Learn the basic rules of Romanian sentence structure
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Intro |
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| Antoni: How are sentences structured in Romanian? |
| Anna: And does the word order affect the meaning? |
| Antoni: At RomanianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. In the following situation, Ben Lee, a foreign-exchange student, thinks he sees a famous Russian singer as he's walking with a friend, Mara Moldoveanu, in central Bucharest. He gestures to Mara and says, |
| "I know him! That's Sebastian Stan!" |
| Ben Lee: Îl știu! Este Sebastian Stan! |
| Dialogue |
| Ben Lee: Îl știu! Este Sebastian Stan! |
| Mara Moldoveanu: Și eu îl știu! |
| Antoni: Once more with the English translation. |
| Ben Lee: Îl știu! Este Sebastian Stan! |
| Antoni: "I know him! That's Sebastian Stan!" |
| Mara Moldoveanu: Și eu îl știu! |
| Antoni: "I know him too!" |
Lesson focus |
| Antoni: In this lesson, you will be learning how sentences are structured in Romanian and whether or not word order affects meaning. |
| Romanian sentences follow the subject-verb-object structure. This is the same as English and most European languages. There is, however, a major difference between Romanian and English sentence structure because Romanian word order can be a lot more flexible, without necessarily affecting the meaning of a construction. In the dialogue you just heard, for instance, Ben said, |
| Anna: Îl știu! |
| Antoni: which means "I know him," but he could also have said, |
| Anna: Știu îl! |
| Antoni: and it would have meant the same thing. To a native Romanian speaker, both would make sense. That said, it's best to stick to the subject-verb-object word order if you are unsure. Sometimes, if you switch the order up, the meaning of what you are saying will still be clear to a Romanian person but what you are saying might sound unnatural. Playing around with word order, in Romanian, is usually done in poems, books, songs, and the like. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Antoni: Let's take a closer look at the dialogue. |
| Do you remember how Ben Lee says "I know him! That's Sebastian Stan?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Anna as Ben Lee: Îl știu! Este Sebastian Stan! |
| Antoni: Earlier, it was mentioned that Ben Lee could have switched the words of his initial sentence around and it still would have made sense. Another interesting observation about his sentence is that it contains no subject pronoun. This is because, in the nominative case, it is common to drop the pronoun in Romanian. That said, third-person pronouns are often still used. In the sentence that Ben said, the word |
| Anna: Îl |
| Antoni: means "him" and the word |
| Anna: știu |
| Antoni: means "know" so, this sentence translates directly to "him know." It might be a bit confusing, after hearing that Romanian is a subject-verb-object language, to suddenly be introduced to a sentence beginning with the object "him" and ending with the verb "know." One way to make sense of this is to consider the fact that the subject pronoun "I" or |
| Anna: Eu |
| Antoni: is implied in the conjugation of the verb. In Romanian, the verb stem for "know" is |
| Anna: ști |
| Antoni: and when it is conjugated as |
| Anna: știu, |
| Antoni: it means "I know." In other words, the pronoun is implied by the conjugation of the verb. This means that the sentence |
| Anna: Îl știu! |
| Antoni: translates more precisely to "Him, I know." This already makes more sense in English. Now, if we switch the two Romanian words around and say |
| Anna: Știu îl! |
| Antoni: it is even closer to the conventional English construction—"I know him." This illustrates the flexibility of Romanian word order. |
| While we are on the topic of pronouns and word order, it is also important to note that there are many examples, in Romanian, of pronouns being partially combined with a verb by using a hyphen. This way of contracting words is used to show that the pronoun has not been dropped. The most common example of this is |
| Anna: n-am |
| Antoni: which is a shortened version of |
| Anna: nu am |
| Antoni: meaning "I don't have" or "I haven't." |
| Let's now look at the second part of Ben's comment, in which he uses a basic subject-verb-object construction: |
| Anna: Este Sebastian Stan! |
| Antoni: In the dialogue, this sentence was translated as "That is Sebastian Stan!" because this usage reflects idiomatic English, but, when we translate it directly, it becomes "He is Sebastian Stan!" This is because the verb |
| Anna: este |
| Antoni: is the third person singular of the "to be" verb in Romanian and translates, in this case, to "he is." The basic "to be" verb in Romanian is |
| Anna: a fi. |
| [Recall 2] |
| Antoni: Now, let's take a look at our second sentence. Do you remember how Mara Moldoveanu says "I know him too?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Anna as Mara Moldoveanu: Și eu îl știu! |
| Antoni: This is, of course, not a direct translation of the Romanian expression. A direct translation would be "And I him know," or, to be even more precise, if we consider that the verb is conjugated, one could translate it directly as "And I, him I know!" Another way to say this sentence would be |
| Anna: Și eu știu îl! |
| Antoni: and this would translate directly to something that sounds more like conventional English—"And I, I know him!" This also illustrates just how flexible Romanian sentence structure is. |
| [Summary] |
| Antoni: So far, in this lesson, you have learned that Romanian word structure is similar to English in that it follows the subject-verb-object format, but it is also far more flexible than English word structure is. This is partly because verbs can be conjugated to imply that pronouns and pronouns can be dropped in the nominative case. Let's now look at some other aspects of sentence structure in Romanian. |
| Expansion/Contrast (Optional) |
| Antoni: Something that might be a little tricky for a native English speaker to wrap their minds around at first, is the fact that, in Romanian, adjectives follow the noun and not the other way around. This only applies to noun-adjective phrases because there can sometimes be a verb between a noun and an adjective. Let's look at an example of a sentence using a noun-adjective phrase. This one means "You are a smart man:" |
| Anna: Ești un om inteligent. |
| Antoni: In this sentence, the adjective |
| Anna: inteligent |
| Antoni: or "smart," follows the noun for "man," which is |
| Anna: om |
| Antoni: In this next example, you can hear the Romanian adjective for "good" – |
| Anna: bun – |
| Antoni: being preceded by the Romanian noun for "dog," which is |
| Anna: câine. |
| Antoni: The example means "You're a good dog," and it sounds like this: |
| Anna: Ești un câine bun. |
| Antoni: Another unusual convention in Romanian is that articles do not precede nouns. Instead, they are attached to the end of the noun. It is advisable to take the time to study the rules for when to attach which article to a noun. You'll find that it's actually not that difficult and shouldn't take too long to memorize. In the meantime, here are two examples. The first illustrates the use of the definite article in a sentence that means "I can't see the dog:" |
| Anna: Nu văd câinele. |
| Antoni: And the second illustrates the use of the indefinite article in a sentence meaning "I see a dog:" |
| Anna: Văd un câine. |
| Antoni: So, with articles being attached to nouns, pronouns being dropped, verbs conjugating to imply pronouns, and other unusual conventions, it is easy to see why Romanian word order can be more flexible than English word order. |
| Practice |
| Antoni: Let's review. Respond to the prompts by speaking aloud. Then, repeat after the native speaker, focusing on pronunciation. |
| Do you remember how Ben Lee says "I know him! That's Sebastian Stan?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Anna as Ben Lee: Îl știu! Este Sebastian Stan! |
| Antoni: Listen again and repeat. |
| Anna as Ben Lee: Îl știu! Este Sebastian Stan! |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Anna as Ben Lee: Îl știu! Este Sebastian Stan! |
| Antoni: And do you remember how Mara Moldoveanu says "I know him too?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Anna as Mara Moldoveanu: Și eu îl știu! |
| Antoni: Listen again and repeat. |
| Anna as Mara Moldoveanu: Și eu îl știu! |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Anna as Mara Moldoveanu: Și eu îl știu! |
| Cultural Insight/Expansion (Optional) |
| Antoni: One last question that needs to be addressed is: "Where do prepositions fit into a sentence in Romanian?" The answer is that they are usually placed before the noun, or between the verb and the object. That being said, not all nouns require prepositions. If a noun is inanimate, then it doesn't require a preposition. Inanimate nouns are ones that are not a person or an animal. Animate nouns denoting people or animals will, commonly, take the preposition |
| Anna: pe. |
| Antoni: As mentioned before, the preposition is placed between the verb and the object—before the noun, in other words. There are quite a few prepositions in Romanian, and it would be a good idea to study these to see, for instance, how they affect the case of a sentence. |
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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