Thursday, February 16, 2017

How I Remember Romanian Words - and you can, too!


Problem
How to learn Romanian ready for a trip to Romania, a trip to a Romanian shop in London, England, or to speak to a Romanian working in another country.

Answer
Start with Duolingo, the free on line course. You can click on the microphone symbol to hear how the words sound. The first few words include some which look similar to English. Nevertheless, I have had to make up some reminders for myself. I'm listing them here so I can come back to them later, and to help you.

Story
My late mother, when she was getting older and poorly, used to have cleaners from other countries. That was back in the good old days when you could place an advertisement for a cleaner for free in the local supermarket. You could pay the going rate for a cleaner, without worry about legal repercussions. I never learned their languages. What a wasted opportunity.

However, now that I have Duolingo, I can practise my languages on people working everything. I have met people from Romania and Eastern Europe serving in shops and restaurants, even airport shops. The tree cutters in Singapore earlier this year came from Thailand. The painters doing the outside of the building came from Myanmar.

Tips
It's worthwhile reading the comments in D u o l i n g o because sometimes people mention other languages which are similar.
Romanian - English
ai - have (memory aid - drop the h and you get ave, i before e gives you ai. The Italian for you have is tu hai. The French would be I have j'ai, and you have tu as
m e n i u - menu (I had to insert spaces to stop the automatic spell checker changing the word)
s a n d v i c i - sandwich
tu - you
un (same as the French) - a / an

English - Romanian
a / an - un (same as the French word un)
menu - men
sandwich - s a d d v i c i
You - tu

www.duolingo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and Teacher and tutor of English and other languages. Please like my posts, follow and share.

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