Q&A Series: Language

Q&A Series Intro

Over the past few months, I have enjoyed meeting new people as I have spoken in many churches in various parts of the United States. I have especially enjoyed the times that people have been able – either individually or in a large group setting – to express their interest in Romania by asking questions about this country where I serve.

I thought it would be fun to compile the most frequently asked questions into a blog post, but soon realized there were too many questions for a single post. Therefore, I decided to start a “Q&A” (Question and Answer) series; each week throughout the summer I will add a new blog post to this series. Each post will have several questions related to a specific topic of interest about Romania and my experiences ministering in Romania.

Some of the topics to look forward to include geography, food, communism, and yes, even Dracula.


Q&A: Language

Q: Do Romanians speak Russian?
A: No. Romanians speak Romanian. Under communism, Russian was taught in the schools, but Romanian remained the dominant language. Other languages spoken in Romania include Hungarian by the Hungarian population, German by the Saxon population, and the Roma language spoken by some Roma (Gypsy) populations.

Q: What is the Romanian language like?
A: Romanian is a Latin-based language (also called a Romance language because Latin was the language of Rome). Romanian is similar to other Romance languages – Italian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Romanian is probably most similar to Italian, but Romanian also has some Slavic influence. Like English, Romanian uses the Latin alphabet, not the Cyrillic alphabet used by languages in the Slavic language family (like Russian). 

Q: Is Romanian a hard language to learn?
A:  Romanian is a phonetic language, so it is easy to learn in this aspect; what you read is how it is pronounced. The more grammar you learn, though, the more difficult it seems to become. Some of the language complications include verb conjugations, noun declensions, gender (male, female, neuter) for nouns and adjectives, and formal and informal ways of speaking. I once wrote a blog post just about the difficulty in learning Romanian demonstrative pronouns. Click here to read that post.

Q: Are you fluent in Romanian?
A: To be honest, I’m really not sure what being fluent in a language means. If it means to speak without making errors, then I’m far from being fluent. If it means to be able to converse normally, then I’m fluent. I’ve led Bible studies, preached, and even taught a college-level course in Romanian. That’s because I know the vocabulary of religious terms. When I enter an unfamiliar setting like a hardware store, I may not know the correct words to express what I want.

Q: How did you learn Romanian?
A: I’ve used a combination of methods to learn Romanian. As a college student studying abroad in Romania in 2001, I took a basic Romanian language class. That gave me the basis for the grammar. The majority of language learning, however, has come from interacting with Romanians such as living with a Romanian family where no English was spoken. When I returned to Romania in 2009, I took several months of language classes. I also look for more creative ways to  learn the language. Click here to read a previous blog post I wrote about some of the creative ways I learn Romanian.

The next post in this Q&A series will appear next Monday on the topic of Romanian money.