How Similar Are ROMANIAN and ITALIAN?

In this video I compare two major Romance languages, Romanian and Italian, to see just how similar (and different) they are. ► Learn Romanian with bit.ly/Romanianpod101, or Italian with bit.ly/pod101italian ◄
(Disclosure: Langfocus is an affiliate partner and receives a small referral fee from paid signups)
Special thanks to Alexandru Constantinescu for his Romanian samples and feedback, and Enrico Brunetti for his Italian samples and feedback.
Visual editing and effects: Luis Solana Ureña (Acribus Studio)
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[@TaciturnusIneffabilis]

i am a native romanian speaker. this summer i visited italy and at a caffee me and my friends struck a conversation with an older italian guy and we were all surprised to realise that we didn’t need a translator. we spoke romanian and the guy spoke italian and we had no trouble understanding each other. if i realised that he might not have understood a romanian word that I said I would just use a synonym and most of the time he would catch that. he also did the same. we chatted almost 3 hours and even managed to touch some more complex subjects like art and the military discipline. it was really an unforgettable experience. shows you how similar these 2 languages really are.

[@davidsturm7706]

What part of Italy were you in? The wide variety of Italian dialects makes me guess you might have been near Venezio or Triesti

[@TaciturnusIneffabilis]

@@davidsturm7706 yes, that was in a small town somewhere around Venice

[@jamesz9635]

i love hearing these types of stories, thanks for sharing!

[@luna0237]

X to doubt lmfao😂

[@koantao8321]

I recognise many Romanian words through the Tosco-Romagnolo (San Marino area) dialect my grandmother spoke.

[@KrodinoPOOPS]

Greetings to all Romanian brothers from Italy 🇮🇹🤝🏼🇷🇴

[@Matt-cw1mv]

Ciao Bella 🤌🤌🤌🤌 mafia spaghetti 🤌🤌🤌 mama Mia

[@razvanbarascu4007]

Salutari, fratele nostru!🥃🥃

[@beksultanalibek]

🇪🇸 Hola mi amigos de España

[@solbandtulcea1750]

Salutari la frații noștrii latini Italieni. 🇷🇴🇮🇹 Romania=ROMA

[@cristi8183]

Salut! 🍻 Fratele nostru!

[@Giulia-yn4hh]

I'm Italian. One of my ex classmates was Romanian. One day I went to her house and found a book in Romanian. I started reading it for fun and I was able to figure out almost everything by myself. Since then I have always found it interesting how a country so distant and surrounded by countries where Slavic languages ​​are spoken had a language so similar to mine...

[@UlpianHeritor]

As a kid, I heard people speaking Italian on TV and even though I couldn't quite make out what was being said, it felt like I could almost understand them. I asked my parents, "why are they speaking Romanian so funny?" That's how first I learned that my language is similar to Italian and other Romance languages.

[@Crewex22]

The short answer is this: indigenous people(daci/dacians) heavily influenced by Romans hiding in forests and mountains for many centuries. Many migrations went through Romanian territory but didn't quite manage to settle here, probably being harassed by the locals if they did. Anyway, for centuries basically the river banks and the more accessible parts of the country which were easy to travel through belonged to different migrators, while forests, hills, mountains were inhabited by the Romanians. Only in the early 13 or 14th century did our people manage to create their first Romanian states(Moldavia, Walachia and Transylvania). Disclaimer: this is a very short and oversimplified version of a complex history.

[@dalexdalex]

@@Crewex22 Nu v-ati gandit deloc la teoria care spune ca dacii (tracii), vorbeau deja latina veche, inainte de cuceririle romane???

[@Crewex22]

@@dalexdalex cunosc teoria asta dar nu prea cred in ea. Probabil sâmburele de adevăr din ea este că ambele limbi erau de origine indo-europeana si existau unele asemănări. Dar sa spunem ca vorbeau dacii latina înaintea romanilor e cam absurd. Avem multe cuvinte unice de la daci care nu există în latină.

[@akosveres-ravai8907]

@@Crewex22 "Only in the early 13 or 14th century did our people manage to create their first Romanian states(Moldavia, Walachia and Transylvania). " Transylvania was about as Romanian as the United States that time... It was part of the Kingdom of Hungary. And we are also very generous if we call the 14th century Moldavia and Walachia well-established sates. But at least they were Romanian indeed, unlike Transylvania.

[@yanchoho]

I've never listened to Romanian before and I didn't realize what a beautifully sounding language it is.

[@AlexandruG09]

try listening to carla's dreams

[@ciprianmoldovanu6264]

Check out the music...

[@Nina_user]

Really? Thank you, I always wondered how it sounds for a foreigner.

[@costealucia5357]

@@AlexandruG09 From all the good things that country has to offer you advice him to listen to Carla's bs?Is a Moldovian band, even if Moldovans speak a dialect of romanian language, that doesn't mean that they belong to Romania these days.

[@costealucia5357]

@@Nina_user Unfortunately, all the young people these days behave as their country is an ex colonial land, romglish sucks, so do those that use it.

[@TheGamalore]

I'm American but have been living in Romania for over a year with my wife. During that time I have learned Romanian quite well and can read to what I would say is a fluent level. I recently met an Italian guy in Bucharest, and upon hearing him speak Italian, I was extremely surprised when I could pick out enough words in his sentence to get the general idea of what was being said.

[@mcm80123456]

...so learning Romanian actually you understand today Italian and don't be surprised if you understand also Spanish and Portuguese.

[@TheGamalore]

@@mcm80123456 well growing up in Texas I was surrounded by Spanish and was forced to take it for years in school, so that one wasn't so bad. Can't understand Portugese from Portugal that's for sure, maybe Brazilian Portugese 🤣

[@healththenopulence5106]

@Marcella Tondi Ro has a more complex vocab than italian, in which same word has different versions but each word has a latin version Basically we had to learn other peoples words and they also got romanianized and kept some foreign words But if a romanian pays attention to speak with the latin versions, you understand 100% can even hold lectures However in to us romanians, italian sounds soo wodden language because we have words which make more sense rather than use 'finito' when to stop.. we use 'termina-te' Also although we both have 80%+ latin words we take words from latin which you dont have for example 'incepere' to begin.. and its straight from latin We're 2000km away and 2000years disconnected but with careful word choice you will get rokanian.. just ask them to use another synonim for the word which you dont understand

[@leobraila]

@@healththenopulence5106 We also have purely latin words but whose meaning has changed, that are not found in Italian language. Go! meaning Andare- italian; Mergi- Romanian; mergere-latin.

[@carron979]

@@MrCrish81 cut the diacritics and you will find another "pure latin" word: "intelegi"...

[@TheSpeedsters86]

Long live the friendship of the Romance languages!🇷🇴🇮🇹🇪🇸🇵🇹🇫🇷 🇪🇺

[@alexeyusa6274]

You forget one flag 😢

[@liviuorehovschi5287]

@@alexeyusa6274 which one?

[@Gaff07]

​@@alexeyusa6274 which one?

[@Multifandom_412]

Totally agreed!❤

[@Multifandom_412]

​@@alexeyusa6274 wait.....there are: French Italian Spanish Romanian Portuguese Nope there is everyone😐

[@Arturexiusz]

I'm Polish. Never took classes in neither of these, but I know a word or two in both and I can discern Italian from other Roman languages. Once, I was watching a YT video on some car parts replacement. I was convinced it was in Italian to the moment I saw the license plate that said RO for Romania, and not IT for Italy. That's how similar they are to me :D!

[@euyo-lm7rf]

romanian has slavic influences too , a polish friend said that we don't have as many "z" "tz" ...as your language but more than italian ..and some words are the same maybe with slightly diff meaning...vaca in romanian is cow, curva means whore...😁

[@EminBastea]

as a romanian, i think the romanian spoken in Moldova region, sounds phonetically like mixing italian with Polish language

[@sleepyjohn2695]

"Kurwa" sounds and means the same in Romanian:)))), just they write it differently:)))

[@crepooscul]

"Stai" also means "to sit" in Romanian. "Come stai" can be translated into "Cum stai" in Romanian, and it's a common expression when you want to ask someone about how are they with something specifically. like "Cum stai cu sanatatea" would translate into "How are you with your health (How's your health)." So that's how a Romanian would understand what an Italian is asking, even though the expressions for "how are you" are different.

[@pulitoyoutube1128]

In italian it's the same, io sto means "I stay", "I stand" but olso the auxiliary before the gerundive form like "I AM doing"

[@carron979]

@@pulitoyoutube1128 Gerundive also exists in Romanian, but it's not used to form some kind of "present continuous" like in English or Italian. One may say "stau fumand", but it means "I'm smoking while staying/sitting" not quite "I'm smoking". "Stau fumand" or for instance "Merg fumand" ("vado fumando") just indicates 2 simultaneous actions...

[@irrelevantdumbass5307]

"stai jos" means sit down , "stai" means stay "așază-te" means sit

[@giankion1212]

​@@carron979 sto fumando😅

[@Indievictor]

Also Unde e secția de poliție can be better translated as unde e stația de poliție

[@Student-cs2ws]

As a germanically biased speakers, romance languages like Romanian and Italian are damn hard for us Dutch to get our head around. However since my parents are true Italy-addicts, I consider myself to have been lucky getting exposed to the sound of Italian in a very intense way, spending time in Italy with Italian friends. Back home I did some Latin and French at school. Și atunci în anul 2013 s-a întâmplat ceva incredibil în viața mea, după m-am înregistrat pentru o călătorie spre România în cadrul unui program de schimb, pe care a avut loc între doi școli care au vrut să schimb elevele iei pentru a face contact cu culturi alți. Dar puțin după momentul pe care am sosit, am auzit că limba Română n-a fost deloc o limbă slavică. A fost o limbă așa de asemănătoare cu acestui sunet pe care am auzit deja când am fost în vizită în Italia cu părinții mei. În anul 2013/2014 m-am îndrăgostit cu țara acestea. Fiecare an când am timp să vizitez România, pot să văd că România este o cea mai frumoasa țară pe care am văzut în viața mea… foarte plin de viața. Și acum în 2022, după am privit pe toatele filme animate al copiilor de pe Disney+ în limba Română (pentru că e mai ușor pentru noi), o problemă mică s-apărut dacă sunt în vacanța în Italia cu părinți mei. Dacă încerc să vorbesc limba Italiană cu multe de semne de mână… mintea mea vrea să încă mai vorbește limba Română. Chiar nu pot să opresc.

[@ionconstantinbufanu]

Multumesc foarte dragut din partea ta sa impartasesti experienta ta . Sarbatori fericite

[@GabrielaLtc]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Mulțumesc! 🙂

[@strobo24]

Nice one! Have you seen the "Delta Dunarii"?

[@romaniaplus]

Esti o minune de om! Sunt bucuros sa intalnesc oameni ca tine! Sanatate si numai bucurii!

[@florinadrian5174]

Amazing story. As a Romanian who never took lessons of either, I have the same difficulty when trying to speak Spanish: Italian words come out.

[@stef1866]

Interesting fact, I am Romanian. My great-grandfather fought in WW1 in the Austria-Hungarian army, being from Transylvania, which was part of the dual monarchy at that time. Romania proper fought alongside the triple entante. He was on the Italian front and was caught by Italian army. He said "sunt român!" The Italians responded with "fratello romeno!" He was a prisoner of war and came back with a love of Italy:)

[@andreraphael6727]

Thanks. This is one of the most touching stories I have ever heard. Saluti e un abbraccio ai fratelli romeni dall'italia.

[@dylan-pl9lh]

wow..

[@furybrown3856]

I got goose bumps from that story ...damn

[@katherineamelia98]

that is so cute

[@michelecagnetta4012]

E' una storia bellissima.

[@MarioLucianAndreano]

I am native in both and this is the first time I find a video that fully gets it! Too many times people tend to discredit some Romanian words saying they are not Latin, but if you deep dive you find that they simply evolved differently or come from another closely related word. Excellent video!

[@m.dewylde5287]

Yes! I am Romanian and I am fluent in Italian. I used to think the same. If a Romanian word was very different in Italian, I used to think that is because it must be of Slavic origin, or Greek, Turkish, Hungarian or German. I am still surprised to find out that many words in Romanian are actually much closer to classic Latin than their Italian versions. As a matter of fact, linguists say that Romanian language is the closest to Latin than all the other Romance languages.

[@XxDINOxFROSTxX]

Romanian is more closer to old latin than Italian

[@lalalili4197]

Im nor Italian or Romanian. Just french. I barely write comments on youtube, but i've watched most of ur videos, and I want to thank you, because there are so precise and true. The amount of researches u had to do to make them is incredible. Thank you for sharing it, and thank you for this channel. Paul, respect !

[@maxwellgarrison2983]

Comment bien pouvez-vous comprendre le romanien? Je pense que j'ai reçu 80%.

[@grassytramtracks]

​@@maxwellgarrison2983je parle anglais et français comme langue maternelle et italien comme L2, et je l'ai trouvé facile à comprendre le romanien

[@maxwellgarrison2983]

@@grassytramtracks C'est très intéressant, non? haha

[@ricnyc2759]

Paul works hard. He deserves the millions of followers he has on KZbin.

[@pacofalcini341]

Romanien mdrr

[@nourmajzoub8328]

I'm lebanese and l learned medicine in romania. I traveled 2 times in Italy,and I didnt have any difficulty understanding the italian language while speaking with the italians ,it was a good experience.

[@user-su5jl2jn1x]

عربي

[@andrewcapran1101]

My parents are romanian immigrants. I was born in America but I was taught romanian by my parents since I was little. Growing up in the US, I learned Spanish in school. Having these 3 languages in my brain can allow me to understand Italian almost perfectly

[@costealucia5357]

Try also portuguese, you will be amazed to understand that as well;).

[@carron979]

French instead of Spanish also does the job, but yet again: with Romanian only one can speak fluent Italian in less than a week. I remember the 90's when Romanian football players were transfered to Italian teams for the 1st time and they were giving interviews in Italian days after their arrival... The Italian press was under the impression that they come from the land of geniuses :-))))

[@JiwonAstrid]

oh wow I also have an American friend who has Romanian parents and she learned Spanish too!

[@kristinerumpel]

my story is exactly like yours

[@norielsylvire4516]

Same here, only I went to Spain and learned English at school. It's stupidly easy to understand Italian 😊

[@angheloiumarius]

That's why a very large community of Romanians now live in Italia. It's almost easy to make the transition from one language to other in maximum 2 months. Salutări tuturor românilor & Ciao a tutti :)

[@vilmosmanyoki-gv5gq]

I do love Romanian people, they're plyathe, smart, adaptive & funny, and IMHO your language is the most beautiful Latin language, the No.2 is Brazil dialect ❤

[@Hotaru25]

😊🤗❤

[@mike42356]

The Romanian "Dumneavoastră", written capitalized, the polite form of "you", comes from "Domnia Voastră", which means "Your Highness" - literally "your rulership", in plural form.

[@spawn90336]

in Latin: dominatio vestra

[@dracular22]

For Romanians is far easier to understand Italian and i think that is because for every Italian word there is a synonym in Romanian that is very close but not the other way around, also we use words in a different context. Ex #1 : in Romanian "mare" means "sea" but also "big" (because the sea is big), we have also grand, grandios but is almost never used in day to day conversations, following this logic we can understand Italian when they make sentences with "grande" but for them is very strange and out of context the word mare (sea) in the same sentence in Romanian. Ex #2: For "cave" we have three words meaning the same thing: "pestera", "grota", "caverna", but 90% of the time the word "pestera" is used, in italian there is only: "grotta" and "caverna". This means that an Italian have no clue what is "pestera" but a Romanian can understand very well "grotta" and "caverna". A lot of the words are constantly falling in and out of fashion and this may repeat during centuries as it happened always, maybe in 100 years from now the new Romanian hipsters will like "caverna" more :D.

[@Vlad-uk7ty]

We got slavic and otoman influences in our history therefore it's more difficult for them to understand romanian language. Most likely, "mare" and "pestera" are borrowed from slavic or otoman languages.

[@Kinotaurus]

@@Vlad-uk7ty "Pestera" is definitely derived from Slavic "peschera" (cave). "Mare" probably not, as slavic "more" (cognate of Latin "mare") also means "sea". "VladimirAr" is probably right on the etimology of "mare", especially since the proto-Romanians mostly lived inland so for them the sea would indeed be something not encountered in everyday life and therefore would be awe-inspiring with its size.

[@maxavail]

How about "amore", which in Romanian is "amor", but never used except in poetry, since in daily speech we use Slavic derived words such as "iubire" or "dragoste" ?

[@HeroManNick132]

@@Kinotaurus In most Slavic languages cave is pronounced as "peshtera" more specifically Bulgarian. There were some Aegian dialects in Greece that people who speak Bulgarian use "Shch" instead of "Sht."

[@Lucian86]

Thanks... always wondered why

[@Slimbk13]

As a child growing up in the Romanian countryside, I learned to speak Italian by watching "Stanley and Oliver" dubbed in Italian on the Rai 1 tv channel and it was so easy to understand it that all the kids on my street were able to hold a fluent conversation in Italian, as we were all following the Italian tv stations as they had many more movies and cartoons than our local ones. Even as a 7 year old kid with no history or geography classes yet, I knew that the Italians are our "cousins".

[@alyssejazz]

I'm a native Italian speaker and I'm currently living in Romania to do volunteering. I became almost fluent in Romanian in one month. I still have a lot to learn despite its been 4 months now. A lot of Italian people who did a similar experience in Romania told me that they used to invent words when they were struggling in talking to someone. I tried the same and it worked most of the times. Now I can see why: 77% of words have very similar roots apparently.

[@razvanbarascu4007]

Foarte interesant frate. Istoria si comunismul ne-a separat pentru un timp, dar ma incanta ca ne redescoperim cu interes. Dupa schisma religioasa voi ati ramas ai Romei, iar noi ai Constantinopolului. Azi Roma e Roma, Constantinopolul e Istanbul. Cu toate dificultatile astea, noi tot limba romana vorbim! Apropo, eu am invatat limba italiana la un nivel conversational de cand aveam 4 5 ani de pe RaiUno RaiDue RaiTre, in anii '90. Un abbraccio!✌️♥️

[@SirAdrian87]

If you are an italian in Romania and you don't know the Romanian word when speaking to someone try the Italian word. Romanian tends to have synonyms for most words and more often than not one of them is very close to Italian.

[@Hotaru25]

❤

[@MrPrivits]

As an Italian who learnt some Romanian, I would say that, unlike when I speak English, I can think in Italian and directly translate my thoughts in Romanian. This makes learning and speaking the language a lot easier. I also believe that studying Latin at school has definitely helped. For example, "to understand" ("capire", in Italian, which comes from Latin "capere", which means "to get", "to catch") in Romanian is "a înțelege", that directly comes from the Latin verb "intelligere" with the same meaning which also produces intelligent, intelligente and inteligent in English, Italian and Romanian respectively.

[@amjan]

The thinking aspect is universal for all language families. I'm Polish and can think Polish when speaking other Slavic langauges, like Czech, Russian or Croatian.

[@razvanbarascu4007]

@@amjan yes, for sure. But I guess he was trying to say he just picks up the cognate word in romanian straight after having the italian thought. When I was tired and speaking in english with brits in the UK, the first word I was thinking about to translate my thoughts was the cognate word in english of the romanian one. The brits were like, 'fckin hell mate, where r u pulling this academia words from?'😂😂

[@FreedomAlternative]

That's my biggest problem every time I visit Italy in the first 24 hours. Generally, I think in English when I speak Swedish or Russian. But with Italian I have to remind myself that thinking it through in Romanian definitely improves my speech by a lot.

[@tuluppampam]

Little reminder that intelligere is, technically speaking, a valid Italian word (absolutely never used, but it doesn't matter as anyone would understand it thanks to the word intelligibile)

[@carron979]

Once, our French forensic psychiatry teacher asked: "Do you know where the term "constringere" comes from?" (He wanted to impress us, of course...) So instead of answering "Latin" I asked: "Does it have a "circonflex accent" on the "i"?" "No", he replied... "Then it's not Romanian..." 🙂🙂

[@Frilouz79]

I am French, and I have worked with Romanian companies. I remember once, during a company visit, a Romanian technician had to explain to me how a machine worked. He only spoke Romanian, and someone was translating into English for me. After a few sentences, I told him to stop translating, because I understood what the technician was saying. This is because he was using a lot of international technical terms. In the same way, I could understand some of the news on TV in the hotel because I knew what the speaker was talking about and the political words he was using are international.

[@kallucelfrumos4946]

very similar to esperando ?

[@joangg]

So, maybe, somehow, the deep Latin base of both French and Romenian plus technical vocabulary connected you in a way a stranger language didn't

[@AlexAlex-jk6uq]

@@joangg , yeah, but we have 22.18% of words in our romanian vocabulary borrowed DIRECTLY from french...:) Plus, in interwar period french was very popular among nobility in Romania... They say every second nobelman knew french by that time :)

[@Don_Puparo]

@@kallucelfrumos4946 esperanto! also... esperanto was artificially created by mixing all european languages.late 1800's if I remember well, by a Russian guy.

[@kallucelfrumos4946]

@@Don_Puparo not a ucrainean? Slava ucraina!

[@AlinaMuntean98]

I used to have an Italian neighbor (I'm Romanian) and he was talking in Italian, I was talking in Romanian and somehow we figured it out what we want to say and understand each other in our own language. And when we came across an unknown word, we tried both with our language and body language 🤌🤌to explain what that word is about. The whole experience was funny for us.

[@Wxyz2001]

Being a Brazilian Portuguese speaker I think that all of us, Romance languages speakers (RLS) we make ourselves understood by others RLS when we want to. Speaking more slowly and clearly, sometimes changing the endings of words, using synonyms of words that we normally use in everyday life or even gesticulating and miming. But when we don't want to be understood, we speak quickly, too softly or too loudly, using slang and dialectal variations.

[@re_di_roma_is_back2388]

Sim. Per esempio in Francia per dire adesso io dico mantinente = maintenant (ora, adesso, mantinente). Oppure motto = mot (parola, palabra). Sovente=souvent (spesso, seguido)

[@MsMinoula]

Just so you know, a language is not a code, you never know who can understand you.

[@science_around_the_clock]

I am Italian native-speaker, and I am learning Romanian. I also had the impression that it is easier for Romanians to understand Italian than the other way around. I guess that’s because Romanians can easily get the meaning of Latin-derived Italian words (at least when a similar word exists in Romanian as well), but for Italians there is no way of understanding a Romanian word that does not derive from Latin. For example, a Romanian will highly likely understand the meaning of the Italian word “supportare” (to support), since they have at least two synonyms for the noun “support”, namely “suport” and “sprijin”. However, there is no way an Italian will understand the meaning of the word “sprijin”, as we have no other similar word in our language. Moreover, I must note that having studied Latin at school probably helped me learn Romanian.

[@sebastian.tristan]

Interesting point. But the same can be said of Romanians who can have difficulties when hearing Italian words of Germanic origins (guardare, bianco, etc). I think that the reasons Romanians understand Italian better is a) because Italian is a popular language and b) a lot of Italian words are similar to French and Spanish (all having Latin and Germanic influences) and all popular languages.

[@BananLord]

@@sebastian.tristan we do have the word "gardă" which means guard (gardă de corp = bodyguard) and instead of saying "stai de pază" you can say "stai de gardă" (keep watch). We also use "gardian/eni" in legal documents to refer to who is responsible for a child (parents, adoptive parents or other relatives). We have very few germanic words, even tho we had germanic villages in Romania.

[@sebastian.tristan]

@@BananLord Both of those words are of Frankish (Germanic) origins and were incorporated into Romanian through the relatively recent French influence.

[@camelianedelcu5640]

Noi rumeni siamo un popolo molto ricettivo alle lingue straniere,io ho 74 anni ,pensate che io quando ho finito il liceo (nel 1966) avevo studiato per 7 anni russo,poi per 4 anni ,latino,francese e fuori corso 1 anno di inglese. Ecco perché quando sono stata a Mosca in visita ho potuto leggere in cirillico, il dialetto veneto dove vivo da 44 anni non mi ha creato nessuna difficoltà, è veramente anche la lingua spagnola la capivo quando ho fatto il giro della Spagna.

[@BananLord]

A thing I forgot to mention: "suport" is not a direct synonym of "sprijin" when it come to let's say giving emotional support to someone or cheering someone on bcs saying to someone "te suport" comes around as "you're a bearable person to be around". "Nu suport" means "I can't handle/can't stand to/don't like" and "Nu te (mai) suport/esti insuportabil" is said to someone as in like (not a direct translation to the 1st) "you're insufferable", in a softer way. Recently, with more Rom-English speakers, it is incorporated to mean the same thing as "supporting someone", but it still sounds weird as it isn't used as that in Romanian. But still, the football fans are called "suporteri".

[@AntonioDamicis]

I'm Italian and I have been living in Romania for about 15 years. When I first arrived in Romania, I could understand 20% of a conversation, but 50-60% of written language. After about 3 months, I could understand 80% of both spoken and written language. By studying the language or having continuous exposure, I believe an Italian with a good educational level can speak Romanian decently in around one year. The most intelligible Romanian for an Italian is the modern academic one. A little less the popular speech, to understand which it is necessarily necessary to learn the slang of the place. The initially most difficult thing for an Italian is the learning and correct pronunciation of a whole series of words of Slavic, Hungarian or Turkish origin. In modern Romanian these words are used less than in the written / spoken Romanian of the early twentieth century. The literature of that period is in fact difficult to understand for an Italian who has not studied the language in depth. On the contrary, many Romanians in their first visit to Italy, are able to understand a good part of a conversation. Much depends on the fact that many Romanians are somehow more exposed to Italian than Italians to Romanian and also that the influences of foreign languages on Italian (Arabic/Germanic) are lower than on Romanian (especially Slavic). This is especially true when the Romanian speaker: - has a good schooling - knows other languages of Latin origin - meets people who speak the standard Italian :)

[@PopescuSorin]

also many Romanians are exposed to Spanish (telenovelas)

[@carron979]

I wonder how you dealed with recognising the latin words that Romanian inherited in a "too intact" form from Latin, like sarcina, lumina, frigul, inhumare, incepere... Or tricky words like "falca/falci" from latin "falx" but with a completely different meaning than "falce" in Italian

[@pulitoyoutube1128]

I think that if you can understand and memorize all the words in the romanian Bible without problem your work is done, you know romanian

[@AntonioDamicis]

@@carron979 You know? I am from Salento, in Puglia, South Italy. It happens that, some Romanian words coming from Latin and which are not similar to Italian, are similar to Salentino dialect or maybe to other Italian dialect of which I have some knowledge. As example, "sarcina" in my dialect means "luggage" (somehow changed the sense of the word), "lumina" is "lumi", "frig" is "friddu", etc. Same for other words/expressions like eu (I), socra (mother in law), suecru (father in law), fiiu (son), ce faci? (how are you doing?), picca (a little) , etc. What I mean is that somehow I can guess if a word comes from Latin or not. The most tricky words for me are those ones like "a zbura", which according to Dexonline comes from "Exvolare", so it seems to have the same origin of the Italian "volare", but becuase of that "ZB" I could not figure out (onestly, I thought it was a Slavic word).

[@Meridianux]

Buna seara! De acord cu tine! Imi place limba italiana! Pentru noi e mai simplu sa deducem ce zice un italian! Ai nevoie de un an de zile de studiu pentru a intelege foarte bine limba romana! Noi suntem frati, doua popoare, cu o singura inima ce bate in piept!

[@andreeas.2362]

IF you compare ROmanian with southern Italian dialects, the closeness is striking. It is important to know that most of the legions stationed in Dacia were from southern Italy.

[@Meridianux]

E posibil! Erau veniti si din regiunea Genoa in Dacia, nu numai din sudul Italiei!

[@dancroitoru364]

As usual they sent the southerners, I suppose the Milanese were too busy doing business -)

[@cridr]

do not say that to our west friends ... it is blasphemy there to say that ..

[@gabyradu8266]

I think you are wrong. There was no legion from southern Italy. The two legions that remained after the Roman conquest were the 13th Gemina Legion and the 5th Macedonian Legion. Further south was stationed the 1st Adiutrix Legion. Between 101 and 106, under the command of the new emperor, Adiutrix, together with IV Flavia Felix and XIII Gemina, conquered part of Getia. The IV Flavia Felix Legion was formed from the remains of the V Macedonica Legion. We must mention that the legions were not made up of Romans...the 3000-5000 soldiers who made up a legion were gathered from all over the territory of the Roman Empire. For example, the 5th Macedonian legion was formed mainly from Getae from the province of Moesia.

[@leilagreen7]

@@dancroitoru364😂😂 😂

[@RaffaelePatin]

As an italian, I understood ~60% of the audio and 80/90% of the written language. Some words like dumneavoastra are very interesting, if you studied some latin you could probably relate It to other italian words probably unused

[@PopescuSorin]

dumneavostra = domnia voastra. dumneata = domnia ta, dumneaei = domnia ei. dumnealor = domnia lor

[@alin1553]

Yes, you are right! Dumneavoastră is an compound word "Domnia Voastră". Already become more intelligible, isn't it? "Domnia" comes from latin "Domini" and "Voastră" comes from latin "Vostro", so means Domini Vostro addressed to a respected person. Similar is "Mulțumesc" which comes from "Multa et milia" which means "a lot and thousands". Comparing with Italian language, you have "grazie mille". So, is something similar. If we had said "Mulțumesc grațios" then it would be 95% similar with "grazie mille".

[@RaffaelePatin]

@@alin1553 something like dumneavoastra in italian could be "vossignoria", abbreviation of "vostra" and "signoria". "Vostra" means yours, as in romanian. "Signoria" Is related to "signore" that comes from the latin word "senior", which means "older" but in italian assumed the meaning of "lord". So in this case "signoria" Is like "eccellenza" or "maestà".

[@wyqtor]

@@RaffaelePatin Or 'vostra merced' -> USTED in Spanish, which has the exact same meaning!

[@Zullyan]

Yes, when we are being polite with one another we call each other "Your Lordship" basically.

[@Indigoqueer]

As a Spanish and Italian speaker I always wondered where the past tense forms of ser/essere came from! It is kind of cool that while we chose one half of the verb, the Romanians chose the other. Neat!

[@fedcard]

Look for the video of Linguriosa "Por qué tenemos SER y ESTAR?" She explains it.

[@alexandru59139]

Las calles de idiomas son muy complicadas, jaja! ¡Saludos desde Rumania!

[@tuluppampam]

I think it's got something to do with another Latin verb, fio, which means a lot of different things (it was very used in Latin) like to become, to be elected, to be caused (as in to be made existing, though I've probably worded it wrongly) It is very similar to the past forms of the verb sum in Latin Though this is my analysis with very little knowledge of linguistics and some knowledge of Latin

[@UlpianHeritor]

@@tuluppampam I think you are right. In Romanian, the past tense of Latin essere (fio) became the present tense (a fi) while in Spanish they are inherited in the past tense (fue). Romanian also inherited this in the past tense “fost” (was in English). “A fi” (to be) also spawned some interesting words that only developed in eastern romance, such as “ființa” or “being” as in “ființa umană” (human being)

[@iaredx]

@@alexandru59139 ¡Saludos!

[@Jules81channel]

There is a connection between "fost" and the Italian verb to be "essere". In the form of past perfect of the verb "essere" called Passato Remoto in italian, the 2nd person sing. is "fosti" and the 2nd plural is "foste". Very good video by the way! Grazie! :)

[@alexandru59139]

Fun fact, the word "Grazie" exists also in Romanian as "grație" (it's pronounced the same), but with a different meaning; it means "grace".

[@DinuNoroc]

Or "Grație acestui lucru, s-a întâmplat asta", which means " thanks to / because of this [ thing] , this [ other thing ] happened "

[@alexandru59139]

@@DinuNoroc yea, I missed this case. Thanks!

[@zarzavattzarzavatt9309]

because it's a borrowing from Italian, or maybe french, or latin :)

[@Gabriel_Dinisov]

“Grazie” in Romanian with the Italian meaning is “gratitudine”!

[@floraflowers]

@@zarzavattzarzavatt9309 For "thank you" we have "multumesc" but the shortened version was taken from the French "merci" and it's become so widespread that it's used in day to day conversations by just about anyone to the point where "multumesc" is oftentimes used only in formal contexts.

[@subkontrabasklarinet]

I'm a huge lover of Romania and the Romanian language, so I take this video as a premature Christmas gift. Mulțumesc, Paule!

[@LearnRomanianWithCorina]

If you want more Christmas gifts, I'm here :P

[@mojewjewjew4420]

Where are you from?

[@ItsMikeLearns]

@@LearnRomanianWithCorina i love the channel :)

[@dragosarsene8333]

Hey just a tip, the 'e' ending in Paule can be used to express the vocative case, but can be considered rude when used in combination with a name.

[@mihuionut3721]

I am Romanian and don't know Italian, but if i read it, I understand about 85% from it

[@AntonioBarba_TheKaneB]

I think you guys understand Italian as easily as we Italians understand Spanish. That's a weird relationship but many people that I've spoken too (romanian and spanish speakers) tend to agree.

[@AniRayn]

Presupun ca te referi la 85% din propozitii/mesaje (nu cuvinte), iar aici treaba depinde foarte mult de context. Cand zici ca ai inteles o propozitie, te referi ca ai prins ideea principala, chiar daca nu cunosti unele cuvinte si iti scapa chestiile subtile, nuantate. Si oricum 85% doar pare mult, pana citesti un text unde 15% cuvinte sunt gibberish. Daca acele 15% sunt cuvinte importante, atunci nu poti sa zici ca ai inteles nici jumatate din text.

[@balkanwitch5747]

I can understand the general idea, but I can't understand anything, especially when native speakers talk in Italian... just gibberish that sounds vaguely like Romanian

[@balkanwitch5747]

@@AniRayn exact

[@re_di_roma_is_back2388]

Secondo me dipende dal fatto che siamo poco esposti al rumeno, mentre siamo molto esposti al francese e allo spagnolo (di Spagna e d'Argentina) e anche al portoghese soprattutto il portoghese parlato in Brasile

[@Vercixx]

Romanian here. In high-school we had a choice to learn between Italian and French and many chose Italian. Too many! So the Italian teacher, a very nice guy, came to us and said: listen kids, Italian is a language you can learn when you're old, there's no need to rush into it right now, pick more difficult languages now when you're young :)

[@pieroschneider2783]

Hi, very interesting. I am Piero, an Italian native speaker keen of languages (I can speak five and now studyning my sixth.....). I actually think that the written forms of the two languages are easily understandable one another. Different thing for the spoken language, as in my opinion Romanian phonetic has strongly been influenced by the surrounding eastern European languages. But if an Italian and a Romenian guy want to comunicate between them , if they both speak slowly and carefully chose among the synonyms if some word seems to be not understood by the other side, I think they can for sure find a way out and communicate in a quite complete way and without big obstacles. One more thing: about the form "fost" for "to be" (past) in Romanian (more or less minute 11.00 in the video). In Itailan we have a "past tense" called "passato remoto" further back in time than the more common "passato prossimo", and in some dialects, specially in southern Italy is often used in place of the "passato prossimo. The passato remoto for the 2nd singular person of the verb "essere" (to be) is "(tu) fosti" and could some how be related with the Romanian "fost". Thank you for your videos, all of them very very interesting and useful! Have a nice evening! Piero

[@lucreziaracca4590]

@@3wL7 I think "passato remoto" is equivalent to "passé simple" in French

[@ioanadreesen4222]

​@@3wL7 perfectul simplu

[@adrian.farcas]

The problem for you is not necessarily phonetics, but Romanian grammar - especially the articles glued the end of the words and the genitive/dative case. In Italian the article stands in front, separated, and cases are formed with prepositions. These are easy to understand from the Romanian perspective (which also uses prepositions for accusative) but not the other way round...

[@adrianabutmalai2590]

In Romanian "passato remoto" (perfectul simplu) is solved by meaning, for example the verb "I was" "am fost" means that I was there a day, a month, a year ago. If you say "I was" using the verbs "fui" or "fusăi" it means I was there recently, a minute or a second ago. It should be mentioned that in the southern part of Romania the language closest to Old Latin is spoken.

[@lellab.8179]

I'm Italian and, despite a lot of Romanian people living in my city, I've neved heard the Romanian language. I have to say that listening to it for the first time, I could understand about 70% of it. I've never studied latin, but about "Dumneavoastra" I immediately recognized it as a form of courtesy, a bit as "Vossignoria" (not very much used, nowadays). About "Ai fost", I thought of Italian "passato remoto" (remote past) of "essere" (to be) which is "(tu) fosti" (or "trapassato remoto": (tu) fosti stato). About "unde", we have a word coming from the same latin one: "onde", meaning "from where", a bit archaic but very much used in not so ancient literature. A very interesting comparison video, as always. I was really surprised how much Romanian I could understand.

[@pokeshark]

"Dumneavoastra" is the joint form of "domnia voastra" (in Latin something like "dominus voster").

[@carron979]

in Romanian the "passato remoto" is no more considered literar, but a regionalism specific to the Oltenia region. It has a funny conotation when used in day to day conversation, but still in novels one can encounter a lot of it like in any other neolatin languages...

[@elaela2754]

@@pokeshark or like "Your Highness" in English

[@maddahy]

"Dumneavoastra" means exactly the same thing as "Vossignoria", not only in sense, they are direct reciprocal literal translations, even if split into components.

[@ralucancf]

@@elaela2754 "Your Higness" in romanian would be "Alteța Voastră" and it is normally used (same as in English) when addressing some of the royal family members (ex: prices). "Dumneavoastră" comes from "Domnia voastră " wich in English is "Your Lordship".

[@paholainen100]

If you speak southern Calabrian or Sicilian , you can see the similarities to Romanian. In Calabrian we say “ scusa” unde Este ??” In Romanian it’s the same ( almost ) “ ma scuzat unde este” and there are many words we have in common.

[@esti-od1mz]

Exactly, in trapanese sicilian it would sound like "scusa (d)unni, jesti?""

[@annaandrea8320]

I watched "L' Amica Geniale" and I was so shocked when I heard mia sorella (my sister), tua sorella (your sister) pronounced like: sòrma = soră-mea (Romanian), sòrta = soră-ta (Romanian).

[@annaandrea8320]

@@esti-od1mz, in Transylvanian dialect the equivalent would be pronounced: Scuze, diune ieșci?

[@Bunny-kp1zd]

In sardo "aundi esti?"

[@paholainen100]

@@Bunny-kp1zd yes sardo too. A limba sarda, a limba romana

[@cristiangirbea]

I’m native romanian and never learned french or italian. But while visiting France, we went to see the Barber of Seville at the Opera. The play is sung in Italian and subtitles were in French. To my surprise, I understood 80% of the words and got the whole story and details just by using the similarities with Romanian

[@timoteitodor2868]

It's the first time I have contact with your channel. Hats off for the ammount of research and precision put in to this video. I saw a few similar ones before with many mistakes and assumptions. This is truly an educational material.

[@mytube001]

As a Swedish speaker, these two seem about as close to each other as Danish and Swedish in their modern forms. Most words are the same or very similar, but with different spellings and pronunciations. Some words have the same origin, but now mean different things, which can trip you up. And then a number of words with different origins, loans, that you just have to learn. Some differences in grammar and pronunciation on top of that.

[@AxyDavid]

I speak both swedish and danish, alongside romanian. I would say danish and swedish are more closely related to each other vocabulary wise. However on the written part.... I'd say they're comparable to italian/romanian combination.

[@Meridianux]

@@AxyDavid Probabil se refera cum se aud sunetele! Fonetic, iti da impresia ca toate cuvintele, sunt similare! Bine ca limba romana, pare ca e o italiana cu accent portughez!

[@SanttUy]

I am from Uruguay, hence my native language is Spanish. However, I speak Italian fluently. I’m at the moment learning Romanian on Duolingo and I have to admit Italian is helping me a lot, much more that Spanish or Portuguese. Thanks for the video, it was very interesting and educative. 😊

[@auralplex]

That lady on duo lingo is the devil

[@dhanyrafael]

And I am a Romanian learning Spanish... It's so easy to learn it. I am listening daily to predicas Christiana and I understand almost all the words. 😃👌 I am watching football matches with Portuguese commentary and I am amazed that Portuguese is closer to Romanian than Spanish. Strange. 😃👌

[@Hotaru25]

❤😊

[@EinFelsbrocken]

Its crazy how over a millenia after the fall of the western half of the empire so many places still can understand each other.

[@user-tr9fy3nl9yro]

Because Latin was an elevated language used in Middle Age scientific and cultural Europe by scholars like nowadays English, Latin language being consideted most advanced în comparison, in contrast with the other "barbaric" dialects. În 1940iest în nazi camps, doctors, priests, and other scientists, could understand each other în commune Latin.

[@Bayard1503]

@@user-tr9fy3nl9yro But that has zero bearing on Romanian, Latin was not used or known in the area during the Middle Ages. The religious languages used were Greek and Old Slavonic all the way to the 19th century. Latin languages and dialects (and there used to be a lot of them in Eastern Europe) and their speakers were actually looked down upon in most places where they were in minority... they were mostly rural languages.

[@teddy98100]

You can make them even more similar if you use different words. For example "Ai fost in Franta ?" Can be "Ai stat in Franta ?' Which is more similar to italian.

[@deacudaniel1635]

As a Romanian who doesn't speak Italian, I understood around 80% of the Italian sample in this video.

[@itacom2199]

That's cool

[@mihuionut3721]

Me either

[@wallachia4797]

That's a bit of an exaggeration, 55-60% is more like it.

[@mojewjewjew4420]

@@wallachia4797 its not a exaggeration, what are you a russian bootlicker?

[@SilenceOase]

@@wallachia4797 He obviously spoke for himself, so why correct the person when it comes to their own perception?:

[@gigihentz5510]

when visited Italy some years ago, a shop advertisment struck me..."camicia con maneca longa" which means "camasa cu maneca lunga" in Romanian :):)

[@pierreabbat6157]

I recognize "camicia" as "camisa/chemise", but "camasa" out of context I'd think was the camas plant or something else.

[@MKnew099]

Just for the sake of accuracy, it should be spelled "camicia con manica lunga", however, "camicia a maniche lunghe" is more common.

[@Henrique-iy2lk]

As a portuguese speaker, I understood both sentences completely. In portuguese, it would be "camisa com manga longa"

[@zaqwsx23]

To be precise, in Italian it would be "camicia con manica lunga".

[@Bunny-kp1zd]

@@Henrique-iy2lk sardo: camisa a màniga longa Italiano: camicia a manica lunga

[@aliancemd]

10:45 For “stato” there is the Romanian word “stat”(Ai stat in Franta?) which also means “to stay”, you usually go through Romanian synonyms and you can find a matching word that makes you understand the meaning of a Italian phrase. Personal story: I speak Romanian natively and we had relatives from Italy visit us for 1 month. Their kids knew only Italian, so they would speak to us in Italian, most of the times we would understand them, when not, they or we would go through Italian/Romanian synonyms of the word and there was always some matching word. In a few days it was quite easy to understand them, after you understood that words like “Parole” don’t mean “Password”(Romanian “Parola”), you covered their most used words

[@user-rf5fg4dz9c]

Love Romania and Romanian language from Greece 💙 🇬🇷💙🇷🇴

[@VicenteChenHolaatodos]

I’m from East Asia, but have been learning Italian for nine months. It’s cool to see myself understanding 95% the first shown 15 seconds in Italian, and about Romanian, it was even more shocking seeing myself can get around 80% of its meanings. Yes, I understand the roots of its language family. It’s just soooo interesting to find out that I myself can get what people say even if I haven’t learned their language. So,proud of myself learning this magical language😊

[@silviuvelovici8307]

Keep up the good work!

[@alexsamu9787]

Lol u learn 2 languages at once 🤣

[@StrawberryMilkkTeaa]

Why do you say East Asia, that’s a region in the continent of Asia with more than a single country, lol. What is the reason for this? Is it embarrassing for you to say China?

[@euyo-lm7rf]

@@StrawberryMilkkTeaa maybe he is aware of prejudice ...seems he was right 😁

[@carron979]

It's obvious you are a polyglot and polyglots make connections faster than average people...

[@fabianp1011]

As a native Spanish speaker, these are two of my favorite languages 😍😍 So beautiful

[@Hotaru25]

❤ Spanish and italian are also in my top 5 fav languages. Romanian here. 🤗

[@sapinta]

It's fun that Dumneavoastra is the equivalent of "lei", because it sounds so like "la signorìa vostra" (with dumnea sounding like dominus), which is an old reverential form to address someone socially above you.

[@madalinaplop9932]

I am a native romanian speaker that moved to Italy at 11 years old. I immediately understood the language and it took me 7 months to speak it fluently, of course going to an italian school helped a lot. I now have a bachelor's and master's degree in foreign languages and I studied french and spanish along with the literature and the history of romance languages. It is so fascinating to me and for that I wanted to thank you for this video. I have a question though...do you thing that portuguese is the most similar language to romanian? I've heard lots of people, even my professors, say that but I didn't have the opportunity to learn or appeoach to portuguese. Thank you, you are awesome! 😊😊😊

[@mcsmiha1973]

i am romanian and i also studied foreign languages[germanic languages though] but we continuously had linguistics and compared linguistics courses and i do remember my professors saying the exact same thing. the truth is that when i listen to portuguese i understand a loooot less than i do in italian or spanish, even french. so, my conclusion is that the two languages might be close on grammar realm rather than phonology. perhaps if we study a bit of the phonological changes throughout time we might understand more. i never tried...

[@madalinaplop9932]

That's interesting, you might be right! 😊

[@MrInovasoft]

I am Romanian, I've learned Italian by watching Italian TV channels in the 90's, such as Italia 1 , Rete 4, Canale 5. I've visited Italy first time in 2003 and when I've arrived there I could understand everything and talk to people as if I lived there for years! Italian is the easiest language to learn for Romanians. The languages are so similar that Romanians who live in Italy for a while start mixing up the two languages and become the subject of jokes when they return to Romania because they have forgotten their own language..

[@trinitron40237]

Same story, '97-'98 every morning on Canale 5 for A-Team, Back to the future, Starsky and Hutch, afternoons with "Non e la RAI" with Ambra. 😊

[@diliosspartanetz7588]

The mixing of italian and romanian words is terrible and also cringe when you listen to someone that does it continuosly

[@m.dewylde5287]

@@diliosspartanetz7588 I like it a lot. Most Romanian young people are semi-literate, anyway. They sound better when they drop Italian words into their speech, rather than using broken Romanian.

[@OneTireFire]

Same story

[@andreidcs2113]

Cum a patit Florin Raducioiu :))

[@Bigflorent]

I'm italian and I can say this, Romanian is easily understandable for us if we know well italian. I mean, Romanian seems to use a different logic, for example, in that sentence it was used "foṣti" if I remember correctly and "sono stato", but fosti is the remote past of essere, which means "I was (long time ago)", so if you enlarge your italian vocabulary, it begins to be easier to understand. Most examples are words that we have but use in different cases, like past present and future or simply situations

[@Cipricus]

”if you enlarge your italian vocabulary” < also, if you know more Italian dialects. What Romanian Latin words I cannot find in Italian or other standard Romance languages I usually find in Sardinian, Sicilian, Neapolitan, Corsican, etc, even full phrases.

[@ramonac5600]

And viceversa. I saw a lot of comments that said if you speak slowly Italian and romanian you will understand each other. That slowly speaking allows you think what could be the meaning of an familiar world that you use it in a different sentence. I saw the guy said something about "capire" and in romanian "a intelege". Well it doesn't sound the same but "cap" means "head" in Ro. Some can figure it out from the start (because we also have an expression "foloseste-ti capul" that means "use your head" like "use your brain", and from the context you can figure it out that it can be "to understand") and also will easily memorize because it relates to head. Cannot forget it.

[@stefanhurdubeti9563]

It also helps if you use the sinonims for each word that has some. If an italian is not sure of the meaning of one word, the sinonim will clarify it with no doubt.

[@joseangellopezpelegrin9095]

What I am most impressive with, its how Romanians who emigrated to my homeland "Spain" are such good at adapting themselves to the language in a blink of an eye. Some of them I have met through all this years sound so native, that I could never imagine they were from Romania. 🇪🇸 Las lenguas romances son únicas, 🇷🇴 Limbile romanice sunt unice, 🇮🇹 Le lingue romanze sono uniche, 🇵🇹 As línguas românicas são únicas, 🇫🇷 Le langue romanes sont uniques

[@camelianedelcu5640]

Esatto=exact,bravo hai dimostrato la somiglianza tra tutte queste lingue🙆‍♀️🌺👋

[@_JOJ_]

Spanish and Italian are quite easy for us i would say, Portugese is hard to understand when someone speaks it but is easy to read. French... it takes practice... for me at least French is quite hard, sometimes it feels like it isn't even latin based. 😅

[@_Amarin]

It's probably because we watched a lot of spanish language telenovelas when we were younger😂😂😂😂

[@sdssds1086]

@@_Amarin and listened to the music of Mr Iglesias

[@Hotaru25]

In Romania, most of the people, under 50, speak multiple languages. 2 or 3 minimum. I have had colleagues in Romania that spoke fluently 5 languages, including romanian.

[@isometrix415]

I'm Romanian and i live in Italy I've noticed that many words that contains d in Italian are the same word in Romanian with Z Italian - Dici; Romanian - Zici Italian - Dieci; Romanian - Zece (not the same but quite similar) Italian - Decimale; Romanian - Zecimală Italian - Dimmi; Romanian - Zimi And many more, almost every word that starts with D in Italian, will start with Z in Romanian

[@user-tr9fy3nl9yro]

În 200 hundred years ago written Romanian, prezent Z letter was written D with underwriting of " , " like in și (and).

[@empyrionin]

Not just written, but pronounced "dz" as in "dzece", "dzi-mi", "dumnedzeu". Even today it is regionally pronounced like that. Also in Aromanian today: "dzătsi/dumnidzali"

[@mcsmiha1973]

throughout time there have been some phonetic changes one of them was d-z. you might also notice q-p, ct-pt, etc

[@davidsoto7114]

respect to my Italian and Romanian brothers and sisters! Spanish speaking over here 🇲🇽 I can understand about %50 of what both languages were saying

[@stalker3839]

Stay safe brother i love spanish people and i hope someday i will speak spanish very well , bt Italian and spanish are extremely closer so it wont be a big problem

[@davidsoto7114]

@@stalker3839 keep pushing brother, you got this. Where are you originally from ?

[@riotsee8553]

Impressive

[@razoo911]

you can understand 80% of italian

[@niamtxiv]

But Mexicans are indio while Spanish and Romanians are whites. Lol

[@RyebuckCoppercap]

Non-native Italian speaker here, I understood the Romanian samples quite well, but it also may be because I'm a native Spanish speaker and fluent in English, meaning I've got exposure to some of the Latin-derived words not found in Italian. Anyway, I found them quite similar, in the same way I find Italian and Spanish quite similar :p

[@jayiwa]

I’m not a native speaker of both languages, but I can speak Italian to the point that I can easily pass the Italian citizenship test. I visited Romania in 2019. There were times when the locals couldn’t speak English back to me, so they simply replied in Romanian. Turns out, I could understand them and I replied back in Italian, and they understood me too. Surely, the native speakers of both languages shouldn’t have too much trouble communicating with each other.

[@m.dewylde5287]

Simply speaking good Italian will not guaranty you passing the citizenship test. The test is about the political system, the history and the culture of Italy. You can speak perfectly but fail.

[@carron979]

@@m.dewylde5287 same for Romania. An imigrant must pass the cultural, hystorical and political test that 90% of Romanians would probably fail to pass...

[@m.dewylde5287]

@@carron979 The same everywhere.

[@manueldl9753]

As an Italian I went to Bucarest and understood like 60% of the signs and 30% of the spoken language.

[@zahariacalin1096]

🤌🤌

[@AVIANADRAG]

I’m from Oradea, Romania where I’m Hungarian, Romanian and Romani and I love that our languages are all so different from most of Europe. I speak Romanian and Italian was very easy to learn bc I already knew Romanian, French and Spanish. Then Portuguese was learned in less than a week because of Spanish. I love this language family!

[@ClaudioBrogliato]

I happened to see a video in youtube. At first I thought it was a slavic language for the accent but then I realized I was understanding too many words, it was Romanian.

[@Henritar]

This video just made me want to return to my romanian studies. As a brazilian portuguese, italian a (a little of) french speaker, romanian has always caught my attention. Love your videos!!

[@crimom]

(PT) Nesta casa com um litro de vinho e um kilo de carne de vaca nao se more de fome ou de sede. (RO) In aceasta casa cu un litru de vin si un kil de carne de vaca nu se moare de foame ori de sete. 😊

[@user-fh5xh2nc8c]

Wow, one can almost get dizzy by listening to this very intricate presentation on the differences and similarities of Italian and Romanian. As a long distance operator in Munich, we had to learn conversational Italian, since the Munich office mostly worked with Italy. Our teacher, Dr. Glauco Boico, came from Fiume/Rijeka in Croatia who spoke Italian with a Venetian accent. Italian is very easy, it just falls out of your mouth. As a previously apprenticed bookseller, I eventually returned to my own occupational field and once worked at a bookstore that imported books and periodicals from the East block countries and sold them to American universities. While I mainly worked on imports from Yugoslavia, I also had a chance to look at Romanian periodicals and saw that this language must be somewhat close to Italian. If one keeps one's ears and one's mind open, one can learn a great deal over the years.

[@gi1937]

Italian here. I noticed that from the point of view of fonetics, Romanian tends to have some "double" vowels (diphthongs) more than Italian, like in "moarte" (italian "morte" death) and I got to now that sometimes that doble vowel happens is Friulan language too, where it's pronounced "muart" (Friulan is a romance north-eastern regional language of Italy). A comparison within the to could be interesting. Moreover, typically Friulan and Venetan have Slavic loanwords too to some extent

[@carron979]

there is a "language continuum" starting in Sicily going up north, throu the south of France to Spain and Portugal. "Continuum" means that people of one village can undestand speakers of the next next village, but not always if you skip villages. This continuum is broken to the east on the ex -Yougoslav space. Meaning Friulian speakers cannot really understand Istro-romanians, Megleno-romanians or Aromanians. And I myself as a Romanian have a hard time understanding Aromanian language...

[@giorgiodifrancesco4590]

@@carron979 There are videos on KZbin where you can hear Arumanian being spoken, and for an Italian they are certainly more understandable than those in a South Slavic dialect, with which we share only essential words, being an Indo-European language, but of the "satem" subgroup (while ours is of the "kentum" subgroup).

[@carron979]

@@giorgiodifrancesco4590 well, interestingly enough the Romanian word for "hundred" is "suta" clearly derived from "satem" while all (and I really mean ALL) the other numerals are of latin origin and Latin belongs to the "kentum" subgroup. So either "suta" is a slavic loanword (sto) or a relic of the extinct and unknown Dacian language belonging maybe to the "satem". In any case I don't see much practical utility in this classification/division... satem/kentum

[@giorgiodifrancesco4590]

@@carron979 I think it's a relic, because the dacian was a "satem" language. However, Thracologist Sorin Olteanu hypothesizes that Daco-Thracian was originally a kentum language, part of a Greco-Macedonian branch; but that then Daco-Thracian was influenced by Balto-Slavic, causing over time a change of the language from kentum to satem.

[@user-tr9fy3nl9yro]

Spanish muerte.

[@alexandertumarkin5343]

I'm a Ukrainian, and appeared the first time in Romania in 2000, just accidentally, I hadn't planned to. To my surprise, I understood Romanian fairly well, as for an unprepared young guy. Felt like lots of words were quite international (after all, we all have some words borrowed from Latin, maybe in scientific sphere, but not only), and was able to communicate somehow. When I was in Romania the second time, as well as in Moldova, I could communicate even better, but probably that's just because I had improved some other Romance languages, like Spanish and Italian. So I'd say that the knowledge of Italian does help in Romania as well. Times have changed, we are not allowed to leave the country, previously because of covid and now because of the war, men are supposed to either defend our country, or work for supporting our economy, but I'm still missing my youth adventures with going to other countries and their provinces, where people speak nothing but their own languages.

[@re_di_roma_is_back2388]

Weird. I found Ukrainian very similar to Russian

[@alexandertumarkin5343]

@@re_di_roma_is_back2388 Yes, quite similar, it's a Slavic language whereas Romanian isn't. Still, we have some words just derive from Latin or other languages. Particularly, one of the first phrase that I understood when I arrived at the train station 22 years ago, was "Nu circulă tramvaiele". In Ukrainian it would sound differently, but here's why I understood it: "Nu" cognates with "No/Not" in English, or "Ne" in Ukrainian, so it's clearly a negation. "Tramvaiele" - well, the word is international, it's "tramvai" in Ukrainian. And "circula" - we have the word "tsickuliatsiya", it's never used for public transport, it exists mostly in science, like physics or biology, but it's easy to understand. Another reason is that some words in Romanian are loaned from Slavic, even the word "da" ("yes").

[@Dany94256]

Слава Україні! ти в безпеці? Good to see a message from one of your guys! Are you safe for now, over there?

[@valentinovidiucornea4525]

@@alexandertumarkin5343 Another word in Romanian are loaned from Slavic, is "pizda". Pornografic but true!!!

[@carron979]

@@valentinovidiucornea4525 very true, it's an unconditional stimulus... Pavlov-wise, I mean :-))))

[@fedcard]

As a Spanish speaker, I once listened to Nicolae Ceaușescu's final speech and was able to understand half of what he said without the need for subtitles. The other half, because of the context, I could more or less understand. "Capitali socialisti, participati populari, Bucuresti, un salut.... aló, aló" It seemed like the Pope when he was already old. XD

[@marcelbas]

I am a Dutch-speaking second-language learner of Romanian. I think the greatest similarities between Romanian and Italian are on the lexical-phonological level, as Romanian - like Italian - has kept most Latin words fairly intact. The lack of assimilation, metatheses, vowel changes and the retention of consonantal qualities have kept Romanian words fairly close to their origins. This has even affected loanwords, which were 're-latinised' or made to sound archaic in a way so as to fit Romanian phonology (such as pronunciation of final t in French 'salut', a in 'balena' (whale), v in 'consecvent' and names like Elveția).

[@marcoi0416]

As a native italian i can say that romanian was very similar to my language and i managed to understand the majority of the words

[@gixmax]

Romanian speaker, can understand almost all written Italian, for the spoken form it really depends on the Italian dialect they are using. Also have some Italian friends who live here, in Romania, and they got to speak a very decent Romanian just by working and being around us for some time, without any formal education.

[@ltubabbo529]

The majority of what we Italians call "dialects" are not dialects of Italian, they are real languages. Even among Italians it is not clear if one speaks different languages, in Italy there are more than 20 languages, so there is a good variety

[@camelianedelcu5640]

@@ltubabbo529 Esatto la lingua rumena si parla in tutto il paese,non vi sono i dialetti come in Italia.Nel nord ovest certi parlano ungherese,questo perché sotto l'impero austro-ungarico ,con l'aiuto dei altri 3 paesi si sono permessi a prendere per un periodo la nostra TRANSILVANIA, che finalmente con il trattato di Trianon,in Francia ,nel 1918 ci fu restituita la TRANSILVANIA che è ,è ci sarà per sempre la nostra terra.Anche se ci sono altri territori che furono presi dalla Russia,Ucraina,Serbia e Bulgaria.Noi non abbiamo mai preso la terra altrui. Anche Italia ha dovuto rinunciare a certi terreni(vedi Istria).

[@ltubabbo529]

@@camelianedelcu5640 Scrivi in un ottimo italiano! Brava! Conosco la situazione della Transilvania, a quel tempo era la zona di confine dell'impero austro-ungarico, quindi i comandati mandarono molti ungheresi lì in maniera tale da tenere sotto controllo la situazione. Gli istriani purtroppo sono ormai pochi, sono una minoranza. Sarebbe bello se la Corsica diventasse italiana. Sono felice che la Romania stia vivendo un periodo di crescita economica 😁 Siete in tantissimi qui in Italia (1 milione), all'inizio c'è stato qualche problema tra noi, ma è normale, era una novità. A distanza di anni i rumeni si sono integrati perfettamente, molto meglio di tanti altri popoli, c'è rispetto 👍🏼

[@ValeriusMagni]

@@camelianedelcu5640 ci sono dialetti rumeni, il moldavo è un esempio

[@danascully6698]

@@ValeriusMagni Non ci sono dialetti in rumeno, solo alcuni regionalismi che non influenzano in alcun modo la comprensione della lingua tra i rumeni nativi. La Moldavia è solo una regione storica della Romania.

[@Pokerface-tr1ds]

I am romanian born, but I live in Germany. I have some italian co workerst and we gave each other some examples and all of us were quite amazed how similar our languages are. Here is an example: Italians say "Morto di foame" while Romanians say "mort de foame". So... work it out :)

[@mimi5769]

I'm Italian and here in Italy there are lots of Romanians, even my neighbours are from Romania lol. They can speak Italian perfectly, I can't understand a word of Romanian, but even when they speak among themselves i can always hear similar sounds. Maybe i should pay more attention lol

[@cllaudiusd521]

The Romanian language is not the most difficult to understand by other speakers of Romance languages. The most difficult to understand in general are probably French and Portuguese (of course, without knowing them from school). It's just that the Romanian language is less known and publicized than the others, this is the just explanation.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

I worked with some italian colleagues here in Romania a few years ago, I was shocked to see that after 1-2 years in Romania they spoke very advanced romanian in some cases close to native romanian, with a slight italian accent.

[@FreedomAlternative]

Here's a British woman and an Italian man speaking Romanian - kzbin.info/www/bejne/a6aniKlmocyhg68

[@kittykatariel9716]

I also worked with some Italians here in Romania ( they were from different regions in Italy) and they all spoke very well Romanian with a beautiful Italian accent.

[@Crucifix7]

I am romanian, so, funny story, i've been at a fair in germany, work related. We would have a lot of italian customers that could not speak english. We had 2 italian visitors that could not speak a bit of english but they were verry intrested in the company and what we had to offer. Over the years I picked up some basic phrases, and with these particular visitors we could not communicate. I then said to him ( because my brain after the fair was a mush of french, spanish, italian with a sprinke of romanian and i was afraid not to insult by saying some words in these languages and insult them) Tu parlare italiano , I eu parlare romana. ( probably butcherd the italian language when i said that but funny thing after). We could understand eachother pretty good. But the trick was to speak slow, than you can fill the missing words that you can't understand. And it was the stranges conversation that i would speak my language and get response in different language. We could had a dialogue and we understood exactly 80% of the time :)). And i never learned italian as classes or courses. I've learned english, german and a bit of french but never italian. And when this worked once to prove the theory, i've tried after with another visitor and had the same result.

[@floraflowers]

I once went to an Italian restaurant and, at some point, the owner began talking with someone I had come with who was from South America. They were talking about the differences between Italian and Latin Spanish, I wasn't paying much attention until I heard "cum se zice?". I instantly lifted my head and asked the owner what he just said, now thinking that he was also speaking Romanian. He repeated slower "commo se dice?". I mean, I knew Romanian and Italian were very similar and I obviously had heard that particular phrase in Italian before, but it was the way that he spoke it and the accent he had that sounded like the phrase had been fluently spoken in Romanian instead of Italian.

[@Eirian1923]

I'm a Hungarian from Romania, so I started learning Romanian very early in primary school. The problem with it was that after 4 years we continued learning Romanian as a mothertongue, therefore the rest of my education was spent trying to figure out my way beetween archaic and regional expressions instead of exercising the modern language. This means that I understand almost anything (except the archaic and regional expressions), but I really struggle when I try to formulate a correct sentence. Genders can be really confusing. 200 days ago I decided to try to learn Italian on duolingo, and seems really easy. Most of the words so far are familiar from Romanian or English, therefore the main challenge is grammatical correctness.

[@andreeas.2362]

is hard to learn genders in romanian. Most kids learn at home until they reach school and by heart. Most you can feel them but many you simply have to lean by exposure. If you are shy to speak in romanian, the best I can recommend (it is how I leaned French) is to read easy preferred literature at first (ex Agatha Christie books etc. Romance or detective stories are easy reads and can help with the basic vocabulary - in any language you wish to study).

[@carron979]

here's a hint: plants and animals are either masculin or feminin, never neuter...

[@J.P.MistaPista]

Last year I went to a shop in Kolozsvar, and at the cashdesk the shop-assistant told me something in Romanian. I've never learnt Romanian, and I looked at my son for help, but he looked back at me like what I wanted from him as he can't speak Romanian either. I told him in Hungarian it's a shame we cannot speak any Romanian. The shop-assistant behind the desk said in Hungarian: I can't speak Romanian properly either, I only know what I must. 😁

[@carron979]

...and of course, if you look closer you may figure out other rules like: any nouns ending with "a" is always feminin also abstract nouns ending in "-re" derived from long forms of infinitive like: "crestere", "nastere", "cugetare", "dezvoltare", "stare", "fire", "deplasare", "prezentare"etc... are feminine

[@cosimocorigliano8185]

@@J.P.MistaPista learning Romanian is challenging for Hungarians, but not imposible. Sure...if you are not interested...but it is a beautiful language when you actually speak it. Languages are a treasure in my opinion.

[@TenorCantusFirmus]

As a native Italian speaker, understanding spoken Romanian isn't actually that much more difficult than understanding some Italian Dialects. I might even take it for Neapolitan, while i.e. Calabrese is much harder than both to understand. Written Romanian might be easier, expecially if you have studied Latin.

[@dayanbalevski4446]

I always knew Romanian was similar to Italian, but I could never quantify it - this helps! All in all, I feel that Italian seems to be simpler than Romanian just by this video comparison, but maybe I am wrong. Cheers from Bulgaria neighbours.

[@mojewjewjew4420]

Thats weird, i though youd find our language easier bc we are neighbors and have some slavic words.

[@dayanbalevski4446]

@@mojewjewjew4420 That is true, but this video makes Italian look simpler to me. I visit Romania relatively often, and I have friends there, so I have more exposure But the direct comparison to Italian makes it look more complicated/harder for someone to learn.

[@IceWolf75]

@@mojewjewjew4420 We have "some" Slavic words but I'd say it's too little for a native Slavic speaker to understand Romanian.

[@HeroManNick132]

@@IceWolf75 Bogdan is a Slavic name haha.

[@darui9185]

Don't translate.. ତୁମେ ଅଭିଶାପିତ କାରଣ ଯଦି ତୁମେ ଅଭିଶାପ ଭାଙ୍ଗିବ ନାହିଁ ତୁମେ ମରିବ, ଅଭିଶାପକୁ ଭାଙ୍ଗିବାର ଏକମାତ୍ର ଉପାୟ ହେଉଛି ମୋ ଚ୍ୟାନେଲକୁ ସବସ୍କ୍ରାଇବ କରିବା

[@grecuboy5331]

This is such a compact yet in depth analysis. Thank you so much for your work! 👍🏼

[@svgkasor]

I'm from Moldova so I speak Romanian and recently I started learning Italian Because Italian is my fifth language it seams pretty easy to me but also I wouldn't say that it's easy to fully understand Italian just by knowing Romanian

[@SebastianMorath]

Well as a Chinese who live in Spain almost 10 years. that 30 sec Romanian Sample I can understand about 60%, and the Italian part I can basiclly understand all.

[@bzcup]

The text choice for romanian was unfortunate. He should have used the same text for both languages or a similar text for a usual activity like the italian sample.

[@boldisordorin9010]

12:39 in romanian we can also use "e" instead of "este" or "unde-i" instead of "unde este". Station in romanian is also translated as "stație"

[@FullMetalPier]

Let's bring our languages closer! ;) Greetings from Verona!

[@askallois]

In sardo "Andi esti" significa "dove sei", praticamente uguale

[@user-tr9fy3nl9yro]

Stațiune în Romanian means resort.

[@billyrocka3972]

Ok, well... I put a like at this video because I am an Italian man who likes languages. I speak a few English but don't speak any Romanian neither Latin. I can say for sure that all the sentences in Italian are very accurate, and this makes me think that every single thing you said in this video is accurate the same way. Furthermore, in my opinion, this video is very stimulating because it's spoken in three different languages (four if we include Latin), so I have to strive to understand everything. I've never seen a video like this one before. Congratulations and thank you very much!

[@AlexAlex-jk6uq]

Nice video! There is something close for „belly button” in romanian, except „buric”. It is „ombilic” or „umbilic”, but we dont use it that much. It is more like an anatomic word. When you talk abt the romanian diacritics you forgot the „ț”. We use it for the „zz„ sound, like in „pizza”. :) For example, some words: măreț (grand), țigară (cigarette), țânțar (mosquito)... Since lot of romanian and moldavian people work in Italy, they need very short terms to learn italian language speaking form...like few months :)

[@PaulNechifor]

Some notes: * Besides the short infinitive ("a auzi" = to listen), Romanian also has long infinitives ("auzire") with the "-re" ending from the original Latin. Short infinitives are more common which is why they're the form used in the dictionary. * You've missed "ț" (t with a comma) which is the only letter unique to Romanian (it represents the "ts" sound, like z in "pizza"). * You translated "to have" as "avea". You're missing "a". It's "a avea" or "avere". "Avea" just means "had".

[@ACIDVENOM2501]

I agree with you but I'd like to complete your 1st and 3rd notes: - long infinitives correspond indeed to feminine nouns in romanian so that this -re ending can be seen as a suffix (whose meaning is similar to the -ție / -sie / -țiune / -siune suffixes restricted to verbs with latin roots I guess), for example: * a pregăti = to prepare -> pregătirea = the preparation * a gândi = to think -> gândirea = the thought * a aduna = to gather -> adunarea = the gathering * a întâlni = to meet -> întâlnirea = the meeting * a stăpâni = to control/to master -> stăpânirea = the mastery - romanian builds its imperfect tense the same way as french and italian (and I guess as well as other western romance languages too) build actually their simple future tense (verb stem with endings corresponding indeed to the auxiliary verb a avea as used in the compound perfect tense) * a cânta (to sing) -> cânt+∅+am (I sang), cânt+∅+ai (you (singular) sang), cânt+∅+a (he/she sang), cânt+∅+am (we sang), cânt+∅+ați (you (plural) sang), cânt+∅+au (they sang) * a primi (to send) -> prim+e+a (he/she sent) * a face (to do/to make) -> fac+e+a (he/she did/made) * a avea (to have) -> av+e+a (he/she had) that's why forgetting the a before the (short) infinitive can lead to confusion with this other form

[@enigmaster84]

As an Italian, I was surprised by how much I could understand in the first short example! Romanian always catches my curiosity but I've never got into it. You've just given me another reason to start :)

[@mauriziomonge]

10:52 - Romanian's "fost" is also related to Italian's "Passato Remoto" (~=simple past) form which is "fosti", which is however referring to ancient past, and not very used in spoken language and somewhat archaic. Source: I'm Italian.

[@Vercixx]

"Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non *foste* a viver come bruti, ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza"

[@mauriziomonge]

@@Vercixx correct, "foste" being the plural (voi = yall), "fosti" (tu = you singular)

[@christinefischer2137]

back here, and it was a joy again. you have a way of putting so much info in these videos, and the other thing i like is how you explain how cognates develop. knowledge about this helps so much to remember vocabulary.

[@Babuscum]

Hi! Italian here. I don’t know if someone else in the comments said that in Italian we have “FOST”. Our simple past (Passato Remoto) for the verb “to be”, ESSERE is: Io fui Tu fosti Egli fu Noi fummo Voi foste Essi furono In our Trapassato Remoto it’s the same: we add “stato/a” to the Passato Remoto (Io fui stato etc). As you can see in this case the two language match. And AI FOST clearly translates in our TU FOSTI, the tense (simple past) is the same, even if in Italian is more common the use of the Passato Prossimo (Io sono stato, Present Perfect in English) instead of the Passato Remoto. As to the auxiliary verbs, in Italian we use both Have and Be, and I’d say that Have is not really more used than Be. Italian rules are complicated :-) Great video!!! I’ll share it with a Romanian friend!

[@razvanbarascu4007]

Conjugare 'a fi'/'to be' la perfectul simplu: eu fui tu fuși el/ea fu noi furăm voi furăți ei/ele fură

[@civfanatic8853]

You are quite right, but italian, like french for moving verbs, uses both verbs ”to be” and ”to have” for Present Perfect which is the same with ”Pasee Compose/Perfect Compus”, but this is formed in romanian ONLY with the verb ”to have/a avea”. Like in engIish, where present perfect with ”to be” is something very archaic, from Shakespeare time. Simple Past in rou is like Răzvan said above, but ”fost” is the past participle of ”to be/a fi” and thus used only in front with an ”am(i) / ai(you) / a(he/she)...etc”

[@lmaozedong18]

@@razvanbarascu4007 Nu e corect ce ai scris acolo. Perfectul simplu la persoana a doua singular este 'tu fuseși'. Se vede că nu ești oltean. :)

[@jaxzor]

I`m a Romanian, and few years ago me and my brother (both romanian speekers) went to a MotoGP race in Spielberg (Austira), we were surounded by Italian people (huge motorsport fan base), and at some point a group of Italian dudes and girls offered us beers and asked us from what region of Italy are we cause they understand what we`re talking but not everything...they tought we`re joking when we said we`re from Romania...

[@civfanatic8853]

That shows how unknown rou really is as the 5th major romance language and of course how underrated Rou is as a country and thats happening in Europe, not in Africa or east Asia. That shows again how bad rou are at promoting their culture in general, but also how ignorant the western europe is when it comes to the eastern half of the continent. Almost a paradox 😯😕😪

[@giorgiodifrancesco4590]

Non esageriamo. It depends on who you've been dealing with.

[@carron979]

That's a happy situation, but once I was in Nice at a hotel in the elevator when an Italian couple got in, smiling and cheerfully speaking Italian. Than my father spoke to my mother in Romanian and at the ground level the Italian lady left the elevator saying "arrivederci..." turning her back to my father without looking at him. Her smile dissapeared and the tone of her voice changed so much, my father understood she was upset if not vexed so he got confused like "what did I do?". I had to explain to him that the Italian lady must have taken him for an arogant countryman (maybe speaking in his dialect) unwilling to salute or engage in a little small talk with some other Italian fellows... 🙂

[@danascully6698]

@@civfanatic8853 You forget that Romania was an isolated country for almost 45 years, thanks to the Russian "friends". Europe and the entire free world didn't even know Romania existed and only now, for about 20-25 years, they discover this country with its language and culture!

[@giorgiodifrancesco4590]

@@carron979 There is no possibility that an Italian would mistake a person who speaks Romanian for a person who speaks an Italian dialect. Romanian and Italian dialects are too different from each other. The lady said hello because we are taught to be polite even in the lifts. I speak several Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish), one Italian dialect and I understand others quite well, but if I hear spoken Romanian I understand it only partially, because there are too many Slavic and Hungarian words mixed in with the Latin ones. Furthermore, Latin words often have a totally different meaning from what they originally had. Not to mention, in Romanian, the real inventions of neo-Latin verbs coined starting from Latin words, but forgetting the original Latin verb. On the other hand, I understand quite a bit of Romanian if I hear the news, because I understand what it's about. I understand it much more if I read it.

[@SD-ko4tz]

As a Dutch I worked with and in Romania. The moment I realised Romanian is a sort of Italian with a slavick accent I suddenly understood what they were saying

[@itsameweegee02]

Personally as an Italian I didn't find many things that I couldn't understand or get from people talking in Romanian. There were times when some friends were speaking in Romanian about private stuff and I could actually understand almost everything. Probably it would take me a lot to actually learn Romanian compared to a Romanian learning italian, because I couldn't understand well cases in latin, so I think it will be hard for this language too. Nonetheless I think I'll try to learn it someday.

[@SPONGE_BOB_2022]

Bravo ! Cel mai bun mod este să asculți muzică subtitrată, sau orice alte conținuturi cu subtitrare.. Dovadă că și eu trebuie să -mi storc puțin creierii _ să înțeleg cum funcționează cazurile.. Dar de vorbit, le vorbesc corect și fără să înțeleg .

[@lunadeargint540]

Don't wory about the cases, the are not at all as complicated as in Latin.

[@mariusmuresan8248]

No worries about the cases. First they are a simplified form of the Latin original, and secondly, if you forget them you can simply speak like in Italian, with subject/object and prepositions. Romanians themselves speak sometimes like that. It's not correct but understandable.

[@blotski]

I'm a native speaker of English. I studied Russian and French at university and later learned Spanish up to about C1 level. I spoke no Italian. I have been learning Romanian for about 5 years and have reached about C1 level too. I found both Spanish and Russian helpful in my Romanian studies. Although Romanian is mostly Latin in its structure there are a lot of Slavic borrowings. However, since I learnt Romanian it has really surprised me how much Italian I can guess the meaning of! I've never studied Italian but Romanian has really opened up Italian to me. However, I think it's probably easier for a Romanian speaker to guess the meaning of Italian words than vice versa.

[@cosdache]

Romanian and Russian are the online europea languages with the sound î/â.

[@mihaidanielescu]

Congrats ! Getting to C level in a romance language is really tough for english and germans. I'm romanian living in Spain and I can see it is not easy for them.

[@DarkAncientZ]

@@cosdache And Polish.

[@willmurphy4073]

Same with me and Norwegian (as a native English speaker), I can understand the majority of Danish and Swedish written. With the help of Norwegian (and some old English and Icelandic, plus studying Germanic sound shifts), I can also sort of understand languages like Frisian and Dutch. German loanwords into Norwegian also help me with German too

[@nel_dubbio_mena]

@@cosdache What russian sound is î? There isnt

[@ilrompiballe6187]

Italian speaker here! I heard very few conversations in Romanian, and maybe was for the accent or the use of some non Latin words, but I never understood the context of the speakers. But watching your video it was much easier to understand both in writing and listening forms, enough for me to think that if I could live some weeks or months I can actually learn it very fast and become fluent with a daily exposure.

[@carron979]

2:10 "fronte"- "frunte", "volpe"- "vulpe", "monte"-"munte", "molte"-"multe", "mosca"-"musca" etc... Marks un empirical rule for those who take the shortcut to switch from one language to the other. "O" from Italian becomes "U" in Romanian. Very usefull for nouns related to geografical origin, for instance "il napoletano" (Italian)-"napoletanul" (Romanian)

[@yavitvexe9997]

that is interesing, just recently I saw some Romanian subtitles in some video, so first when I saw them I thought they were Italian😀 It's surprising how much they have in common, as well as with other Romance languages. and having some knowledge in them I understood almost everything

[@nicolaramoso3286]

I'm an Italian speaker who's learning Romanian and sometimes it feels like English: not because they are similar but because there are a lot of day-to-day words that are very different from the Italian ones, whether because they come from Slavic or Turkish but as soon as you start to delve into the more modern or academic vocabulary then a large amount of words become very similar. Like the difference between "shy" and "timid": the latter comes from Latin but it's less used colloquially compared to the former. That of course is not representative of how the language really is it's just how it feels to me sometimes.

[@mojewjewjew4420]

Idk what your experience is with romanian but turkish has a miniscule influence and slavic is also small, most likely you meet words from latin that arent used alot in latin or many words in recent times are borrowed from english, slavic words are few but used quite often like război,drujbă,etc.

[@nicolaramoso3286]

@@mojewjewjew4420 well I wouldn't say that there are only a few slavic words used frequently in Romanian Like "noroc, dragoste, slujbă" there are several examples But yeah in general you're right maybe many of these words have a different Latin origin Several come from Greek for example

[@meneldur666]

@@mojewjewjew4420 there are quite a lot of Slavic influences, but I think nowadays they're not as common in colloquial Romanian. Words like văzduh, for example, for which most people would use cer instead. In my limited experience, of course.

[@Cris-hd1wb]

The number of Latin words is constantly increasing, and the non-Latin vocabulary tends to turn archaic. You’ll notice this in literature especially, where you’ll find many Slavic words that have nowadays been replaced with Latin counterparts in daily speech. I think it’s rly cool because it greatly expands the vocabulary.

[@Cris-hd1wb]

@@mojewjewjew4420 there are many many Slavic, Turkish and Greek words, but they’re slowly being replaced

[@mirceadraga7421]

Foarte profesionistă această analiză a dumneavoastră! Sunt impresionat de precizia și acuratețea ei. Felicitări! :)

[@Shadowman75]

Great video and the amazing research is outstanding 👍🏻

[@cv5w]

Interestingly, regarding the greeting "salut" (which comes from French or more likely learned Latin), it is a doublet of the word "sărut" which comes directly from the same exact Latin word, following the classic sound changes from Latin to Romanian (rhotacism, where the L between vowels became an R). "Sărut" means kiss (noun).

[@vlina4123]

Nu! Sărut e de la za+rot (slav) = înseamnă *de gură*, doar înaite spuneau: a da guriță, a da buzele. Zâmbi de la *zubi* (slav. dinți).

[@cutecatlolxd3972]

@@vlina4123 bro parcă ești copilu care întreabă pentru tema de acasă

[@davidl2684]

@@vlina4123 Interesantă teorie, ai vreo sursă? Că nu am găsit nimic. Pare totuși puțin probabil, pentru că, de obicei, cuvintele românești provenite de la cuvinte slavone cu prefixul „za” păstrează sunetul „z” (zăpadă, zadar, etc.).

[@ionelflorea2116]

@@davidl2684 nici nu e adevarat..nimeni nu adopta cuvinte in felul asta, prin alipirea e doua ca sa faca unu

[@sorincalciu]

@@davidl2684 "A săruta", din latină "salutare"! Conform "Dicţionarului Limbii Romîne Moderne", Buc. 1958 (când România s-a scris la un moment dat la ordin cu "î," sub influenţă sovietică, ca să părem pentru unii mai mult slavi decât latini). Exact aceeaşi etimologie a cuvântului "a săruta" din latină "salutare" o stabileşte şi "Dicţionarul Enciclopedic Cartea Românească" I.A. Candrea, Buc. 1931. Nu, nu văd nicio legătură cu vreo limbă slavă aici. În rusă, de ex. se spune "целовать" (tselovat') "a săruta".

[@afz902k]

I speak Spanish and normally don't understand any Romanian, but having the Italian side by side really helps!

[@Pangui008]

totally! I was watching the video and my reaction was "oye, pero así sí se entiende! :O"

[@diogorodrigues747]

As a Portuguese, I normally understand some words of Romanian that are very close to Portuguese and sometimes Romanian TV is actually surprisingly intelligible (or at least the newscasts), but in informal speech is quite difficult because they use lots of loanwords from Slavonic and Hungarian, and other Latin cognates that we don't use too.

[@Pangui008]

@@diogorodrigues747 oooh, informal speech is the hardest one, always. Even for people who speak the same lang, when it's informal from another country is hard. Some Spanish speakers even say that in Chile we don't speak Spanish 😅(I won't try to argue 😅) That makes me wonder: is it easier for romance lang speakers from Europe to understand Romanian, even when controlling for the lang? (I mean, comparing French speakers from Fr/Ca; Portuguese speakers from Pt/Br; Spanish speakers from Es/Mx, etc.)

[@LearnRomanianWithCorina]

@@diogorodrigues747 Informal speech is always the most difficult, especially because a lot of times it doesn't comply with the standard, literary norms

[@pxn748]

Same here!