Learning Romanian, Reading, Writing and Speaking, with a little help from Duolingo

Problem
I have a trip to Romania planned. I cannot even say, yes, no, toilet, how much, or I have lost my group. Not yet. However, I have started learning. Just one lesson a day.

Answer
The wonderful Duolingo website which enables you to learn language basics for free now has 27 languages ready or soon to be ready for English speakers:

Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto

French
German
Greek
Hebrew

Hindi
Hungarian
Indonesian
Irish

Italian
Klingon
Korean
Norwegian

Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian

Spanish
Swahili
Swedish
Turkish

Ukrainian
Vietnamese
Welsh

I have started Romanian. It is a Romance language and said to be one of the easier languages to learn. It certainly starts looking easy.

English - Romanian
a - o
am - sunt
boy - baiat
girl - fata
I - eu
man - barbat
not - nu
woman - femeie

Romanian - English
barbat
eu - i
femeie
nu
o - a
un
sunt - am

I am having trouble inserting the accents. The second a in fata has a concave or cave or spoon shape above it. The nearest kind of accent I can insert is a line.

Now, how do I remember the words. My associations with the words may not be politically correct, but they achieve their purpose.
The Romanian for girl is fata. (I think of a fat girl. Fatter - a fatter girl. Fatā.)
The Romanian for woman is femeie. I think of the word female. The l is squashed to make an i. Three times letter e.
The Romanian for man is b a r b a t. Similar spelling to a Barbarian. I think of a barbarian man in a hat. Or a Viking in a barbed hat. B a r b a t .
Not and nu both begin with the letter n .


Author
Angela Lansbury, English teacher and tutor and languages teacher.