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Romanian - Where to begin? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| MerkVallaj Diglot Newbie Hungary Joined 4636 days ago 7 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English Studies: German, Russian, Romanian | Message 1 of 9 11 January 2012 at 8:45pm | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone!
I would like to start learning Romanian, because I've been to Romania many times and I really liked the country, and would like to understand the Romanian locals, not just the ethnic Hungarians when I visit, and I have an interest in Romanian culture, history and the language itself. This will be my first Romance language, so I won't get any "discounts" from other languages in this group, though I notice that there is some similarity between English and Romanian vocabulary, and my knowledge of Russian might help in the parts of Romanian that were influenced by Slavic languages. The problem I have is that even here in Budapest, where I live, there aren't many language learning materials available for Romanian. There are some local language schools which offer Romanian courses, but they're somewhat expensive and I don't have that much money right now. The only cheap self-study book I managed to find in a bookstore isn't really a "language course" but more like a basic dictionary with extra features. It's called "Kezdők Román Nyelvkönyve" (Romanian Language-book of Beginners) in Hungarian. It consits of a brief introductory text about the Romanian language, a page about how to pronounce the alphabet, and a pretty good grammar part with tables of noun declensions, verb conjugations and adverbs. There is a page or two of basic phrases like "Cum te cheamă?" and the rest of the book is a comic book-like "picture dictionary" with various cartoonish drawings, and Romanian words with the Hungarian translation pointing to them from a broad range of basic topics like "around the house", "pets", "food" etc. Do you think a book like this is useful to start learning the language? I thought about practicing reading texts like the Romanian Wikipedia even if I don't understand them to get familiar with the pronounciation, and how the Romanian language "looks like", then learn the basic phrases, a few other basic words, then before diving into the vocabulary of the book, learn all the noun declensions and verb conjugations. Do you think this is a good approach and I should get this much out of this book before searching other Romanian learning materials? Any other advices? Do you know any websites where you can learn Romanian? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5283 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes  Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto | Message 2 of 9 11 January 2012 at 9:04pm | IP Logged |
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I'd take a look at the language profile and the materials it lists here. Some are free,
some aren't: Romanian Language Profile 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6532 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 9 11 January 2012 at 9:09pm | IP Logged |
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It depends on your learning style. There are free materials by FSI/DLI, and on the other extreme there are audiobooks so you could try listening-reading. i'm doing the latter but of course I have the advantage of studying other Romance languages.
What are your plans? If you're going to learn French or Spanish anyway, you could even start now. In the long run this will help your Romanian but at first it might create confusion - though it should still help with passive understanding. You could also check if your local library has some good materials or can get them for you via inter-library exchange. also, do you have Romanian TV available? sports are perhaps the easiest thing to watch, also movies that you've seen many times and/or with subtitles. and do you like some Romanian songs? are there any that you love enough to look up every word in them? you can use googletranslate to speed up the process. edit: oh and you should be able to find some materials in Romania. i suppose shipping shouldn't be too expensive? or you could ask someone who travels there a lot - i can imagine that you of course want to speak some Romanian by the next time you go there yourself! Edited by Serpent on 11 January 2012 at 9:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MerkVallaj Diglot Newbie Hungary Joined 4636 days ago 7 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English Studies: German, Russian, Romanian | Message 4 of 9 11 January 2012 at 9:53pm | IP Logged |
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"I'd take a look at the language profile and the materials it lists here. Some are free,
some aren't:" I looked at the Romanian language profile, there are some useful links in it, thanks for the tip. "What are your plans?" My plans are mainly to know enough Romanian to speak with locals in Romania, understand Romanian TV/Radio, and read books in Romanian. After this, it depends on what the future brings. "If you're going to learn French or Spanish anyway" I'm not planning to learn other Romance languages, because I don't think I'm going to live in areas where these languages are spoken, but I might live in Romania or near the Romanian border in the near future. And if I want to learn other Romance languages later, the knowledge of Romanian will help me in it. "also, do you have Romanian TV available? sports are perhaps the easiest thing to watch, also movies that you've seen many times and/or with subtitles." Budapest is too far from the Romanian border to receive Romanian TV with an antenna, but I can watch some Romanian TV channels over the internet and I have some multi-language DVDs, some might have the option of setting the language to Romanian. "and do you like some Romanian songs? are there any that you love enough to look up every word in them?" Yep, I already tried this, before "officially" deciding to start learning Romanian. :) "oh and you should be able to find some materials in Romania." Good idea, never thought about it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4892 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 5 of 9 11 January 2012 at 9:58pm | IP Logged |
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This might be a quite useful. http://cnt.dnt.md/romint/undp/index.php It has an audio
portion and is organized systematically. I think however, it is all in Romanian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5197 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 9 11 January 2012 at 11:20pm | IP Logged |
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Whilst you can learn Romanian through English, there is a Romanian Cultural Institute in Budapest: Román Kultarális Intézet and their email address is romankulturalis.intezet@upcmail.hu. Perhaps this may be of some help in finding out about materials with a Hungarian base.
For on-line learning Romanian in Romanian, I saved this link a few years ago Curs de Limba Română It's free, with audio and supposedly up to level B1. I like the US Defense Language Institute courses, DLI, which are free to download in the public domain. The Romanian Basic course uses English as a base, but their use of English is limited. DLI Romanian Basic Course There is extensive mp3 audio available. Edited by iguanamon on 12 January 2012 at 6:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| MerkVallaj Diglot Newbie Hungary Joined 4636 days ago 7 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English Studies: German, Russian, Romanian | Message 7 of 9 12 January 2012 at 2:50pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the links, I think they'll be very useful.
Meanwhile it seems that learning Romanian will be easier than German and Russian. The case system is even simpler than in German, the gender system and plural determination seems to be more capricious and illogical than in Russian, but much easier than in German. The only difficult feature seems to be the elaborate verb conjugation system with the many forms and tenses, but because this seems to be the "catch" in every Romance language (and in one way or the other in English) I'm not really surprised by it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6800 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 8 of 9 13 January 2012 at 12:24am | IP Logged |
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You might find the following YouTube channel very helpful
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_62-9YsHbCs&feature=related 1 person has voted this message useful |
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