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How different is Romanian? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 1 of 25 07 June 2012 at 5:01am | IP Logged | ||
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For those of you with experience with Romanian and other Romance languages, how different is it? I've seen the chart on this site that says it about 60% similar to the other modern Romance languages. On the other hand, the Wikipedia article on Slavic influence on Romanian notes that about 1/5 of the words in Romanian are Slavic in origin, including many common words. What does that actually mean in real terms? I've listened to some clips of the language, so I get the general sound of it and the sense that it's recognizable. I guess I was wondering what the major hurdles are for someone who knows at least one other Romance language (French and my current project, Portuguese in my case) and how high are those hurdles?
I don't know if I'll pursue it later on, but I'm curious. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 2 of 25 07 June 2012 at 10:31am | IP Logged | ||
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When I did Romance philology at the University, I had a brief course in Romanian. It's some time ago, but from memory, these were the most difficult parts compared to other Romance languages:
1. Romanian has kept a case system, although simplified compared to Latin. 2. Nouns have three genders instead of two (masculine, feminine and neuter), and the definite article is enclitic (attached to the end of the noun). 3. The verb system is complex and has some specific features, e.g. the existence of a presumptive mood. Also, in many cases where Romance languages use the infinitive, Romanian uses the particle să followed by the subjunctive (for example "it is necessary to work" = French: il faut travailler, Romanian: trebuie să lucreze. 4. The heavy influence of non-Romance languages, in particular Slavic, but also Balkan languages. Finally, there are some phonetic peculiarities which can make it more difficult to recognise the Latin origin of the word, e.g. Latin QU gives "p" in many words: "aqua" (water) - "apă", "quattuor" (four) - "patru". 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5067 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 3 of 25 07 June 2012 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | ||
It should be noted that features 2 and 3 that were mentioned here are common with Bulgarian and the larger Balkan Sprachbund (which also may contain feature 1 as well), meaning that they are areal features adopted by many languages in the region. I don't know much about Romanian but I do know that the Balkan Sprachbund contains non-Slavic languages as well like Albanian and Greek which also have influenced Romanian to a point. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 4 of 25 07 June 2012 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just an additional note: Obviously it is a huge advantage to know one or two Romance languages if you want to learn Romanian. After about six months of study I was able to read and make sense of complex texts, even literature (with the help of a dictionary of course). However, it would have taken me a lot more time to get to a level where I could have used it actively (speaking and writing). I didn't follow up on it after the introduction course I got, but maybe I will some day. It is an interesting language in itself with its mix of Romance, Slavic and Balkan elements (as Kartof rightly points out).
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 25 07 June 2012 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Romance Profile includes a point-by-point comparison of a handful of features for 6 languages including Romanian while the Romanian Profile has some comments with examples comparing certain aspects of Romanian with those in other Romance languages (scroll to the comments under "Difficulties", "Grammar", "Pronunciation" and "Vocabulary" in that profile).
The short answer from what I recall when studying Romanian is that it's pretty divergent from the other languages in the group but some parts of it are still familiar when you're fluent in another Romance language. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 6 of 25 08 June 2012 at 12:04am | IP Logged | ||
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At what level do you primarily run into the Slavic vocabulary? Are they common, or are they mostly in the more literate level? Would a basic grasp of a Slavic language help with learning a basic level of Romanian, or would it be something that only comes into play as you get deeper into the language?
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 25 08 June 2012 at 7:48am | IP Logged | ||
You wouldn't need to be fluent in a Slavonic language to detect the Slavonic loanwords in Romanian (at least I was in the same position when I started to learn Romanian) but by the same token that influence or stratum wouldn't be recognizable if you knew no Slavonic language. About 15% of the current lexicon can be traced to Slavonic. This post gives some examples of these loanwords and include basic items that I encountered as a beginner (e.g. a citi "to read", ceas "clock", vreme "weather, time", a plăti "to pay", da "yes", a trebui "to be necessary") This article on Wikipedia has some more information on the topic but the Talk Page has a couple of Romanian editors disputing the veracity of the article. It seems quietly motivated from the common Romanian sensitivity toward traits which are perceived as demonstrating the divergence of Romanian from other Romance languages and/or Latin. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tennisfan Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5361 days ago 130 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 8 of 25 08 June 2012 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been studying Romanian for a few years, I took an unofficial test late last year at a language institute that put me around C1 level, I think if I were conservative I would say I'm more of an advanced B2, but hey, who doesn't like to be complimented?
I speak Italian and Spanish both at about the same level, somewhere between B2 and C1. French about B1. So that being said, I would echo a lot of the comments from above and add a few of my own. As the others have mentioned, Romanian has kept an incredibly vast case system (at least if you aren't used to using it). The genitive/dative are identical, so that helps. Also, in the 19th century Romanian had a bit of a "French revolution" of sorts and borrowed a lot of words from French, so if you speak French that will help. But keeping in mind the geography of the country and its history will give you a bit more insight. Romania was isolated from its Latin conquerors and was surrounded by Slavs, and Hungarians. The Slavs were in control at various points, and so Romanians heard "slavona" (Slavic) at church, in literature, in official documents, etc. So a lot of slavic words came into the language, despite the grammar remaining mostly Latin. Then there were a litany of people that tried to conquer Romania, the Hungarians, the Turks, etc, so a lot of everyday words come from other languages. "oraș"- city, town = Hungarian, "geam" - window = Turkish, etc etc. On the other hand, you will already have a series of words, verbs in particular, that would be at your disposition from your knowledge of Latin languages. Just to think of a few off the top of my head: a permite, a caracteriza, a prefera, a convinge, a astepta, a putea, a invita, a exista, a simti, a evita, a estima, a crea, a crede, etc etc. You can easily figure these out, some of them you can figure out even without knowledge of another latin language. However. The one thing I tell people when they ask about Romanian is this: it is not at all as difficult as people think if you want simply to communicate and start speaking. It's relatively accessible, conjugates simpler in some cases than Spanish/Italian/French etc. As I mentioned above there are plenty of words that have been loaned from French and more and more from English. BUT, it's a much more difficult task to be able to speak it well and to speak intelligently. Maybe a better way to say it is this: you could probably get to B1 in a few months of serious study. But going from B1 to C1 even if you were in Romania would take a hell of a lot longer. That's because IMO when you speak Romanian there are about a million ways you can make a sentence sound awkard. If you just want to get your point across then that's fine, but if you want to speak elegantly and richly, then there is a lot of fine tuning to be done. Some of my own personal problems: pronouns are very very hard in Romanian, they all decline, first of all, and they're everywhere, second of all. Relative pronouns are very hard. But actually I've had the most trouble with demonstrative pronouns. In English we have "this, that, these, those." That's it. In Romanian there are about 40 ways to say that depending 1) on its function in the sentence and 2) the situation. That is to say, there is sort of a casual way and a formal way. I still have problems with them today. You can see them all here, just to be scared: http://diacritica.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/demonstrative/ Also, prepositions are very challenging. They are not at all intuitive to what we would think of in English. What I mean by that is not simply a matter of translation, but, for example, there are two ways to say of "de" and "din." No problem there. But they would use "din" as the preposition for to be "from" somewhere and also to be "in" somewhere, like a building. That's a simple example but they can be very confusing. Another one: gender of nouns can vary. There are masculine, feminine, and neuter, and some change gender from singular to plural. Some of these are strict depending on the word. For example, words that end in "-ție" are all feminine, "instrucție," "conversație," for example. A lot of those come from Latin and you can identify their gender quickly. Then there are a lot of words that there is no way to know what their gender is, you just have to... memorize it. Sort of like the German der/die/das, you just have to know it. I'd say about 50% of Romanian words you can guess their gender by looking, the others you have to learn. It takes time. Some other obstacles: practically every person under 40 or so in Romania speaks English. So you really have to push them to speak Romanian with you. Also, if you speak at even an A1 level they will be so impressed that you even know where Romania is on a map, let alone speak the language, that they will be too afraid to correct you for fear of hurting your feelings. There are lots of other things and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have, so feel free. But that would be my take---it's not hard to start speaking, not at all. But if you want to speak well, and speak normally, it takes a lot of fine tuning, and a lot of suppressing of instincts from English and from other Latin languages. It is however a very beautiful language and once you do start speaking well, people will ADORE you. Very few people even try learning Romanian, even foreigners in Romania don't even try. So they will worship you if you give it a shot. :) 14 persons have voted this message useful |
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