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Why learn Romanian? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 54 31 July 2006 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree (if the book is still like the old yellow thing that I bought back in the seventies). But back to the main question: why learn Romanian? For the simple reason that it is the only Romance language that is seriously different from the rest. It has a neuter, it has genitive/dative, it has a strange possessive particle (for want of a better word), and it has more or less killed off its infinitive as a verbal form much like modern Greek or - so I'm told - Albanian and Bulgarian. For somebody interested in language development it is a treasure trove as a specimen of what happens when you cut off a language from its nearest neighbours and surround it with aliens. But it is not an easy language to acquire, even for people who know French, Italian, Latin on the one hand and Russian, Turkish and Greek on the other. And outside Romania and Moldova nobody will give you any credit for knowing it. Edited by Iversen on 31 July 2006 at 5:03pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| easyboy82 Pentaglot Groupie Italy Joined 6831 days ago 72 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek | Message 18 of 54 02 August 2006 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Really?Sincerely I think Romanian is quite distant from Italian...I find Spanish easy to understand for an Italian speaker who hasn't studied it, but Romanian... I studied a little of this language and this has confirmed my impression (that it is far more distant from Italian than any other romance language) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6891 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 19 of 54 02 August 2006 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Spoken Romanian sounds similar to Italian (with some Slavic sounds thrown in for good measure) and written Romanian does resemble the other Romance languages in some ways, but overall it almost seems to be in a league of its own with all those cases and Slavic influences. I once heard that a good knowledge of Latin would help you more with Romanian than with any of the other modern Romance languages although I cannot really say how true this may be.
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| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6826 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 20 of 54 03 August 2006 at 2:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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One reason to teach youself Romanian is because of the unique way it
sounds. I've never heard another language that sounded so interesting. To someone who doesn't speak a single work of Romanian it may sound like three different languages all mixed together: French, Slavic, and Italian. I love listening to Romanian because of this. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6857 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 21 of 54 03 August 2006 at 2:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've always called Romanian a "Slavic Italian". It's a wonderful sounding language and even the written form has a nice look to it.
Romanian is on my "hit list", but there is a serious lack of good resources. I really hope this changes soon. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6891 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 22 of 54 03 August 2006 at 3:29am | IP Logged | |||||
Very true. I've seen few good resources (print or online) for Romanian. There's a Pimsleur course available but it's only a few lessons long from what I've heard. There's, of course, the 'Teach Yourself Romanian' but it seems to get nothing but bad reviews. I have a few sites for you if you're interested : + EasyRomanian.Com (subscription needed) + Orbilat : Romanian + Langmedia : Romanian in Romania (I had more links but I can't find them now!) And some very useful (and free) PDF files (no audio, sadly) : + PC Volunteers First Steps in Romanian + Romanian Grammar Workbook for Peace Corps Volunteers + Practicum for Writing and Reading in Romanian + Limba Romana Pre-Service Training Language Manual + SEELC : Romanian Grammar Reference Hope those are of some help. :) Edited by lady_skywalker on 03 August 2006 at 3:29am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 54 03 August 2006 at 3:35am | IP Logged | |||||
We have a thread (Dead Languages & Polyglottery) where the usefulness of Latin for the study of Romance languages is discussed. Opinions expressed here runs the whole gamut from "it is almost a necessity" to "it is a waste of time". As for Romanian there is one area where more has survived from Latin than in any other Romance language, namely noun declension. It has three genders (even though neutrum is really just a compromise between masculinum and femininum), and it has two cases: nominative/accusative and genitive/dative. An ending as genitive plural -(l)or will bring forth the tears in any Latin lover who remembers the good old -orum. But as a practical didactic tool you cannot rely on Latin, because you cannot predict where these relics are found. Verbs? The endings of 3 persons x 2 numbers have more or less been preserved, but not to a greater extent than in any other Romance language. And infinitive has been reduced to the role as a verbal noun. If you want to say "I want to say" it is something like "Vreau să zice" which could be translated I want that-I-say (subjunctive), - a construction shared with modern Greek. This could not be guessed on the basis of neither Latin nor Old Greek, but is a common development for the languages of Southern Balkan. Articles? Romanian uses enclitic articles om -> omul (man -> the man), with an l derived from Latin ille. If you have an adjective in front then it takes the article: "Bunul om", but "Omul bun". This is funnily enough very close to the rules in the Scandinavian languages (hurray!), but resembles nothing in the other Romance languages, and you could not guess it from knowing Latin. Of course you get some vocabulary for free from Latin (if you know the sound shift-rules, that is), but less than in any other Romance language because of the big influx of Slavic words and words from other languages in the neighborhood. So all in all: don't learn Latin if Romanian is the goal, but rejoice in the insight in Romanian you get if you already know Latin.
One of the main reasons for the funny sound of Romanian is its use of midtongue wowels. In languages like French you find a nondescript little wowel in stressless positions (e in "que faire"), - it is also fairly close to the first wowel in English bury, but formed in the middle of the mouth. Romanian has several of these wowels and uses them freely in stressed position: there is an 'a' with a halfcircle above ă ( & # 259 ; without the spaces), which is close to the e-sound I just mentioned, and then there is an â as in România - the same sound as î - which is little more closed than the other, which gives it a sound nearer to french u (or German ü). No other Romance language has three series of wowels: front - middle -back of the mouth, combined with more or less open mouth. So all in all Romanian is a fascinating language to study, and now where you can get both written and spoken Romanian through the internet it is not quite as difficult to get good native stuff to study. But if I had to choose my first Romance language, the choice would not be to study Romanian. EDIT: it is a problem writing those Romanian letters, - at first I saw the a-with-the-halfcircle ă (sign 259 in html) correctly, but when I returned half an hour or so later it had turned into an a with a tilde (ă). The a og i with circumflex (â î) have turned into pure nonsense and they don't improve even if I change the character set. 2.EDIT: Now that I have edited the post the Romanian letters are suddenly back again!? But for how long? - SPOOKY! Edited by Iversen on 13 August 2006 at 2:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7145 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 24 of 54 03 August 2006 at 5:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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For those seeking materials to study Romanian, there is a university-level textbook available, with CDs and an accompanying workbook, produced by Ohio State University. It gets good reviews on Amazon. The book is "Discover Romanian", by Rodica Botoman. The Ohio State Press page for the book is available at:
http://www.ohiostatepress.org/index.htm?/books/book%20pages/ botoman%20discover.htm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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