by Last time I touched on the nominative (subject pronouns) and the stressed version of the accusative (direct object pronouns). These are used in sentences like She works for me and I played with her, and work pretty much the same as in English.
Now I’m going to deal with the unstressed accusative pronouns. These are used in sentences like she saw him and we took it and, famously, I love you.
Here are the unstressed accusative pronouns in Romanian:
mă: me
te: you (singular)
îl: him
o: her
ne: us
vă: you (plural)
îi: them (all male, or a mix of genders)
le: them (all female)
All of these are different to the stressed versions, but just like with the stressed versions, the he/she and them pronouns are gendered. (That’s important, because the unstressed dative pronouns, which I’ll discuss later, aren’t gendered; that confuses me.) In a usual affirmative sentence, these pronouns normally go before the verb. Here are examples of all these pronouns in the present tense, including I love you:
(Tu) mă crezi: you believe me
(Eu) te iubesc: I love you
(Noi) îl găsim: we find him
(Eu) o sun: I call her
(Tu) ne părăsești: you leave us
(Noi) vă mulțumim: (we) thank you
(Ea) îi ia: she takes them
(El) le pune: he puts them
Now, sometimes these pronouns change when they interact with other words, such as the auxiliary verb of the compound past tense, which is the everyday tense used to talk about the past in Romanian. Here are the same sentences above, but in the past tense:
(Tu) m-ai crezut: you believed me
(Eu) te-am iubit: I loved you
(Noi) l-am găsit: we found him
(Eu) am sunat-o: I called her
(Tu) ne-ai părăsit: you left us
(Noi) v-am mulțumit: we thanked you
(Ea) i-a luat: she took them
(El) le-a pus: he put them
You can see that in the past tense, hyphens appear, some of the pronouns are contracted, and o (her) moves to after the verb. Here are some examples with other tenses:
Îl voi da bomboanele: I’ll give him the sweets
O vei găsi?: Will you find her/it?
N-o făceam: We didn’t do it
Nu-l vedeau: They didn’t see him/it
In less formal situations, the negative nu causes vowels to be elided; nu o becomes n-o and nu îl becomes nu-l. This happens outside the world of pronouns too – nu am becomes n-am, for instance.
Another common situation occurs with the imperative, when you tell someone to do something. The pronoun always goes after the verb in this case. Here are some examples of this:
Sună-mă: Call me
Las-o: Leave/let her/it (somebody or something feminine)
Fă-o: Do it
Întreabă-l: Ask him
Ascultați-ne: Listen to us (when you’re telling multiple people; for a single person it’s ascultă-ne)
Mănâncă-i: Eat them (carrots, for example, because they’re masculine)
Ia-le: Take them (books, for example, because they’re feminine)
The imperative form of leave or let is normally lasă, but the final ă is elided when it comes up against the o. I heard las-o recently on the tennis court. A young girl hit a ball that was clearly going out, but one of her male opponents hit it before it bounced, to be “nice”. She then said las-o să cadă, or let it bounce (literally let it fall). I sympathised; she was far too good to need that sort of help. Ball in Romanian is minge, which is feminine.
Next time I’ll deal with the tricky little word pe.
