Romanian grammar

Romanian grammar is the study of grammar in the Romanian language.

Pronouns

There are eight personal pronouns in Romanian:

Singular 1st person eu 2nd person tu 3rd person el (masc.), ea (fem.) Plural 1st person noi 2nd person voi 3rd person ei (masc.), ele (fem.) The pronouns above are those in the nominative case. They are usually omitted in Romanian unless required to disambiguate the meaning of a sentence. Usually, the verb ending provides information about the subject.

The accusative forms of the pronouns come in two forms: a stressed and an unstressed form.

Singular 1st person (pe) mine m(a`) 2nd person (pe) tine te 3rd person masc. (pe) el il (-l-) 3rd person fem. (pe) ea o Plural 1st person (pe) noi ne 2nd person (pe) voi v(a`) 3rd person masc. (pe) ei (i^)i 3rd person fem. (pe) ele le

Nouns

Romanian nouns are inflected by gender, number and case.

Gender

Unlike the other Romance languages, Romanian has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter, keeping the neuter gender from Latin. Nouns of this gender use the masculine form for the singular and the feminine form for the plural. Words ending in "ă" are feminine, while words ending in a consonant are masculine and neuter and words ending in "e" can be of either gender.

Sometimes it is possible to change the gender using suffixes. From feminine to masculine the suffix "-oi" is used (pisica (fem) - pisoi (masc) = cat) and the reverse with suffix "-ică" (lup (masc) - lupoaică (fem) - wolf).

Romanian nouns have 5 cases, Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative and Vocative.

Number

Romanian distinguishes between singular and plural forms of a noun, the plural being formed with vowel change, but sometimes there are some other sounds that change inside the noun.

Here's a table with the rough general rules of the Romanian plural:

Gender Ending - Sg Ending - Pl

Feminine -ă/-e/-ea -e/-i/-ele
Masculine -(consonant)/-e/-u -i
Neuter -(consonant) -uri/-oare/-e

Some examples:

Gender Noun - Sg Noun - Pl

Feminine carte = book cărţi = books

Masculine călător = traveler călători = travelers

Neuter drum = road drumuri = roads

Neuter măr = apple mere = apples

Articles

Definite article

Another peculiarity of Romanian is that it is the only Romance language that has the definite article attached to the end of the noun (as in North Germanic languages) instead of being a separate word in front. They were formed as in other Romance languages from the Latin demonstrative pronouns.

Gender Noun Definite article Noun with article

Feminine carte = book -a cartea = the book

Masculine drum = road -ul drumul = the road

Indefinite article

Gender Nominative Dative

Singular Plural Singular Plural

Feminine o nişte unei unor

Masculine un unui

Neuter

Possession

Possession is indicated by using the possesive article (see table) and the oblique case of the possessor noun.

Gender Singular Plural

Feminine al a

Masculine ai ale

Numerals

Adjectives

Verbs

Adverbs

Prepositions

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