by This morning I wondered why men who run market stalls in Romania, and probably elsewhere, have such huge hands. Being able to pick up great handfuls of strawberries gives you a competitive advantage over those who can’t? Seriously, two men in a row today had absolutely enormous grubby mitts.
It’s one of life’s mysteries, just like Romanian pronouns. Today I’ll tackle some of the less horrendous aspects, and then go from there.
The nominative (or subject) pronouns are the easy ones. In English, these are I, you, he, she, it, we and they, and here are the Romanian equivalents:
eu: I
tu: you (singular)
el: he
ea: she
noi: we
voi: you (plural)
ei: they (either all male or a mixture of male or female; Romanian is sexist)
ele: they (all female)
There’s also dumneavoastră, the formal you, but let’s not go there. I discussed that monstrous pronoun a month ago here.
Notice that there’s no it in the above list. That’s because in Romanian, everything has a gender. A wall is masculine, a table is feminine, and a chair is masculine when you have one but mysteriously changes sex when it teams up with other chairs. My students sometimes struggle with the idea of things being genderless, and refer to inanimate objects as he or she in English.
Another thing to note is that Romanian is “pro-drop”, meaning that you don’t need to use the subject (i.e. the nominative pronoun) with a verb. If I want to say I serve, I can say eu servesc or just servesc. (I can also say servesc eu; in Romanian it’s OK to stick the subject after the verb.) The subject is mostly unused, but it is used for emphasis. For instance, I might say Eu servesc? or Servesc eu? on the tennis court, to ask if it’s really my turn to serve. Note as well that, unlike in English, questions in Romanian are formed in the same way as statements. That aspect of the Romanian language is therefore considerably easier than its English counterpart; my students have ongoing battles with the do and does and did and is and are and have and has and had of English questions. Another reason you might use the subject with a verb is that for most verbs, and most tenses, two of the persons have the same form. In my serve example, servesc could mean both I serve and they serve. Mănâncă can mean either he/she eats or they eat. Am jucat can mean either I played or we played. So if it isn’t clear, adding the subject can avoid confusion.
So far, so good. Now we move to the accusative (or direct object) pronouns. In English, these are me, you, him, her, it, us and them. The accusative pronouns come in two flavours in Romanian, stressed and unstressed. They’re both common, and I’ll deal with the easier stressed variety, which is used after verbs, first:
mine: me
tine: you (singular)
el: him
ea: her
noi: us
voi: you (plural)
ei: them (all male, or a mix of genders)
ele: them (all female)
Guess what. With the exception of me and the singular you, these are identical to the nominative pronouns. Here are some example sentences:
(Eu) vin cu tine: I’m coming with you.
(Tu) vii cu mine?: Are you coming with me?
(Noi) mergem fără el: We’re going without him.
(El) merge fără noi: He’s going without us.
With this post I’ve eased into Romanian pronouns, and next time I’ll deal with the (harder) unstressed accusative pronouns, which are used before verbs.
