by I was about to write about my experiences with an employment consultant, but I’m trying to keep things positive on this blog.
Here’s some more Romanian. I’m getting just a little obsessed with this language (I need to be obsessed with something or else I’ll go mad). I often used to look at Wikipedia pages on obscure languages in dull moments at work, but this is the first time it’s gone further (and this is hardly what you’d call an obscure language).
There are several different words for Hello/Hi in Romanian, just like in English. The ones I’m seeing the most are:
Bună ziua (literally “good day”), bună dimineața (good morning), bună seara (good evening). Good night is noapte bună – I’ve no idea why that one is the other way round.
Bună – this seems to be a nice informal catch-all for the bunăs above. It’s used quite a lot I think.
Salut (as in French)
Servus (used mostly in Transylvania, as well as a bunch of other Eastern European countries)
Ceau (pronounced like the Italian “ciao”, and mostly used in the west of the country)
It’s quite nice that they use different greetings in different parts of the country. I’ll talk about a city in the west of Romania in another post.
Servus and ceau are also used for “bye”, as is pa or pa-pa. The “official” goodbye phrase is la revedere.
It’s important to know what words/phrases people actually say. I noticed as I was coming up and down Mt Kaukau on Monday (public holiday: lots of people) that “morning” was more common than “hi” or “hello” at that time of day. “Good morning” (which you’ll see near the start of any English phrase book) didn’t crop up at all, but it certainly does in more formal situations. It’s interesting that we keep the “morning” in informal situations whereas Romanians keep the “good”.
The next post on Romanian will deal with nouns.
