Standard Romanian (i.e. the Daco-Romanian language within Eastern Romance) shares largely the same grammar and most of the vocabulary and phonological processes with the other three surviving varieties of Eastern Romance, namely Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian.
As a Romance language, Romanian shares many characteristics with its more distant relatives: Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, etc. However, Romanian has preserved certain features of Latin grammar that have been lost elsewhere. This could be explained by a host of factors such as: relative isolation in the Balkans, possible pre-existence of identical grammatical structures in its substratum (as opposed to the substrata over which the other Romance languages developed), and existence of similar elements in the neighboring languages. One Latin element that has survived in Romanian while having disappeared from other Romance languages is the morphological case differentiation in nouns. Nevertheless, declensions have been reduced to only three forms (nominative/accusative, genitive/dative, and vocative) from the original six or seven. Another, that is only seen marginally in other Romance languages such as Italian, is the retention of the neuter gender in nouns.
Romanian is attested from the 16th century. The first Romanian grammar was Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae by Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Șincai, published in 1780. Many modern writings on Romanian grammar, in particular, most of those published by the Romanian Academy (), are prescriptive; the rules regarding plural formation, verb conjugation, word spelling and meanings, etc. are revised periodically to include new tendencies in the language.James E. Augerot (2000). "Romanian / Limba română: A Course in Modern Romanian". Center for Romanian Studies.Laura Daniliuc and Radu Daniliuc (2000). "Descriptive Romanian Grammar: An Outline". Lincom Europa, Munich, Germany.Gheorghe Doca (1999). Romanian language. Vol. I: Essential Structures. Ars Docendi, Bucharest, RomaniaGheorghe Doca (2000). Romanian language. Vol. II: Morpho-Syntactic and Lexical Structures. Ars Docendi, Bucharest, Romania Liana Pop, Victoria Moldovan (eds) (1997). "Gramatica limbii române / Grammaire du roumain / Romanian Grammar". Echinox, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Maria Aldea, "Valori referențiale generate de articolul definit și de cel indefinit românesc în determinarea substantivului. Studiu de caz: Scrisoarea lui Neacșu (1521)".
Nouns
Gender
Romanian nouns are categorized into three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. The neuter behaves like the masculine in the singular and the feminine in the plural, unlike the neuter in Latin which had distinct forms. Nouns which in their dictionary form (singular, nominative, with no article) end in a consonant or the vowel/semivowel -u are mostly masculine or neuter; if they end in -ă or -a they are usually feminine. In the plural, the ending -i corresponds generally to masculine nouns, whereas feminine and neuter nouns often end in -e. In synchronic terms, Romanian neuter nouns can also be analysed as "ambigeneric", that is as being masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural (see below) and even in diachronic terms certain linguists have argued that this pattern, as well as that of case differentiation, was in a sense "re-invented" rather than a "direct" continuation of the Latin neuter. However, most noun genders correspond to Latin categorization, such as first declension which remained feminine. Similarly third declension nouns retained the gender from Latin, neuter included, most likely reinforced by the Latin plural form -ores which gave the feminine plural -uri in Romanian. Second declension nouns were reanalysed on their semantic characteristic (cervus >cerb "stag" remained masculine but campus >câmp "field" became neuter). As for the fourth declension, the nouns were analysed in regards to their plural endings as the declension collapsed into the second, being reassigned as neutral based on the -ores plural form. The change of gender can thus be explained by syncretism and homophony.
Examples: Masculine: ('man, human being'), ('ox'), ('tree'); Neuter: ('road'), ('present, gift'), ('example'); Feminine: ('grandmother'), ('book'), ('coffee').
For nouns designating people the grammatical gender can only be masculine or feminine, and is strictly determined by the biological sex, no matter the phonetics of the noun. For example, nouns like (father) and (priest) are masculine as they refer to male people, although phonetically they are similar to typical feminine nouns.
For native speakers, the general rule for determining a noun's gender relies on the "one-two" test, which consists in inflecting the noun to both the singular and the plural, together with the numbers one and two. Depending on the gender, the numbers will have different forms for each of the three genders: masculine nouns will be ; feminine nouns, ; neuter nouns, .
Masculine: , ('one human being', 'two human beings'), , ('one rabbit', 'two rabbits'). In this case both and are in their masculine forms. Feminine: , ('one girl', 'two girls'), ('one bird', 'two birds'). In this case both and are in their feminine forms. Neuter: , ('one body', 'two bodies'), , ('one drawer', 'two drawers'). In this case is in its masculine form while is in its feminine form. This is the only case in which the two numbers have different genders.
Romanian numbers generally have a single form regardless of the gender of the determined noun. Exceptions are the numbers ('one') ('two') and all the numbers made up of two or more digits when the last digit is 1 or 2; these have masculine and feminine forms. In Romanian there is no gender-neutral form for numbers, adjectives or other noun determiners.
Number Romanian has two grammatical numbers: singular and plural. Morphologically, the plural form is built by adding specific endings to the singular form. For example, nominative nouns without the definite article form the plural by adding one of the endings -i, -uri, -e, or -le. The plural formation mechanism, often involving other changes in the word structure, is an intrinsic property of each noun and has to be learned together with it.
Examples: -i: – ('tree'), – ('horse'), – ('father'), – ('boat'); -uri: – ('train'), – ('job, task'), – ('tent'); -e: – ('straw'), – ('table, meal'), – ('theater'), – ('museum'); -le: – ('star'), – ('coffee'), – ('pajama').
Case Romanian has inherited three cases from Latin: nominative/accusative, dative/genitive and vocative. Morphologically, the nominative and the accusative are identical in nouns; similarly, the genitive and the dative share the same form (these pairs are distinct in the personal pronouns, however). The vocative is less used as it is normally restricted to nouns designating people or things which are commonly addressed directly. Additionally, nouns in the vocative often borrow the nominative form even when there is a distinct vocative form available.
The genitive-dative form can be derived from the nominative. For feminine nouns the form used in the dative/genitive singular is most often identical to the nominative plural, for example – – (a book – of/to a book – two books).
If the noun is determined by a determiner other than the definite article (an indefinite article, a demonstrative, an indefinite quantifier), then the genitive-dative affixes are applied to this determiner, not to the noun, for example – ('a boy' – 'of/to a boy'). Similarly, if the noun is determined by the definite article (an enclitic in Romanian, see that section), the genitive-dative mark is added at the end of the noun together with the article, for example – ('the boy' – 'of/to the boy'), – ('the book' – 'of/to the book'). Masculine proper names designating people form the genitive-dative by placing the article before the noun: ('of/to Brâncuși'); the same applies to feminine names only when they don't have a typically feminine ending: .
In usual genitival phrases such as ('the name of the rose'), the genitive is only recognized by the specific ending (- in this example) and no other words are necessary. However, in other situations, usually if the noun modified by the genitive attribute is indefinite, the genitival article is required, as for example in ('some of the writer's works').
Romanian dative phrases exhibit clitic doubling similar to that in Spanish, in which the noun in the dative is doubled by a pronoun. The position of this pronoun in the sentence depends on the mood and tense of the verb. For example, in the sentence ('I give a present to [my] parents'), the pronoun doubles the noun without bringing any additional information.
As specified above, the vocative case in Romanian has a special form for most nouns. The tendency in contemporary Romanian is to use the nominative forms, however. The traditional vocative is retained in speech, however, especially in informal speech, or by people living in the countryside. It is seen as a mark of unrefined speech by the majority of city-dwellers, who refrain from its usage. The forms of the vocative are as follows. (Note that the vocative does not have both definite and indefinite forms. The following rules are to be applied for the indefinite form of the nouns):
Singular feminine nouns and proper names ending in an unstressed -ă/-a take the ending -o e.g. → ('girl!'). Some popular vocative forms are different, though: → ! ('Mary!'). Singular feminine nouns ending in an unstressed -e take the ending -eo e.g. → ! ('bridge!'). Sometimes, the e is dropped altogether. Singular feminine nouns ending in a stressed -a take the ending -auo e.g. → ! ('stick!'). Singular masculine and neuter nouns ending in a consonant take the ending -ule e.g. → ! ('boy!'). The vocative for animate nouns is sometimes formed as if the noun were a proper name: → ! (see below). Singular masculine and neuter nouns ending in unstressed -e/-ă take no extra ending (-Ø) e.g. → ! ('brother!'). Masculine proper names take the ending -e e.g. → ! ('Stephen!'). Some words also experience some change in their vowels ( → ! 'John!'). All plural nouns take the ending -lor e.g. → ! ('apples!').
Here are some examples of nouns completely inflected:
Without a definite article Masculine Feminine Neuter Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural NominativeAccusative GenitiveDative
With a definite article Masculine Feminine Neuter Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural NominativeAccusative GenitiveDative
Masculine Feminine Neuter Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Vocative
Articles
Definite article An often cited peculiarity of Romanian, which it shares with Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian, is that, unlike all other Romance languages, the definite articles are usually attached to the end of the noun as enclitics (as in Albanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and North Germanic languages) instead of being placed in front (See Balkan sprachbund). These enclitic definite articles are believed to have been formed, as in other Romance languages, from Latin demonstrative pronouns. The table below shows the generally accepted etymology of the Romanian definite article.
Masculine Feminine Singular Plural Singular Plural NominativeAccusative Lat. acc. → Rom. → , , Lat. nom. → Rom. → Lat. acc. → Rom. → → Lat. nom. → Rom. GenitiveDative Late Lat. dat. , influenced by and vulgar → Rom. Lat. gen. → Rom. Lat. dat. , influenced by → Rom. Lat. gen. (gender distinction lost) → Rom.
Examples:
Masculine nouns (singular, nominative/accusative): – ('forest' – 'the forest'); – ('tree' – 'the tree'); – ('brother' – 'the brother'); – ('father' – 'the father').
Neuter nouns (singular, nominative/accusative): – ('theater' – 'the theater'); – ('place' – 'the place');
Feminine nouns (singular, nominative/accusative): casă – casa (house – the house);