Latin noctem became noapte, lacte became lapte, and octo became opt. Watch ct turn into pt a few times and you have a feel for Romanian: a Romance language that kept its Latin bones, then spent centuries among Slavic, Hungarian, Greek and Turkish neighbours and borrowed from all of them.
That mixture decides how to learn Romanian. Lean on the Latin side, because anyone with some French, Italian or Spanish, or just the Latin-based half of English, will recognise a good share of the vocabulary. But take the grammar seriously from week one, because it behaves like no other Romance language: the article goes on the end of the noun, and nouns still have cases. The Foreign Service Institute, which trains American diplomats and ranks languages by the hours they take, puts Romanian in its easiest category, with Spanish and Italian, at around 24 weeks of full-time study. That's why it belongs in any honest conversation about the easiest languages to learn, as long as nobody pretends easy means effortless.
Where Romanian is spoken
Romanian is the official language of Romania and Moldova and the first language of roughly 24 million people. It is also one of the official languages of Serbia's Vojvodina, it's spoken in the Chernivtsi region of Ukraine, and large Romanian communities live in Italy, Spain, Germany and the UK. It is an official language of the European Union.
Its closest relatives are small: Aromanian, spoken in pockets across the Balkans, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian, kept alive in a handful of villages in Croatia's Istria.
Alphabet and sounds
Romanian uses the Latin alphabet plus five letters: ă, â, î, ș and ț. Ș is "sh", ț is "ts", and ă is the vowel in the middle of "about". Â and î are two spellings of one sound, a vowel made in the middle of the mouth that English doesn't have; î is used at the start and end of words (în, "in"), â inside them (România, pâine, "bread"). Ce and ci sound like the start of "chess" and "chip", while che and chi are "ke" and "ki", the same trick Italian uses.
Romanian was written in Cyrillic until the nineteenth century, and in Soviet Moldova until 1989. Today's spelling is regular and you can read aloud within a week. One habit to adopt early: a final -i after a consonant is barely pronounced, so lupi (wolves) sounds close to "loop" with a slight softening at the end, never "loopee".
What Latin gives you
A lot of vocabulary: apă (water), om (person), frate (brother), carte (book), noapte (night), soare (sun). Romanian also borrowed heavily from French in the nineteenth century, so an office is a birou, a pavement is a trotuar, and alongside the proper mulțumesc, people say mersi for thanks. Verbs conjugate for person, as in Spanish or Italian, so pronouns are usually dropped: vorbesc is "I speak", vorbim "we speak".
What it doesn't
The article on the end
Lup is a wolf, lupul is the wolf. Casă is a house, casa is the house. Om is a person, omul the person. Bulgarian and Albanian do the same, part of a set of habits the Balkan languages share, and anyone who has studied Bulgarian will recognise the pattern.
Cases
Romanian kept a genitive-dative form, and it shows up on the article. Fata is the girl; cartea fetei is the girl's book. Names take a small word in front instead: casa lui Ion, Ion's house. Possessives need a linking article that agrees with the thing owned: un prieten al meu is a friend of mine, o prietenă a mea a female friend of mine. There's even a vocative for calling people, as in Ioane.
Neuter nouns that switch sides
A third group of nouns behaves as masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural: un scaun, două scaune (one chair, two chairs), un tren, două trenuri.
Să instead of "to"
Where English says "I want to go", Romanian says vreau să merg, literally "I want that I go". Trebuie să plec, I have to leave. Another Balkan habit, and one you need in the first month.
The Slavic layer
Da, yes, is Slavic. So are prieten (friend), drag (dear) and a iubi (to love). These are the words where Italian won't help you at all.
Not quite Italian: pe, al and the parts nobody warns you about
The usual pitch is "it's like Italian, you'll be fine", and material built on that idea tends to rush through cognates and tenses and leave the genuinely Romanian parts for later. The biggest casualty is how Romanian marks a person as the object of a verb: you double it with a pronoun and put pe in front. Îl văd pe Ion means "I see Ion", literally "him I see pe Ion". O iubesc pe Maria, I love Maria. Learners who meet this late say văd Ion for months, and Romanians understand them and wince slightly. The possessive al, a, ai, ale gets the same late treatment. Both belong in the first weeks, as phrases, long before they need a grammar explanation.
First Romanian words
Bună ziua is the polite good day; bună and salut are the friendly hellos. Mulțumesc is thank you. Vă rog is please to someone you address formally, te rog to a friend. Da and nu are yes and no. Scuzați is excuse me, and îmi pare rău is I'm sorry. Nu înțeleg, I don't understand. Vorbiți engleză? asks whether someone speaks English. La revedere is goodbye. At the table you need two more: poftă bună before the meal, and noroc when glasses meet, a word that also means luck.
A first month
- Week 1: the sounds above, the greetings, and five minutes of reading aloud every day.
- Week 2: forty nouns, each with its definite form (lup and lupul, casă and casa), plus a fi, to be (sunt, ești, este, suntem, sunteți, sunt), and a avea, to have (am, ai, are).
- Week 3: common verbs in the present, and să after vreau, trebuie and pot ("I can").
- Week 4: pe with people, al and a with your friends and family, and short written messages to a Romanian speaker or another learner.
Learn Romanian with Qlango
Qlango teaches Romanian from A1 to B2, the level where you can follow Romanian television, argue a point and hold a long conversation without switching languages. Lessons are short. Spaced repetition brings words back just before you would forget them, and flashcards are there for a quick review on the bus. The answer modes, from choosing one of four to building sentences and writing them out, are where lupul and casa lui Ion become automatic.
You can chat with other learners, translate their messages when you're lost, get AI help writing your answer, and test yourself in Word Duel against friends or other learners. Premium, available monthly, yearly or as a one-time Forever plan, adds offline learning and an AI teacher who will explain fetei as many times as you need. Every course starts with a choice of the language you learn through; the table of languages and levels has the details.
Noapte, lapte, opt: the Latin underneath turns many new words into puzzles you can solve on sight. Take Qlango's A1 course through the language you're most comfortable in, and keep pe and să close from the first week, because those two are pure Romanian.
