Romanian Words: 120 Basic Words With Pronunciation and Meaning

Read this first: how Romanian sounds

Romanian is mostly pronounced as written, which makes it far friendlier than French or English. You need five special letters and a handful of rules.

The five letters

Consonant rules

• c before e or i is "ch" (ce = cheh, cinci = cheench); elsewhere it is "k" (casă). ch before e or i is "k" (chiar = kyar).
• g before e or i is "j" as in "gentle" (ger = jer); elsewhere hard (gară). gh before e or i is hard "g" (ghid = geed).
• j is the "zh" of "measure" (jos = zhos).
• r is rolled or tapped, as in Spanish or Italian.
• Final i after a consonant is usually a whisper, almost silent: lupi (wolves) is "loop-y" with the y barely there. But -ii is a full "ee".

Stress is unpredictable, so the pronunciation column below marks it in capitals. Most words stress the second-to-last syllable, but not reliably enough to guess.

Greetings and politeness

Two notes. Bună on its own is the most useful word in the language: it is "hi" to almost anyone, and it is also the first half of good morning, good day and good evening. Poftim is a strange one: it means "here you go" when you hand something over, and "pardon?" when you did not hear, and "go ahead" when you let someone pass. You will hear it twenty times a day.

The words that make sentences work

Question words

Useful full questions: Unde este...? (OON-deh YES-teh, where is...?), Cât costă? (kuht KOS-tuh, how much does it cost?), Ce înseamnă? (cheh uhn-SYAHM-nuh, what does it mean?), Vorbiți engleză? (vor-BEETS en-GLEH-zuh, do you speak English?).

Pronouns

Romanian drops the pronoun most of the time, because the verb ending shows who is acting: Sunt din Anglia (I'm from England) with no "eu". Use the pronoun only for emphasis. And note dumneavoastră: it is the formal "you", it takes plural verb forms, and it is used with strangers, officials, older people and shop staff. When in doubt, use it.

People and family

Domnul (Mr) and doamna (Mrs) are used before surnames and on their own as "sir" and "madam": "Bună ziua, doamnă." The -ul and -a on the end are the definite article; see below.

Numbers 1 to 10

Then unsprezece (11), doisprezece (12), douăzeci (20), o sută (100), o mie (1,000). If you know Italian or Spanish, patru, cinci, șase, șapte, opt, nouă and zece will look like distant cousins of quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, dieci, because they are.

Time and days

The days line up with the Latin planets exactly as in Spanish and Italian: luni (Moon), marți (Mars), miercuri (Mercury), joi (Jupiter), vineri (Venus). Lowercase, like the other Romance languages.

Food and drink

Places and getting around

Verbs you will use every day

The forms in brackets are the "I" form, which is what you will use most. Two survival sentences: Nu înțeleg (noo uhn-tseh-LEG, I don't understand) and Nu vorbesc bine română (noo vor-BESK BEE-neh ro-MUH-nuh, I don't speak Romanian well).

Adjectives

Adjectives agree with the noun: un om bun (a good man), o casă bună (a good house). They usually go after the noun, as in Spanish.

The definite article goes on the end

This is the thing that makes Romanian look alien even to Italians. "The" is not a separate word; it is a suffix.

Masculine nouns take -ul (or -le if they end in e), feminine nouns ending in ă swap it for -a, feminine nouns ending in e add -a, and plurals take -i (masculine) or -le (feminine). You do not need to produce this perfectly on day one; you need to recognise that casa and casă are the same word with and without "the".

The indefinite article is separate and easy: un (masculine), o (feminine): un om, o casă.

Romanian words that look like Italian, and the ones that do not

About seventy percent of Romanian vocabulary is Latin-derived, so if you know a Romance language, these are free: bun (buono), mare (mare, in the sense of big is different, but the shape is familiar), frumos (formosus), apă (acqua), pâine (pane), carne, lapte (latte), noapte (notte), săptămână (settimana), ce, cine, unde, când, cu, pentru (per), mulțumesc (from "mulți ani", many years, an old blessing), a înțelege (intelligere).

The rest is where Romanian surprises you. From Slavic: da (yes), prieten (friend), iubire (love), a iubi, vreme (weather, time), drag (dear), zid (wall), sfânt (holy), bogat (rich), sărac (poor), hrană (food). From Turkish: ciorbă (soup), cafea (coffee), dușman (enemy), musafir (guest), geam (window pane), chef (mood, party). From Hungarian: oraș (city), gând (thought), a cheltui (to spend), belșug (abundance). From Greek: a folosi (to use), prisos (surplus). And from French, thousands of nineteenth-century borrowings: mersi, birou (office), șofer (driver), bagaj.

The practical effect: you can often guess a Romanian noun from Italian, and you can almost never guess the word for "yes", "friend" or "love".

Common mistakes with Romanian words

• Pronouncing ă as "a". Casă is KAH-suh, not KAH-sah. The neutral vowel is the sound of Romanian; get it wrong and every word is off.
• Treating â and î as different sounds. Same sound, different spelling positions.
• Saying "ts" for ș or "sh" for ț. The comma-hooked letters are easy to mix up on a screen. ș = sh, ț = ts.
• Pronouncing ce and ci with a hard c. Cinci is "cheench", not "kinki".
• Using tu with everyone. Romanians are more formal than Spaniards or Italians. Dumneavoastră with strangers, officials and elders.
• Forgetting that "the" is stuck on the end. "The house" is casa, not "la casă".
• Assuming da means "yes" in a Romance way. It does mean yes, and it is Slavic, and Romanians will enjoy explaining that.
• Mixing up lună (month) and lună (moon). Same word; context decides.
• Saying "mulțumesc" as "mool-too-MESK". The ț is "ts": mool-tsoo-MESK.

Say them out loud, then use them for real

A list of Romanian words is only useful once the ă, â, ș and ț come out of your mouth without a pause. That takes repetition with your voice, not your eyes.

1. Say the greetings table out loud three times, slowly, watching the neutral vowels.
2. Say ten nouns with and without the article: om, omul; casă, casa; carte, cartea.
3. Build five sentences from the verbs: Vreau apă. Nu înțeleg. Vorbiți engleză? Cât costă? Sunt din Canada.
4. Then say them to something that listens and corrects. SPAIKING's AI speaking partner will run the shop, the café and the train station with you in Romanian and fix the "KAH-sah" and the hard c in cinci the moment you say them. That is the difference between knowing Romanian words and being able to use them in Cluj.