Learn three things about Romanian pronunciation: how to deal with the letter -s, how to manage the pronunciation of diphthongs in Romanian, and how to handle a Romanian hiatus
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| Pronunciation #4 Difficult Romanian Pronunciations |
| Eric: Hi everyone, I’m Eric, and welcome back to RomanianPod101.com. This is Pronunciation, Lesson 4 - Difficult Romanian Pronunciations. |
| Mihai: Bună ziua tuturor! Hi, everyone, I’m Mihai! So we’re progressing quickly with our pronunciation lessons, aren’t we? |
| Eric: Yes, we can almost say anything we want now in Romanian. |
| Mihai: So let’s keep moving. |
| Eric: In this lesson you’re going to learn how to pronounce the diphthongs and triphthongs in Romanian, and how we read diphthongs and the hiatus. |
| Mihai: Let’s start with diphthongs and triphthongs |
| Eric: A diphthong is a juncture of two vowels within the same syllable and a triphthong is a juncture of three vowels in a syllable. How does this affect pronunciation? |
| Mihai: The main characteristic of the diphthongs and triphtongs is that we pronounce them in one breath, and together the vowels lose their individual vocal characteristics, making a brand new sound. |
| Eric: It’s magic! |
| Mihai: (laughs) No, it’s just simple phonetics. And for people who like to know the phonetics, the first or last sound in the diphthong becomes a semivowel, because it loses a half of its vocal quality. |
| Eric: And for a triphthong? |
| Mihai: The first and last sounds become semivowels because they lose half of their vowel quality. |
| Eric: Anything else we should know? |
| Mihai: There are two types of diphthongs – descendant and ascendant. |
| Eric: The ascendant diphthong is when the semivowel comes first, and descendant is when the semivowel is the second sound. Are there any other rules that can help us out? |
| Mihai: We add - u and -i after each Romanian semivowel, and we get the descendant diphthongs. Only the combination U U is not a diphthong. |
| Eric: That I can remember! |
| Mihai: So we have ai, au, ei, eu, ii, iu, ou, ăi, ău, âi, and âu. |
| Eric: Can we hear some examples? |
| Mihai: Sure, we’ll start with -a and - i, which make ai like in mai for example. |
| Eric: This means “may” |
| Mihai: Next a and - u. These make au, which is in August |
| Eric: “August” |
| Mihai: E and I, these make ei as in lei |
| Eric: “Lions” |
| Mihai: U and i, making ui as in pui |
| Eric: “chicken” |
| Mihai: o and u, ou as in nouraş |
| Eric: “little cloud.” |
| Mihai: It seems difficult in theory, but is rather easy in practice right? |
| Eric: Well yes. I guess the best way to get it down is to practice what you hear from native speakers. |
| Mihai: Absolutely. Now take a look at the ascendant diphthongs. |
| Eric: A semivowel plus a vowel right? |
| Mihai: That’s correct Eric. |
| Eric: Shall we give our listeners a list? |
| Mihai: Of course. Here we have e, i, o, and u followed by a vowel. Ea, eo, ia, ie, io, iu, oa, ua, and uă. |
| Eric: Let’s go through some examples. |
| Mihai: ea as in dimineaţă |
| Eric: “morning” |
| Mihai: ia as in iarnă |
| Eric: “winter” |
| Mihai: oa as in oameni |
| Eric: “humans” |
| Mihai: And the last one is ua ziua. |
| Eric: “the day.” So we just learned all the Romanian diphthongs? |
| Mihai: Yes, these are the diphthongs that exist in Romanian grammar books, but new diphthongs can be found in some loan words. |
| Eric: : Alright, now let’s talk about triphthongs. |
| Mihai: A triphthong always comes in this order - semivowel + vowel + semivowel. |
| Eric: Do you have an example for us? |
| Mihai: Sure! There are seven Romanian triphthongs. They are Eau, eai, oai, iai, iau, iei, and ioa. |
| Eric: You just sounded like a theater student. What are some examples, Mihai? |
| Mihai: Eau as in Vreau |
| Eric: “I want” |
| Mihai: eai- as in spuneai |
| Eric: “you were saying” |
| Mihai: iai- as in scriai |
| Eric: “you were writing” |
| Mihai: iau - |
| Eric: “I take” |
| Mihai: iei- as in miei |
| Eric: “lambs” |
| Mihai: ioa- as in inimioară |
| Eric: Which means “little heart.” Great! So we’re done with the triphthongs. Let’s move on to the hiatus. This is when there are two vowels close to each other and they both preserve their vocal quality. In other words, they both keep their original sound, right? |
| Mihai: Yes, exactly. |
| Eric: Let’s hear some examples. |
| Mihai: filosofie , fi-lo-so fi-e |
| Eric: “philosophy” |
| Mihai: ştiinţă, şti-in-ţă |
| Eric: “science” |
| Mihai: Eroină, e-ro-i-nă |
| Eric: “heroine” |
| Mihai: violincel, vi-o-lon-cel |
| Eric: “cello” |
| Mihai: As for the pronunciation, please keep your mouth open longer than usual. |
| Eric: Okay, is there anything else before we go? |
| Mihai: Yes, one last thing. In some cases, the hiatus can cause difficulties and mistakes in pronunciation. |
| Eric: For example? |
| Mihai: In Romanian we say A-us-tria and not Aus-tri-a. |
| Eric: "Austria." |
| Mihai: na-ţi-u-ne and not na-ţiu-ne. |
| Eric: "nation.” So the mistakes consist of merging the sounds of the vowels in hiatus so that a diphthong is formed. |
| Mihai: Which leads to the words being mispronounced. |
| Eric: That just about does it for this lesson. Premium members, use the review track to perfect your pronunciation. |
| Mihai: It’s available in the premium section of the website, |
| Eric: the learning center, |
| Mihai: and through iTunes via the premium feed. |
| Eric: The Review Track gives you vocabulary and phrases followed by a short pause so you can repeat the words aloud. |
| Mihai: It’s the best way to get good fast! |
| Eric: Okay. Thanks for listening everyone, bye! |
| Mihai: La revedere! |
Comments
HideHi Listeners! What is the most difficult Romanian word to pronounce for you?
Hi John,
Thank you for your message.👍
This lesson was designed without them since it solely explains pronunciation and doesn't introduce a conversation.
Have a great day!
Cheers,
Lena
Team RomanianPod101.com
Just returned to my studies and maybe I am a little stupid, but I cant even see a Dialog or Vocabulary Section?
Hello John,
Thank you for your question!
Most of our lesson series have Dialogue and Vocabulary sections, and you can find the microphone button next to each line there. Regarding the Review Tracks, if you click on the Download button under the lesson title, you will find the Review audio file.
Please let us know if any further questions arise throughout your studies.
Best,
Ali
Team RomanianPod101.com
Hi, John,
Thank you for your reaching out, for your questions, and patience.
To find out the answers to your questions, we need to continue to cultivate patience. I take care of teaching and communicating with students. The information you asked is not easily available to me either yet, but I will check this with our team. I plan to let someone in our technical team know about this situation and I will try to make sure that you will receive an answer as soon as we can.
Thank you for studying with us.
Sincerely,
Patricia
Team RomanianPod101.com
Hi,
What and where is the "review track"?
And where is the record function I can't see a little microphone button anywhere.
John
Hi Bernice,
Thank you for your feedback!
While the option to listen to the pronunciations of the diphthongs separately is not available, a recommendation is to check our Resources page (using the link below) where you can find other relevant written materials, that can help with your learning:
https://www.RomanianPod101.com/Romanian-resources/
Also, please feel free to use the pronunciations in the Lesson Audio as a guide.
About your question, the two Romanian words have a similar appearance, but their diacritics are different:
rău= bad
râu= river
Sincerely,
Patricia
Team RomanianPod101.com
Rau means bad (boy) and Rau means river????
I wish they had the option to hear each diphtong, etc. and the words following 😳 separately with the little speaker.
Hi, Melanie,
Thank you for sharing!
It is normal to find difficult words while studying a new language. The good news is that with practice and time, it will become easier for you to understand and speak even the difficult words. Maybe it can help to separate the words into syllables or to repeat them in a slow manner, paying attention to each letter, until it becomes natural.
Feel free to write us again if you have any questions or comments.
Good luck!
Sincerely,
Patricia
Team RomanianPod101.com
Most difficult word for me is câine
Hello, Lizzie,
Thank you for your comments 😄. We are glad that you are enjoying learning Romanian with us.
Yes, some words are more difficult than others, but by practicing the speaking and listening of these words, you will see that it will become easier for you to pronounce them.
Let us know if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Patricia
Team RomanianPod101.com
More difficult: eu iau, miei, iminiora
super helpful! now my mouth hurts! 😄
Hello James,
Meanwhile you can of course listen to the pronunciation of the diphthongs and triphthongs any time in the main audio of the lesson.
Thank you,
Mihai
Team RomanianPod101.com
Hello James,
Thank you for using RomanianPod101.com and for taking your time to send us feedback.
I will make sure your request will reach our contents team for consideration and I hope we will be able to deliver it soon.
I'm very glad to hear you are enjoying the lessons!
Thank you,
Mihai
Team RomanianPod101.com
it would be very helpful in the vowels, consonants, and Diphthongs, Triphthongs, and Vowels in Hiatus if you had a recording of the sound next to each of them so that it could be listened to and then practiced, simular to the word on other lesson. I am enjoying the lessons
Bună Maria,
It is okay to struggle with the pronunciation of some words, practice is the key. The group of letters "ua" sounds like "wha" if this is more helpful to you. Don't worry about getting it wrong at first, you will learn in time how to say it correctly.
If you have more questions, please feel free to contact us.
Cheers,
Mika
Team RomanianPod101.com
cafeaua, oaie...I struggle with these words