Learn how to ask where somebody is in Romanian
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| Bună tuturor! Sunt Raluca. Hi everybody! I’m Raluca. |
| Welcome to RomanianPod101.com’s Româna în 3 minute. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Romanian. |
| In the last lesson, you learned how to talk about nationality using the verb “to be”, a fi. In this lesson, we’ll use it to talk about location, to say things like "I am in the street" or "He is in the room", so it's very useful! |
| When asking where something or someone is, we use the verb ești in Romanian. |
| For example, when someone asks you on the phone ¿Unde ești? That means "Where are you?" in an informal way. |
| [slowly] ¿Unde ești? |
| Let's break it down. |
| Unde means "Where", |
| ești is the 2nd person singular form of the verb ’to be’ or ‘a fi’. It is the equivalent of “you are”. Again, the pronoun is omitted from the sentence. |
| ¿Unde ești? |
| Answering this question is very easy! You just say Sunt, then add a preposition, such as la meaning “at”, pe meaning “on” or în meaning “in”, then say the place where you are. |
| Let’s try an example with pe meaning “on”: |
| Sunt pe stradă. "I am on the street". |
| [slowly] Sunt pe stradă. |
| Now let’s see a few other possible answers with “I”: |
| "I am at the office" would be Sunt la birou. |
| "I am in a store" would be Sunt la magazin. |
| “I am in the house” would be Sunt în casă. |
| Another useful expression with the verb a fi is to ask for a specific person on the phone. You can say Este plus his or her name. |
| So to ask for your friend Manuel, for example, say Este Manuel? meaning "Is Manuel there?” |
| Let’s have a look at how we conjugate the verb “to be” a fi. We have: |
| sunt for “I am”, |
| ești for “you are”, |
| este for “he/she is”, |
| suntem for “we are”, |
| sunteți for “you are” in the plural form, |
| and sunt again for “they are.” |
| Now it’s time for Raluca’s Insights. |
| You can use this convenient question if you are lost in the street – Nu știu unde sunt, ¿mă puteți ajuta vă rog? |
| This means “I don’t know where I am, can you help me please?“ |
| [slowly] Nu știu unde sunt, ¿mă puteți ajuta vă rog? |
| In this lesson we learned how to talk about your location thanks to the verb a fi. Next time we’ll learn how to talk about age using the verb a avea, which is "to have" in Romanian. So do you want to know how to ask someone’s age? I’ll tell you how in the next Româna în 3 minute lesson. |
| Pe curând! See you soon! |
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