Lost in Romania-basic Romanian words and phrases for beginners

Christmas is on the way and many of us started already to make plans of how to spend them with our beloved ones. Traditional destinations like Vienna, Paris or Berlin are among the most popular if we are talking about Europe or, for the most adventurous, Finland with Rovaniemi, the village of Santa Claus and the magnificent Northern Lights! Of course, there are people who wish something different: Spending these holly days in a sandy beach, singing the Jingle Bells on a boat in the middle of turquoise waters wouldn’t mind them we guess!

But, let’s leave them for now and we encourage you to imagine spending the holidays, somewhere a bit closer, in one of the beautiful places of Romania. What do you think of this idea? Well, to us sounds great! Even if you don’t still have a private Romanian teacher, even if you didn’t start your Romanian classes or online Romanian classes (why not?), we are here to provide you, through this article, some easy words and phrases of Romanian language which we suppose that you will find very useful once you step your foot on this magnificent country.

Well, as it is logical for everyone, the first thought that will come to his head when he or she sees a new place and before he opens the GPS on the mobile phone (or map for the most romantic ones) will be:

 I am lost, can I ask you something? = M-am rătăcit, pot să te întreb ceva?

We reassure you that everyone in Romania is very kind and most certainly they will be willing to help you and to give you instructions of how to get to a place.

We assume that one of your next questions (especially if you spend the most of your time of the day walking in order to see all the highlights and sightseeings) will be something like:

How far is the city center? = La ce distanţă este centrul orașului?

One answer that you may receive will be:

Go straight on = Mergi tot înainte

Or

It’s on the left = Este pe stânga 

and

It’s on the right = Este pe dreapta.

We want to make sure that  you will learn these extremely easy phrases and since we are indeed certain that you will do so, please allow us to put some additional words in order to widen a little bit more your vocabulary and help you learn Romanian!Hence, if we suppose that your hotel for instance is next to a super market:

The hotel is next to the super market = Hotelul este lângă super market

In the unpleasant situation that you will need a pharmacy you can say:

I must find a pharmacy = Trebuie să găsesc o farmacie

Another category of phrases should definitely be the ones of the public transportation as you will move a lot. So, we give you the following:

I want a taxi = Doresc un taxi

Where is the metro station? = Unde este stația de metrou?

Where does this bus go? = Unde merge autobuzul asta?

It’s over here = Este pe aici

You must turn = Trebuie să te întorci

Straight on = Drept înainte

And for the end of this article, as our role as an online Romanian teacher comes to an end, we kept some useful ‘’touristic words’’ like:

Restaurant (written exactly as in English with slightly different pronunciation),

Museum = Muzeu

Palace = Palat

Castle = Castel

Tour guide = Ghid turistic

Mall (same as in English).

We hope that we provided you the most useful words and expressions and you will never lose your way within Romania, wherever you travel, either it’s about a big city with big boulevards, or a smaller one with narrow streets or even a picturesque village, now you understand a little bit more the Romanian language!