Romanian Lessons Are Loaded

Romanian lessons are now available online! Huge kudos and thanks to Monik and Mihai who made it happen!

As you may already know Romania is a East-European country and you can read about it a nice and very useful article from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania.

So please please visit Romanian lessons on Internet Polyglot - enjoy the new language!

And, as usual, if you see any discrepancies and incorrect translations - shout out loud here or on the forum.


History of the Romanian Language



At the beginning of Christianity, the land that is now the country of Romania was occupied by settlements of Geto-dacians, an indo-European family of tribes. With the Latin expansion from Central Europe and the Greek influences from the South, the Geto-dacians would make contact with the two great civilizations through trade and of course, wars. Roman writings attest that geto-dacian traders around the Danube were polyglots, being able to speak several local dialects, Latin and old Greek. It’s from this combination of cultures that the Romanian people and language were born, although in today’s language the predominant reagent is Latin.



Actually, of the old Geto-Dacian dialect only around 100 words are left, the others being either assimilated by the Latin language or simply replaced. The Greek influence can be seen mostly in the lower part of Romania and is not very large, but mentionable. At the same time, other nomadic influences can be spotted in the Romanian language, most of which are attested to the Goths.



Learning Romanian



Learning Romanian is as easy (or well, as hard) as learning any other Latin based language such as Italian, French or Spanish. Actually, if you already know any of these languages, learning Romanian will most likely be a walk in the park, since they have several shared words, grammar structures and pronunciation rules.



Although you won’t find them with the abundance you would for English, Italian, French or some other languages, “Learn Romanian” courses and books can be downloaded from the Internet, or bought from local libraries in case you thought of starting learning by yourself. Another great source of learning material can be found on the many sites that offer free Romanian lessons online all across the World Wide Web.



And if these aren’t enough for you, feel free to try and improve vocabulary through the numerous Romanian vocabulary games that can also be found online. These vocabulary games will help you memorize words and improve your spelling and pronunciation skills. Although you can’t simply learn Romanian by yourself through simple vocabulary games, they’re a great addition to any free Romanian online lessons or “How to Learn Romanian” courses that you might be following.



From a grammatical point of view, Romanian shares the same set of rules as Italian (after all, both languages are considered to be the direct descendants of Latin). Romanian nouns for example are inflected by gender (feminine, masculine and neuter), case (nominative/accusative, dative/genitive and vocative) and number (singular and plural). The articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns, agree in gender with the noun they reference.




Articles about Romanian in other languages:

History of the Romanian Language (in English)
Lengua Rumana (in Spanish)
Langue roumaine (in French)
Rumänische Sprache (in German)
Lingua rumena (in Italian)
Roemeense Taal (in Dutch)
Língua Romanian (in Portuguese)
Istoria limbii Romane (in Romanian)
История румынского языка (in Russian)
تأريخ اللغة الرومانية (in Arabic)