrases for Learning Romanian |
| INTRODUCTION |
| Eric: Hi everyone, I’m Eric, and welcome back to RomanianPod101.com! This is Basic Bootcamp Lesson 3 - Useful Phrases for Learning Romanian. |
| Mihai: Hello, everyone. Mihai here. |
| Mihai: What's our focus for this lesson, Eric? |
| Eric: In this lesson, you will learn five phrases to boost your Romanian learning. |
| Mihai: This conversation takes place in a Romanian classroom. |
| Eric: It’s between a student of Romanian and his teacher. |
| Mihai: The speakers are using formal Romanian. |
| Eric: Let's listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Student: Doamnă profesoară, cum se spune 'a fork' in română? |
| Profesor: “O furculiţa”... |
| Student: Puteţi repeta? Încet, vă rog? |
| Profesor: “o fur-cu-liţă." |
| Student: Puteţi să scrieţi, vă rog? |
| Eric: Let’s listen to the conversation one time slowly. |
| Student: Doamnă profesoară, cum se spune 'a fork' in română? |
| Profesor: “O furculiţă”… |
| Student: Puteţi repeta? Încet, vă rog? |
| Profesor: “o fur-cu-liţă." |
| Student: Puteţi să scrieţi, vă rog? |
| Eric: Now with the English translation. |
| Student: Doamnă profesoară, cum se spune 'a fork' in română? |
| Student: Teacher, how do you say “a fork” in Romanian? |
| Profesor: O furculiţă… |
| Profesor: A fork |
| Student: Puteţi repeta? Încet, vă rog? |
| Student: Can you repeat? Slowly, please? |
| Profesor: “o fur-cu-liţă." |
| Profesor: A fork |
| Student: Puteţi să scrieţi, vă rog? |
| Student: Can you write it down please? |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Eric: It's always nice to keep in mind the necessary phrases that will boost your Romanian learning. |
| Mihai: Yes, especially when you are in a country where people speak fast and have different regional accents. |
| Eric: True, Romanian people tend to speak with different accents, but it is not very confusing like it can be in other countries. |
| Mihai: So, even if learning a language implies that you need understand the native pace, don't hesitate to cut people off in the middle of their speech to have them repeat something. |
| Eric: …Maybe not the middle of their speech. |
| Mihai: Okay, not in the middle of their speech, especially in Romania. |
| Eric: Yes, listening to others and not cutting them off is necessary in Romania. |
| Mihai: At least if you want to make any friends! |
| Eric: Yeah, being all excited or monopolizing the conversation can be seen as rude. |
| Mihai: Although, of course, some Romanians do it...but, if you feel lost in a conversation, or if you are just wondering what the meaning of that funny-sounding word is, then use the phrases you just heard. |
| Eric: What people will really appreciate is if you say the magic words… |
| Mihai: Vă rog, |
| Eric: which means "please." |
| Mihai: Especially if you are addressing a stranger. For example, imagine you're in the subway and you need to ask someone the meaning of a sign. |
| Eric: Yes, in that case you should definitely start or end your sentence with “please" |
| Mihai: In Romanian that will be va rog. Romanian people are quite used to random conversations with strangers, for example while waiting for the bus or train. "Is this train going to be late again?" or "Is this bus going to the center?" People ask for directions all the time and sometimes carry on talking about general topics, like the weather. |
| Eric: So don't be afraid of joining other people's conversations, unless they are talking about something obviously private. Then, if you need directions, don't forget to say "please" before or after you ask your question. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Eric: Let's take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| Mihai: cum [natural native speed] |
| Eric: how |
| Mihai: cum [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Mihai: cum [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have.. |
| Mihai: furculiţă [natural native speed] |
| Eric: fork |
| Mihai: furculiţă [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Mihai: furculiţă [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have.. |
| Mihai: vă rog [natural native speed] |
| Eric: please |
| Mihai: vă rog[slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Mihai: vă rog [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have.. |
| Mihai: puteţi [natural native speed] |
| Eric: you can (formal) |
| Mihai: puteţi [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Mihai: puteţi [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have.. |
| Mihai: să scrieţi [natural native speed] |
| Eric: to write |
| Mihai: să scrieţi [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Mihai: să scrieţi [natural native speed] |
| Eric: And last.. |
| Mihai: Domnule (pronoun) [natural native speed] |
| Eric: sir, mister |
| Mihai: Domnule [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Mihai: Domnule [natural native speed] |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Eric: Let's have a closer look at the usage of some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Mihai: Okay, so the first phrase is not actually a phrase…it's an expression. It's Domnule profesor, and it's used to address your male teacher in a polite and formal way. |
| Eric: It's the equivalent of "teacher." and is literally translated as “mister the teacher”. What if your teacher is a female? Does it change anything? |
| Mihai: It does. If your teacher is a female, you should call her Doamnă profesoară. It's the most appropriate way of addressing a teacher. An acceptable, less formal way is to call our teacher prof. This works for both male and female teachers, but we should never use this word directly to a teacher. It’s considered rude. |
| Eric: Okay. The second phrase is "How do you say a ‘fork’ in Romanian” |
| Mihai: Which is Cum se spune 'a fork' in română? Cum means "how" and se spune means "you say." Literally, this would be "it’s said," since in Romanian there is no particle like "do." Se is used as an impersonal subject instead of "you." |
| Eric: Is se used for formal speech only? To address your teacher, someone you don't know, or someone more important than you? |
| Mihai: Se in this case is impersonal, so that can be used in both formal and casual speech. |
| Eric: What’s next? |
| Mihai: Let's talk about our third phrase, Puteţi repeta?, which is translated as “can you repeat?” |
| Eric: This one is only used if you need someone to repeat something. |
| Mihai: Ah, that's what people do with me…they always ask me to repeat. I speak way too fast in Romanian! |
| Eric: Yeah, too fast for non-Romanian speakers... |
| Mihai: Even for some Romanian native speakers. I come from a region where we speak Romanian faster then other regions. My teacher, who was from Transylvania, had always told me to slow down; otherwise, he couldn’t follow me. |
| Eric: I'm happy we converse in English, then (laughs). |
| Mihai: You can hear that this is formal Romanian thanks to the puteţi at the beginning of the sentence, which is "can" in the second person plural. The second person plural conjugation tells you it's formal speech. Then, you have repeta, which means "repeat."Okay, now the fourth phrase is Încet, vă rog? |
| Eric: which means "slowly please." |
| Mihai: See, the magic words again? |
| Eric: Ah yes. And "slowly” will be helpful with fast speakers like Mihai. |
| Mihai: Exactly! |
| Eric: And the last phrase is |
| Mihai: Puteţi să scrieţi, vă rog? So the translation for "write down" is să scrieţi. Să is a conjunction, which in this case will be translated as "to." Scrieţi is the verb a scrie meaning “to write” conjugated in the second person plural. |
| Eric: Because the conversation is formal. |
| Mihai: Yes, next we have vă rog which means “please”, as we mentioned before. |
| Mihai: To finish up, I would like to mention something. |
| Eric: Please do. |
| Mihai: Since you’ll be asking all the questions in Romanian, you will need the appropriate intonation. |
| Eric: Oh, that's right. Don't forget that in Romanian, when asking a question, you should ALWAYS raise your intonation at the end of the question. Like this… |
| Mihai: Puteţi să scrieţi, vă rog? This is important because you won't reverse the verb and the subject like in English. To say "Can you?" You would say "You can."Actually, you don't even use "you," so it will be "can." So only the intonation tells you it's a question. |
| Eric: Okay, now let’s move on to the lesson focus. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Mihai: Remember how I said that the words puteţi and scrieti are the hints that will tell you it's a formal conversation, because the verb is conjugated in the second person plural Dumneavostră? |
| Eric: Yes, that’s the pronoun used in formal situations. It's the polite "you." |
| Mihai: Exactly. It translates as "you," but it's used for both women and men. And remember, the pronoun before the verb is almost never used in spoken Romanian, unless we want to stress the subject. So Dumneavostră puteţi? becomes puteţi? |
| Eric: How would you ask a friend to repeat, though? |
| Mihai: You would ask Poti repeta? The informal pronoun for "you" is tu. Once again, you skip the pronoun before the conjugated verb. And the form of the verb completely varies whether you use Dumneavostră or tu. Listen…Dumneavostră puteţi and tu poţi. |
| Eric: Yes, I think we can hear the difference. |
| Mihai: Okay, we don't want to overwhelm you with too much grammar, so we’ll just finish with a little note about two of our phrases, Puteţi repeta? and Puteţi scrie? |
| Eric: Yeah, just a quick note on how, when two verbs follow each other in a Romanian sentence, the second verb is usually in the infinitive form. |
| Mihai: Okay, you probably don't know what Romanian infinitives look or sound like, but that's fine. |
| Eric: You'll learn more about infinitives later! First, go ahead and work on your phrases! They’ll help you feel more confident and are a great tool to improve quickly with native speakers! |
Outro |
| Eric: That just about does it for this lesson. |
| Mihai: Ready to test what you just learned? |
| Eric: Make this lesson's vocabulary stick by using lesson specific flashcards on RomanianPod101.com. |
| Mihai: There is a reason everyone uses flashcards... |
| Eric: They work... |
| Mihai: They really do help memorization. |
| Eric: You can get the flashcards for this lesson at |
| Mihai: RomanianPod101.com. |
| Eric: Okay... |
| Eric: Thank you for listening! |
| Mihai: Mulţumim! La revedere! |
Comments
Hide