Learn about the difference between the perfect and imperfect tense in Romanian
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Intro |
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| Antoni: What is the difference between the perfect and imperfect tense in Romanian? |
| Anna: And how do you know which one to use? |
| Antoni: At RomanianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Ilie Iordache is chatting with his neighbor, Mark Lee, after Mark called him earlier that morning. Ilie says, |
| "I was reading this book when you called." |
| Ilie Iordache: Citeam cartea aceasta când m-ai sunat. |
| Dialogue |
| Ilie Iordache: Citeam cartea aceasta când m-ai sunat. |
| Mark Lee: Am citit acea carte săptămâna trecută. |
| Antoni: Once more with the English translation. |
| Ilie Iordache: Citeam cartea aceasta când m-ai sunat. |
| Antoni: "I was reading this book when you called." |
| Mark Lee: Am citit acea carte săptămâna trecută. |
| Antoni: "I read that book last week." |
Lesson focus |
| Antoni: There are four past tenses in the indicative mood in Romanian, but, in this lesson, we will focus on the two most commonly used forms of the perfect, and we will also look at the imperfect. The two most common forms of the perfect are the simple perfect or |
| Anna: perfectul simplu |
| Antoni: and the compound perfect or |
| Anna: perfectul compus. |
| Antoni: In English, the simple perfect can be illustrated by the phrase "I did" and the compound perfect by "I have done." The simple perfect indicative, in Romanian, has to do with a completed action that happened in the recent past, not long before the time at which the speaker is speaking. This is similar to the way the present perfect is sometimes used in English. The compound perfect is used for past completed actions no matter how long ago they happened. |
| Let's now have a look at how the verbs conjugate according to person in the different tenses. This is important because, as you probably know, Romanian people often exclude the pronoun, since it is implied by the conjugation of the verb. We'll break down the conjugations for the two tenses we've talked about so far by using the Romanian verb for "to do," which is |
| Anna: a face. |
| Antoni: Let's start with the simple perfect because the compound perfect is very easy. In the simple perfect, the conjugation of the first person singular "I did" is |
| Anna: făcui. |
| Antoni: Notice how there is no separate pronoun. It is implied by the conjugation of the verb. That is how we know that |
| Anna: făcuși |
| Antoni: is the Romanian for the second person, singular "you did," and that the Romanian for "he did," "she did" or "it did" is |
| Anna: făcu. |
| Antoni: Next, let's listen to the Romanian verb conjugations for the simple perfect with plural pronouns. You will hear the conjugations meaning "we did," "you did," and "they did," respectively: |
| Anna: făcurăm, [pause] făcurăți, [pause] făcură. |
| Antoni: Now you will see why the compound perfect is not helpful when it comes to learning verb conjugation in Romanian. The reason is that the only conjugation you have to learn is that of the helping verb |
| Anna: a avea |
| Antoni: which means "to have." Listen now to the conjugations for the first, second, and third person, respectively, in the compound perfect. They are: |
| Anna: am făcut, [pause] ai făcut, [pause] a făcut. |
| Antoni: These conjugations mean "I have done," "you have done" and "he-," "she-," or "it-" "has done." As you can hear, all that you need to know, beyond the conjugations of the helping verb, is the past participle of the actual verb. You will hear it repeated in the conjugations for the plural pronouns. |
| Anna: am făcut, [pause] ați făcut, [pause] au făcut. |
| Antoni: These mean, "we have done," "you have done," and "they have done." |
| Now, the third form of the past tense, which was alluded to earlier, is the imperfect. This is the tense that you would use when you want to talk about something in the past that is unfinished, or incomplete—hence the word "imperfect." We use the perfect for completed actions, but the imperfect for unfinished actions in the past. An example of the past imperfect would be a sentence like "While I was sleeping, he went through my things." In Romanian, it sounds like this: |
| Anna: În timp ce dormeam, mi-a umblat prin lucruri. |
| Antoni: The verb for "sleeping," or |
| Anna: dormeam, |
| Antoni: is in the imperfect form, while the verb |
| Anna: umblat, |
| Antoni: meaning "to go through," is in the perfect form. Let's now hear how to conjugate the same verb we used previously but in the imperfect past tense. We'll start with the singular pronouns and you will hear the conjugations for "I was doing," "you were doing" and "he-," "she-" or "it-" "was doing." |
| Anna: făceam, [pause] făceai, [pause] făcea. |
| Antoni: And now the plural pronouns: |
| Anna: făceam, [pause] făceați, [pause] făceau. |
| Antoni: These mean "we were doing," "you were doing," and "they were doing," respectively. |
| Now that you have learned what is meant by the perfect and imperfect tenses in Romanian, let's have a look at how these principles were applied in the dialogue. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Antoni: Do you remember how Ilie Iordache says "I was reading this book when you called?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Anna as Ilie Iordache: Citeam cartea aceasta când m-ai sunat. |
| Antoni: In this statement, Ilie is using the imperfect form of the verb "reading," which is: |
| Anna: citeam |
| Antoni: but she is using the verb |
| Anna: sunat |
| Antoni: for "you called," and this is in the perfect form. As you can hear, the imperfect form is good for instances where one thing that was happening, in the past, was interrupted by another. We used it previously in the sentence |
| Anna: În timp ce dormeam, mi-a umblat prin lucruri, |
| Antoni: which illustrates the same principle. |
| [Recall 2] |
| Antoni: Now, let's take a look at our second sentence. |
| Do you remember how Mark Lee says, "I read that book last week?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Anna as Mark Lee: Am citit acea carte săptămâna trecută. |
| Antoni: In this sentence, Mark is talking about an action that was completed in the past. This is how we know that he is using the perfect tense. We also know this because he used the past perfect form of the verb "to read," which is |
| Anna: citit. |
| Antoni: Did you notice the helping verb |
| Anna: am |
| Antoni: at the beginning of the sentence? We mentioned, previously, that this is the conjugation of "to have" in the first person. It translates to "I have" and so, to be precise, Mark's answer translates to "I have read that book last week." In English, this would seem strange because it is not conventional to refer to the time when using the English version of the simple perfect tense. The simple perfect is used to refer to things that occurred at an indefinite time in the past. In Romanian, however, it is possible to combine what would be the simple perfect in English with a specific time. This format is the compound perfect in Romanian. |
| The compound perfect is often preferred over the imperfect in Romanian. For instance, if someone wanted to say "My father was Romanian," they would probably use the compound perfect form, which is: |
| Anna: Tatăl meu a fost român. |
| Antoni: As you can hear, the third person conjugation of "to have" was used in front of the verb, resulting in this construction: |
| Anna: a fost. |
| Antoni: This is how we know that the speaker is using the compound perfect tense. The imperfect tense version of the same sentence would have sounded like this: |
| Anna: Tatăl meu era român. |
| Antoni: It's also important to know that, generally, the simple perfect tense is used in writing and the compound perfect tense is preferred when speaking. |
| [Summary] |
| Antoni: In this lesson, you learned that there are two perfect tenses in Romanian—the simple perfect and the compound perfect. The simple perfect is used more often in writing, while the compound perfect is used more frequently when people are speaking. The big difference between the two is that the simple perfect requires one to learn six different conjugations of the verb, whereas, in the compound perfect tense, there is only one conjugation of the verb but one has to learn the various conjugations of the auxiliary verb "to have." You also learned about the imperfect tense in this lesson. In Romanian, the imperfect tense is used when you want to talk about something that happened in the past but was not completed. It is useful for describing situations where one occurrence was interrupted by another. Often, in Romanian, the compound perfect can be used instead of the imperfect. |
| Expansion/Contrast (Optional) |
| Antoni: A further, brief note about the compound perfect in Romanian is necessary here. We've already talked about the fact that this is the tense most commonly used when wanting to talk about an action that has been completed in the past. What can be confusing about this tense, for English speakers, is that it can also correspond to the English present perfect or present perfect continuous tenses. The reason for this is that there is, in fact, no present perfect tense in Romanian and no formal way to distinguish between the simple and the continuous. For this reason, the imperfect tense in Romanian can be used to form, not only a sentence like this one, which translates to "I have just seen Andrea!": |
| Anna: Numai ce-am văzut-o pe Andreea! |
| Antoni: but also a sentence like this one: |
| Anna: Nu am văzut-o pe Andreea de doi ani. |
| Antoni: That translates to "I haven't seen Andrea for two years." A further example of this usage is: |
| Anna: Am lucrat mult săptămâna asta. |
| Antoni: This means "I have been working a lot this week." As you can see, the compound perfect tense is very versatile, which is probably one of the reasons it is the preferred tense when it comes to talking about the past. |
Outro |
| Antoni: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Anna: La revedere. |
| Antoni: See you soon! |
| Credits: Anna (Romanian, Romania), Antoni (English, synthetic voice) |
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