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Monday, May 8, 2017

How to type Romanian letters and other foreign fonts; and pronounce them


Problem
How do I type a Romanian word including the squiggly bits?

Answer
Copy from Romanian text, for example in Wikipedia.

î
ş
ș
ă
â
ș
ţ
ț

What is it called?
The little signs above the letters are called accents.
The upside down V is called a circumflex.

The saucer above the a is called a breve.
(But if you look on Youtube for pronouncing breve you get something else which is to do with coffee.)
(In German the double dot above letters is called an umlaut.)
A tail below the letter c is called a cedilla (or tail or comma).
The cedilla is attached. The comma below is separate.

You can't see clearly if the font is small. Therefore,  in my blog post I clicked above the text box far left on the word compose and then the fifth symbols below on the left, the double t, showing larger text and selected LARGE.

The saucer shape above the letter a:
Ă (upper case) or ă (lower case), usually called in English an A-breve, is a letter used in the Romanian language; also in the Vietnamese language but for a different sound.

HOW TO SAY IT
(From Wikipedia, ignoring their part about the history of the language.)
 a/a/a in "father"
Ă ă (a with breve)/ə/a in "above"
 â (a with circumflex)/ɨ/the close central unrounded vowel as heard, for example, in the last syllable of the word roses for some English speakers, used inside the word, "bread" = "pâine"
B b/b/b in "ball"
C c/k/c in "scan"
/tʃ/ch in "chimpanzee" — if c appears before letters e or i (but not î)
D d/d/d in "door"
E e/e/e in "merry"
/e̯/(semivocalic /e/)
/je/ye in "yes" — in a few old words with initial e: este, el etc.[6]
F f/f/f in "flag"
G g/ɡ/g in "goat"
/dʒ/g in "general" — if g appears before letters e or i (but not î)
H h/h/ ([h], [ç], [x])ch in Scottish "loch" or h in English "ha!" or more usually a subtle mix of the two (that is, not so guttural as the Scottish loch.)
(mute)no pronunciation if h appears between letters c or g and e or i (che, chi, ghe, ghi)
I i/i/i in "machine"
/j/y in "yes"
/ʲ/Indicates palatalization of the preceding consonant
Πî (i with circumflex)/ɨ/Identical to Â, see above, used in the beginning and at the end of the word for aesthetic reasons, ex. "to learn" = "a învăța"; "to kill" = "a omorî"
J j/ʒ/s in "treasure"
K k/k/c in "scan"
L l/l/l in "lamp"
M m/m/m in "mouth"
N n/n/n in "north"
O o/o/o in "floor"
/o̯/(semivocalic /o/)
P p/p/p in "spot"
Q q/k/k in "kettle"
R r/r/alveolar trill or tap
S s/s/s in "song"
Ș ș (s with comma) */ʃ/sh in "shopping"
T t/t/t in "stone"
Ț ț (t with comma) */ts/zz in "pizza" but with considerable emphasis on the "ss"
U u/u/u in "group"
/w/w in "cow"
V v/v/v in "vision"
W w/v/v in "vision"
/w/w in "west"
/u/oo in "spoon"
X x/ks/x in "six"
/ɡz/x in "example"
Y y/j/y in "yes"
/i/i in "machine"
Z z/z/z in "zipper"

Special letters[edit]

Pre- (top) and post-1993 (bottom) street signs in Bucharest, showing the two different spellings of the same name
Romanian orthography does not use accents or diacritics – these are secondary symbols added to letters (i.e. basic glyphs) to alter their pronunciation or to distinguish between words. There are, however, five special letters in the Romanian alphabet (associated with four different sounds) which are formed by modifying other Latin letters; strictly speaking these letters function as basic glyphs in their own right rather than letters with diacritical marks, but they are often referred to as the latter.
  • Ț ț — t with comma – for the sound /t͡s/
Tips
Here is a website which helps?
http://romanian.typeit.org
http://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/windows/codeint/

How to say it?

http://www.learnro.com/romanian-vowels-pronunciation

Links

The Letter of Neacşu of Câmpulung (the first written document in Romanian)
http://www.cimec.ro/Istorie/neacsu/eng/
Romanian Electronic talking dictionaries
http://www.ectaco.com
Not a website but a sales page for a device you buy with prices, after discount, on the day I looked in May 2017, from about $259.

Meetup.com might have a Romanian or French/Spanish/German or other language discussion group near you, or you could start one.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages. Please share my posts.
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