Luke always said, "There's nothing hard about learning Romanian...but there are a million easy things." Luke wrote a grammar book - Romanian Grammar in 5 Minutes. I think it's supposed to be 5 minutes a day, for the rest of your life. I don't know. I'll give you a little preview and share some things from his book a little later.

I'm not going to pretend that this is going to be some kind of repository for all things Romanian. There are still several hundred thousand things I haven't learned yet. But I thought it would be interesting to see at least some of the similarities and differences between Romanian and English.

Since Romanian is a romance language (Roman - Romanian, get it?), there are a lot of familiar looking and sounding words. See if you can figure out what these words mean (hold your mouse over the word for the answer):

Now, if you got those, try these out. Just a clue...I wouldn't put them there if they meant what you think they mean.

Okay, so that was fun. Now, how 'bout some curious little things?

• There is no Romanian word for "foot." Give it up Radu, you know I'm right. "Bottom of the leg" is not a word.

 

• In English you take a picture. In Romanian, you make one. But...

 

• You don't make a decision in Romanian. You take it.

 

• In English there are four demonstrative pronouns: this, that, these, those. In Romanian there are 42 ways to say them. I won't list them...but trust me...

 

• The Romanian word for goatee is cioc. Beak.

 

• For those who like grammar: The Romanian word "uit" means "I forget." The reflexive "mă uit" however, means "I am looking."

 

• Along those lines: "te rog" means "please" (literally "I ask you"). The reflexive "mă rog" means "I pray." It is also used colloquially as something like, "I mean...you know," as in, "yeah, that was fun. I mean, you know...not like walking up to Flãmânda, but it was okay."