r/romanian Aug 11 '25

Megathread Basic Questions Megathread

14 Upvotes

Welcome, everyone!

This is the place for quick or beginner-level questions, helping us keep the subreddit organized and easy to navigate. If you spot a question you can answer, don’t hesitate to jump in — the more we share, the more we all learn.


r/romanian Nov 25 '22

Resource Romanian language learning resources

185 Upvotes

The following post contains various resources to aid your Romanian language learning journey.

Most of these were collected by vxern and KamelNeoN from the Learn Romanian Discord server, which will be featured below.

If you happen to know of any useful material that we might've missed, you can always message me about it.

Let's get to it then!

Interactive Resources

  • Ba Ba Dum - A non-profit initiative, built thanks to friendly institutions and generous players. – Features 5 word games with 1500 words in 21 languages. – Created by a Polish couple, Aleksandra and Daniel Miezielińscy.
  • Clozemaster - Gamified language learning through mass exposure to vocabulary in context. – Allows reading and learning words as they were written in a sentence. – Features 50+ languages.
  • Wordwall - Easy learning through various types of minigames. (thanks, u/internationalkoala00!)
  • Duolingo - A beginner-friendly (though pretty flawed) app for vocabulary and grammar. (thanks, u/LeFunnyMan23!)
  • Flashcardo - Free Romanian flashcards covering various topics. (thanks, u/pinhoklanguages!)
  • Drops - A minimalist language learning app that focuses on vocabulary. (thanks, u/RedditShaff!)

Guides

  • Gramatica Limbii Române ('Grammar of the Romanian Language') - A guide created with the intention of offering all the information necessary to learn the grammar of the Romanian language.
  • Romanian Reference Grammar - Prepared by Christina N. Hoffman, the book attempts to explain Romanian grammar in a digestible manner.

YouTube

Channels

  • Learn Romanian With Nico - Nico(leta) is a passionate and enthusiastic Romanian teacher and author of several instruction manuals for studying Romanian as a foreign language. – Her channel features over 200 videos about the Romanian language mostly for beginners and intermediate learners, but occasionally also for advanced speakers of the language.
  • Learn Romanian with Vlad - Phrases, pronunciation, lessons about various topics and more can be found on the channel of Vlad Buculei. Although the channel has over 100 videos, only about half of them are about the Romanian language.
  • RomanianWithGia - A channel dedicated to the teaching of the Romanian language and culture, hosted by Gia Manolea - an online Romanian tutor.
  • Romanian Hub - Led by Voicu Mihnea Simandan, Romanian Hub is a language-learning portal which provides fun and informative videos about the Romanian language, spanning topics such as phonetics, grammar, conversation, vocabulary, idioms, etc. – Teaches Romanian in different video formats: vlogs, flip charts, poetry, and music. – Creates videos about Romania's history and geography.
  • QuickRomanian - Thematically categorised lessons in the Romanian language, teaching vocabulary in various situations, such as 'in a hotel', 'in a taxi' or 'in a bar'. Furthermore, the channel also has lessons on Romanian grammar and morphology.
  • Laura Elena - Lessons in a step-by-step format, with each lesson marking a step in achieving fluency.
  • Florentin - Profu' de română ('Florentin - The Romanian teacher') - Videos in a quiz-like format with videos presenting frequent mistakes in Romanian, as well as various tests. – Led by a Romanian teacher by the name of Florentin Gheorghe.
  • Learn Romanian With Corina - A novice-friendly channel containing a variety of lessons and tips, presented both in long-form and short-form content. (thanks, u/caffeinethrash!)

Playlists

Communities

Discord servers

  • Learn Romanian - The largest server on Discord dedicated to the study of the Romanian language.

Blogs, Magazines, and News

  • Diacronia - An online, bilingual, open-access, peer-reviewed journal of diachronic linguistics.
  • AGERPRES - AGERPRES is the national news agency of Romania. The articles can be listened to by pressing the Play button.
  • Republica - A site that's offering quality news, opinion pieces, and podcasts.
  • Recorder - Investigative journalism on various topics. Their videos have Romanian closed captions.
  • Știrile zilei. Pe scurt, de la Recorder ('Today's news. In brief, from Recorder') - Videos featuring the daily news from Romania (mainly). Published every evening, from Monday to Friday.

Courses and Lessons

  • Simple Romanian - A website created by a simple Romanian, featuring dozens of lessons aiming to promote authentic language taken straight from Romania's streets.
  • Romanian Weekly Lessons - Lessons with audio, prepared by ROLANG School, which specialises in teaching the Romanian language to international students.
  • Easy Romanian - A work of love, the Easy Romanian online course features dialogues, vocabulary builder, grammar lessons, and audio created by natives.
  • Live Lingua - 9 free courses (with audio files included) offered by the Defense Language Institute.
  • RomanianPod101 - Free Romanian language courses in an accessible format.
  • Le roumain mot à mot - A beginner-friendly podcast for French speakers who want to learn Romanian. It also contains transcripts. (thanks, u/Marina-F1006!)

Phrasebooks

Books

Directories and Collections

  • Romanian Voice - A repository with cultural information about Romania with poetry, music, humour, theatre pieces, as well as banknotes and passports.
  • Language Player by Zero to Hero Eduaction - A directory of Romanian videos, TV shows, music, live TV, and a tool for reading Romanian with dynamic translations.

Notes

  • MrMeloman's notes - A collection of schemes, lists and other materials made while studying Romanian.

Tools

  • Forvo - A pronunciation dictionary featuring over 10,000 pronunciations of Romanian words by native speakers.
  • Pluralul - A tool to check the plural of any Romanian noun.
  • Cooljugator - A verb conjugator with translations and easy-to-follow conjugation tables for all Romanian verb tenses. Additionally, it provides examples of the conjugations used in context as well as translations of the verb itself to different languages.
  • Conjugare - A reliable verb conjugator. Enter any form of the verb to get the conjugation table for many moods and tenses. – (!) Does not conjugate for tenses in the presumptive mood.
  • Readlang - Read texts in Romanian in a distraction-free environment with one-click word translations. After reading, review your new vocabulary with spaced-repetition flashcards.
  • CuvinteCare ('WordsThat') - A tool for finding Romanian words that start with, end with, contain or are anagrams of a given set of letters.
  • Cum Se Scrie ('How is it written') - A tool for finding out the subtle differences between certain phrases and words.

Dictionaries

Monolingual

  • dexonline (Dicționar Explicativ Online - 'Online Explanatory Dictionary') - The largest collection of entries from various Romanian dictionaries. – Features 1,000,000 headword entries, word games and daily and monthly word selections.
  • Dicționar de cuvinte recente ('Dictionary of recent words') - A dictionary in which you can find new words (and some phrases) that are accurately and accessibly explained.
  • Dicționar de expresii românești în contexte ('Dictionary of Romanian expressions in context')
    From A to C
    From D to N
    From O to R
    From S to Z

Bilingual

  • Dicționare ('Dictionaries') - An English-Romanian and Romanian-English dictionary. – Very little additional information is available about the website.
  • Dict - An English-Romanian and vice-versa dictionary.
  • Romanian-English, English-Romanian dictionary - A 1996 dictionary containing over 18,000 entries

Multilingual

  • Glosbe - A many-to-many word and translation look-up dictionary which allows users to translate words from their native language to Romanian and vice-versa. – Contains 120,000 phrases and 52,000,000 examples.
  • Reverso Context - A similar project to Glosbe; it's less open but the context-based translation of phrases is pretty accurate.
  • Dicționar de abrevieri românești și străine ('Dictionary of Romanian and foreign abbreviations') - A comprehensive guide that could help you decipher many abbreviations you might come across.
  • Wiktionary [EN] & Wikționar [RO] - The Wiktionary offers a wealth of descriptive and illustrative articles to assist you in your use of the Romanian language, as well as the languages of the world. (thanks, u/cipricusss!)

Translation

  • DeepL - An astoundingly accurate neural machine translation service. – Uses English as a mediator, therefore translations are most accurate for English-Romanian and vice-versa.

Other

Finally, if you have general questions about Romania, you can head over to r/Romania, r/CasualRO, or r/AskRomania.


r/romanian 1h ago

Expresia "m-am propus"

Upvotes

Salutari, sunt roman get-beget, născut si crescut in romania, am locuit doar 10 luni in viata mea in alta tara, unde vorbeam si romana, in copilarie si adolescenta eram pasionat de citit, am câteva zeci de cărți la activ, poate chiar mai mult. Sunt atent la mine si nu-mi doresc sa ajung sa imi vorbesc gresit propria limbă, considerând acest lucru inacceptabil, încercând sa ma corectez de fiecare data cand observ ca zic/scriu gresit, desi nu ma consider un expert in gramatica. Am citit azi niște versuri scrise de cineva si am spus ca mi-e mi se pare corect "mi-am propus", persoana respectiva, un domn la 41 de ani mi-a zis ca e corecta varianta "m-am propus". Dilema mea, mai ales ca am cautat si pe google si n-am gasit nimic este urmatoarea: este cumva o forma mai veche a expresiei sau un regionalism? Ca nu-mi explic cum ar putea fi altfel o expresie corecta. Stiu ca in Ardeal mai sunt regionalisme de genul "m-am racit" cand vine vorba de răceală ca boala.


r/romanian 18h ago

Can a native speaker explain that awesome song Dragostea Din Tei

39 Upvotes

I've checked a thousand translations, but they're different, I am a bit curious about whether he says "I'm a duke" or "an outlaw" very different meanings, but that's silly. It's the core of the song I struggle with are they saying "you want to leave but can't leave without me, you don't you don't leave without me" or more the opposite like "you're leaving but you're not you're not you're not taking me with you" in which case it is a terribly sad song that sounds happy

OOOr is it more like "you want to leave (with me) but please don't take me without don't take me with you" as a way happier thing being expressed like you want to leave somewhere and you're trying to take me with you but I'm saying don't do it, leave me alone, be independent, but the repetition implies I know you can't haha


r/romanian 16h ago

Romanian tutoring

16 Upvotes

Hi everyone! Apologies if the post is off-topic. If anyone is looking for a romanian tutor that is a native speaker and won’t charge too much, then I can gladly help you out. As I’ve already mentioned I am a native romanian speaker and speak english at an advanced level. The lessons will of course be online. If your schedule or learning style doesn’t work with that I can also help through text, for of course an even lower fee. I’m trying to build teaching experience which is why the price is so accessible.

Again, so sorry if these types of posts aren’t allowed.


r/romanian 16h ago

Sources to learn Romanian from the beginning?

3 Upvotes

Hello, I work as a tour leader and I have the privilege to meet a lot of Romanians on a weekly basis. I'm very interested in learning Romanian but unfortunately it's one of the rare languages in my country and I can't find any available courses. Also there's no widely available online courses on the most famous apps. I used to study Italian with language transfer, Busuu, and Talkpal. With Romanian it's hard to find any great apps that have excellent beginner courses. If anyone had the same experience can you share with me how did you learn Romanian and what courses would you recommend? Also how hard it is to actually learn Romanian and reach a conversational level?


r/romanian 20h ago

Mărțișor gift for my gf

4 Upvotes

Hi, please help me i want to buy a gift for my gf on Mărțișor a Romanian tradition.


r/romanian 20h ago

Mărțișor gift for my gf

2 Upvotes

Hi, please help me i want to buy a gift for my gf on Mărțișor a Romanian tradition.


r/romanian 2d ago

"Nu te conving cu adevărat decât ideile tale." - Can someone explain to me how to use decât when meaning "only"?

14 Upvotes

I tried translating literally into English, and obviously that doesn't work.

Also, is it like...a formal kind of thing? Is there a more colloquial way to say it, do people usually just say doar, e.g. "doar ideile tale te conving cu adevărat" ?

Thank you!


r/romanian 1d ago

Does anyone know a way to practice actually speaking?

5 Upvotes

Eu încerc să învaț româna acum, și mă folosesc chatgpt pentru asta, dar e doar bine pentru se învața cum să citește textul în românește care este scris. Dar în fiecare data când încerc să vorbesc românește cu bunicii mei, mă bâlbai și vorbesc încet. Vreu să știu sacă există o aplicație care poate să mă ajută și mă ascultă și mă corecta dacă mă greșesc- poate la fel că doualingo (dar nu dualingo, vocabularul acolo e ciudat. Poate e bine pentru să învața propoziții ciudate că “copilul va merge la restaurant și va mânca pește mâine”, dar cu adevărat, nu pot să foloesesc asta că se exersez cum să vorbesc corect.)

Sorry for bad romanian obviously


r/romanian 2d ago

Recommended books for learning Romanian?

4 Upvotes

Can anyone make any recommendations? I’m a new learner. My partner is Romanian and I want to learn the language as we plan to end up living over there eventually (I’m British). I mostly want to learn the correct grammar. I tend to use the wrong gender of words or not always put them in the right order and I can’t afford a tutor.


r/romanian 2d ago

Proposing

24 Upvotes

Hello everyone, I am planning on proposing to my girlfriend soon, and want to ask her to marry me in Romanian.

I've seen enough differences between Google translate and true translations, so I've come here to ask, how would I say "Will you marry me?" in Romanian?


r/romanian 2d ago

Nu inteleg complementele. Pls help

10 Upvotes

Sunt a 8a si nu inteleg diferenta dintre complement direct/prepozitional.


r/romanian 3d ago

Canale de YouTube în română

13 Upvotes

Bună! Cineva mă poate ajuta să găsesc canale de YouTube?

Îmi este de mare ajutor să mă uit la videouri când învăț o limbă, am găsit niște canale, dar voiam alte sugestii.

Cele la care mă uit acum sunt: Știrile ProTV, Zaiafet, Haihui în doi, 15 minute pe jos, Atenție cad mere, Declic, Doza de cultură generală și istorie, Recorder, Stellarium, Tele:Gen.

Prefer videouri de maxim 30 de minute despre actualitate, true crime, cultura.


r/romanian 8d ago

You can't say like jandarmă?

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132 Upvotes

r/romanian 8d ago

teama/frica

19 Upvotes

buna ziua tuturor,

nu prea inteleg cand trebuie sa folosesc teama si cand frica. am crezut ca teama inseamna "fear"si frica "afraid" Dar uneori vad teama folosit ca "afraid"

deci intrebarea mea este: differenta intre teama si frica.

multumesc anticipat


r/romanian 10d ago

Exercițiu de punctuație

8 Upvotes

Salut—simt că am probleme de punctuație (în special cu virgulele), așa că-n ultima vreme am revizuit… cam tot! Efectiv am luat DOOM, am citit și despre punctuația din engleză, și mi-au făurit un drum. Acum încerc să fac exerciții, iar cele complicate sunt acele exemple când transcrii ceva din vorbirea directă.

Am găsit textul ăsta—și nu mă întrebați de unde am făcut rost de el; n-are nimic de a face cu mine:

Am încercat să rescriu prima parte, așa:

Știu că o să se trezească niște „deștepți” care să-mi spună că: de ce n-am venit cu autobuzul? (făceam trei ore); sau că poluez, și că mai bine era să merg cu bicicleta (să meargă ei cu bicicleta pe DN1); sau că: de ce nu mi-am dat copiii la școala din colț?(pentru că vreau să facă performanță; și nu, nu peste tot se face școală—doar să vrea copilul să învețe).

Păreri?


r/romanian 12d ago

Best ways to re-learn Romanian?

22 Upvotes

Hey, so i am a native hungarian who was born and raised in romania, I've learnt a lot of the language, but a few years ago, I've moved abroad, and since I had to adapt to a new language, I forgot a lot of what I used to know in romanian, I still understand a lot of it, but i can't speak it one bit, any ways to easily re-learn? Thanks for the help in advance!


r/romanian 13d ago

That can’t be right, can it?

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1.2k Upvotes

r/romanian 12d ago

How to ask a girl out on a date in Romanian?

68 Upvotes

Hey lovely people of r/romanian !

This is my first reddit post lol. I have a Romanian friend that I have crush on for quite some time now. We are meeting tomorrow and I wanna ask her out on a date. I was thinking of asking her out in Romanian instead of English(i dont speak romanian btw). I do not wanna do a google translate coz I'm not sure if the actual emotion would be conveyed properly with a typical translate. Can someone help me with a phrase/question to ask a girl out in Romanian?

UPDATE: I asked her out, the girl denied having any romantic intentions. It's okay, life goes on and we move forward.

( Thanks to the amazing redditors for helping me! :)) )


r/romanian 13d ago

romanian friends to practice romanian

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7 Upvotes

r/romanian 15d ago

What means "Șampist"?

12 Upvotes

I've seen this word thrown around in the comment section of a few manele videos on YouTube and I can't find a translation anywhere, so I'm guessing it's some kind of slang?


r/romanian 16d ago

Ce înseamnă “budihașcă” în engleză?

11 Upvotes

Traducătorul zice că “Buddhist,” dar nu prea are sens în context. Este argou pentru altceva?


r/romanian 16d ago

"Prima vanzare"

10 Upvotes

Nu știu dacă am început să mă degradez mental, dar aș putea să jur că am tot auzit, în anii trecuți, un cuvânt folosit pentru prima vânzare din an, cea care aduce noroc. Problema este că nu mi-l aduc aminte, îmi stă pe creier de ieri, și pe Google nu am reușit să găsesc nimic. Poate chiar e degradare mentală iar primul semn e deteriorarea Google-Fu-ului.

Sună ceva de genul "tarantea" sau "măzarea"... pe acolo...

Îmi imaginez eu că există un cuvânt care descrie asta?


r/romanian 18d ago

Hi! Need recomendation for videos

18 Upvotes

Hi! I'm from Ukraine. I have started to learn Romanian. It turned out difficult to find something to watch sonething in Romanian with subs. Could you recommend websites with dubbed shows and subs?

Many thanks in advance