Learn the basic facts concerning grammatical cases in Romanian
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Intro |
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| Antoni: How many grammatical cases are there in Romanian? |
| Anna: And how do they work? |
| Antoni: At RomanianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Sasha Lee is having trouble understanding Romanian grammar. She asks her teacher, Corina Craciun, |
| "How many cases are there in Romanian?" |
| Sasha Lee: Câte cazuri sunt în română? |
| Dialogue |
| Sasha Lee: Câte cazuri sunt în română? |
| Corina Crăciun: Româna are 5 cazuri. |
| Antoni: Once more with the English translation. |
| Sasha Lee: Câte cazuri sunt în română? |
| Antoni: "How many cases are there in Romanian?" |
| Corina Crăciun: Româna are 5 cazuri. |
| Antoni: "Romanian has 5 cases." |
Lesson focus |
| Antoni: In this lesson, you will be learning how many grammatical cases there are in Romanian and how they work. |
| Let's start by talking about what we mean when we use the words "grammatical case." A grammatical case involves inflecting certain words in a sentence on the basis of how they relate to other words in the same sentence. While English has largely lost its case system, remnants of it can be found in how pronouns are inflected. For instance, if the pronoun is the subject of the sentence, we use "I," "you," "we" and so on, but if it is the object, then we use "me," "you," and "us." Pronouns are also inflected for possession, as in "my," "your," and "our." When we discuss the Romanian cases, you will see how some of them correspond loosely to the cases we have just mentioned. This should help you to grasp the concept of cases in Romanian. |
| There are five grammatical cases in Romanian and they are mostly based on how nouns are inflected. These are: |
| The nominative case, |
| Anna: cazul nominativ, |
| Antoni: the accusative case, |
| Anna: cazul acuzativ, |
| Antoni: the genitive case, |
| Anna: cazul genitiv, |
| Antoni: the dative case, |
| Anna: cazul dativ |
| Antoni: and, finally, the vocative case, or |
| Anna: cazul vocativ. |
| Antoni: Before we look more closely at each individual case, a positive note is that most noun forms of the nominative and accusative cases are the same, barring a few, rare exceptions. This is also true of the dative and genitive cases, which means that it won't be as difficult to learn the cases as you might have thought when you heard there were five of them. |
| To begin with, let's look at the nominative case. In the nominative case, the noun is the subject of the sentence. This is similar to what we discussed previously where we mentioned how English pronouns are inflected when they are the subject of the sentence. We use the nominative case to answer the questions, "who?": |
| Anna: cine? |
| Antoni: and "what?" |
| Anna: ce? |
| Antoni: So, for instance, if the sentence is "Andreea asks a question" or |
| Anna: Andreea pune o întrebare, |
| Antoni: and we want to know who [emphasis] carried out the action of the sentence, then the answer would be "Andreea." That is how we know that "Andreea" is the subject of the sentence. |
| The accusative case is used when the noun is the object in the sentence. The questions you can ask for this case are similar to those for the nominative. You also ask "who?" |
| Anna: pe cine? |
| Antoni: and "what?" or |
| Anna: pe ce? |
| Antoni: In this case, however, the answer to these questions tells you what noun is the object of the verb in the sentence. So, if we have a sentence like "Andreea ate cake," or |
| Anna: Andreea a mâncat tort, |
| Antoni: then we would know which noun is the object by answering the question "What [emphasis] did Andreea eat?" The answer, of course, is "cake." |
| When an indirect object is mentioned in a sentence in Romanian, then the noun must be inflected according to the dative case. Take this sentence for instance: |
| Anna: I-a dat fetei un câine. |
| Antoni: It means "He gave the girl a dog," and, in order to discover which noun is the indirect object, we would ask "to whom?" or |
| Anna: cui? |
| Antoni: And the answer is that it was given to "the girl," or |
| Anna: fetei. |
| Antoni: In this way, we can establish which noun is the indirect object of the verb in the sentence. |
| The genitive case indicates possession. This is where, in English, pronouns would be inflected in the possessive, as in "my," "your," "ours," and so on. In Romanian, the question that will help us to identify the possessive is "whose?" or |
| Anna: al cui? |
| Antoni: This translates directly to "of whose?" In the sentence, "The girl's dog is cute" or |
| Anna: Câinele fetei este drăguț. |
| Antoni: The question would then be "Whose [emphasis] dog is cute?" or |
| Anna: Al cui câine este drăguț? |
| Antoni: Finally, let's examine the vocative case. This is the least used case in Romanian, but it is still useful to know. We use it when we are addressing someone directly, so there is not really any question that we can use as a guide. Often, the person's name will be included or they might be referred to in some other way in the sentence, but the addressee will always be mentioned directly. Listen to this sentence, for instance: |
| Anna: Fată, așteaptă aici. |
| Antoni: It means, "Girl, wait here." As you can hear, the girl is being addressed directly by the speaker. Sometimes, this case corresponds with the imperative in English, as it has in this instance, but that is not always true. What is important to remember is that the person is being addressed directly in the sentence and they are being mentioned in it too. |
| We have now talked about the five cases in Romanian and how they work. After a brief overview of what we have learned so far, we will continue to look at a few more examples of the cases. |
| [Summary] |
| Antoni: In this lesson, you have learned that there are five cases in Romanian. These are the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and vocative. You also learned that the noun form for the nominative and accusative is the same and that it is also the same for the dative and genitive. The vocative case is the least used case because it can only be used when addressing someone or something directly. |
| Expansion/Contrast (Optional) |
| Antoni: Something that is sometimes confusing to students of Romanian is how the articles work when it comes to case. For that reason, we will provide you with a short explanation. Let's begin by examining the indefinite articles. In English, these would be "a," "an," and "some." In Romanian, the indefinite articles have the same form in the nominative and accusative, just as the nouns do. They only change in accordance with gender and number, but the way they do this is also the same in both cases. For instance, in both cases, the indefinite article in the masculine and neuter form is: |
| Anna: un |
| Antoni: while the feminine form is |
| Anna: o |
| Antoni: and the plural form is |
| Anna: niște. |
| Antoni: Conveniently, you now know the forms of these indefinite articles in both the nominative and accusative cases. You will be glad to hear that this same principle can be applied to the dative and genitive cases. In both of these cases, the masculine and neuter form of the indefinite article is |
| Anna: unui, |
| Antoni: whereas the feminine is |
| Anna: unei |
| Antoni: and the plural is |
| Anna: unor. |
| Antoni: The indefinite articles are placed before the noun, just as in English. However, when it comes to using the definite article, things get a little more complex. The definite articles are attached to the end of a noun and they take different forms, depending on case and number. This means, also, that one has to take into account the case markings and the plural endings because these must also be attached to the ends of nouns. As you might have guessed, this can be quite a complicated process because you have to combine all three of these endings. A general rule you can follow is that the definite article is placed after the plural mark. Sometimes, this does require some changes to the form of the article in order to make the word easier to pronounce. While we are unable to go into a lot more detail about the definite articles in this lesson, we can show you a brief comparison between the use of indefinite and definite articles using the Romanian word for "ox," which is: |
| Anna: bou. |
| Antoni: We'll start with the nominative and accusative cases and look at the singular first. The Romanian for "an [emphasis] ox" is |
| Anna: un bou, |
| Antoni: but, when using the definite article, we say, "the [emphasis] ox" or |
| Anna: boul. |
| Antoni: When a plural noun is involved and you are using the indefinite article, you would say, |
| Anna: niște boi |
| Antoni: or "some [emphasis] oxen.'' However, when we use the definite article to say "the [emphasis] oxen," it sounds like this: |
| Anna: boii. |
| Antoni: Similarly, when using the dative and genitive, the forms are the same for both cases. "To-" or "of- an [emphasis] ox" is |
| Anna: unui bou, |
| Antoni: whereas "to-" or "of- the [emphasis] ox" is |
| Anna: boului. |
| Antoni: When it comes to using the plural in these cases, to-" or "of- some [emphasis] oxen" is |
| Anna: unor boi, |
| Antoni: while to-" or "of- the [emphasis] oxen" is |
| Anna: boilor. |
| Antoni: And, finally, in the vocative case, we need only consider definite articles because the ox is being addressed directly. "You, ox," [say with emphasis as if calling to an ox] would be |
| Anna: boule, |
| Antoni: and "You, oxen," [say with emphasis as if calling to oxen] is |
| Anna: boilor. |
| Antoni: You now know quite a lot about the cases in Romanian and with this knowledge at your command, you should find it easier to grasp the complexity of the cases when you encounter them in the future. |
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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