Romanian
verbs
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descrip ...
are highly inflected in comparison to
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, but markedly simple in comparison to
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, from which Romanian has inherited its verbal conjugation system (through
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...
). Unlike its nouns, Romanian verbs behave in a similar way to those of other
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
such as
French,
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, and
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
. They
conjugate according to
mood,
tense,
voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...
,
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
and
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
.
Aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
is not an independent feature in Romanian verbs, although it does manifest itself clearly in the contrast between the imperfect and the compound perfect tenses as well as within the presumptive mood. Also,
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...
is not distinct except in the past participle tense, in which the verb behaves like an
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
.
Verb paradigm
There are nine
moods into which a verb can be put, with five of them being personal (having a different form for each
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
) and four non-personal. As an example, the tables below show the verb ''a face'' ("to do") at all moods, tenses, persons and numbers. Only positive forms in the active voice are given. The corresponding
personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
s are not included; unlike English verbs, Romanian verbs generally have different forms for each person and number, so pronouns are most often
dropped except for emphasis. The English equivalents in the tables (one for each mood and tense) are only an approximative indication of the meaning.
Usage
Simple perfect
The
simple perfect has been replaced by the compound perfect in most of the Romanian varieties; it is commonly used in the
Oltenia
Oltenia (, also called Lesser Wallachia in antiquated versions, with the alternative Latin names ''Wallachia Minor'', ''Wallachia Alutana'', ''Wallachia Caesarea'' between 1718 and 1739) is a historical province and geographical region of Romania ...
n vernacular (''graiul oltenesc'') to denote recent actions that still affect the present situation: ''mâncai'' (''I have just eaten''). In the literary standard, the simple perfect is used almost exclusively in writing, where the author refers to the characters' actions as they take place. For that reason, the second person is practically never used, whereas the first person appears only when the writer includes himself among the characters.
Imperfect
In Romanian, the compound perfect is often used where other Romance languages would use the imperfect. For example, the English sentence ''My father was Romanian'' requires the imperfect when translated into languages like French and Italian, whereas in this context in Romanian the compound perfect form ''Tatăl meu a fost român'' is frequently used instead of the imperfect ''Tatăl meu era român''.
Past participle
Verbs in the past participle are used in their singular masculine form when they are part of compound tenses (compound perfect, future perfect, past subjunctive, etc.) in the
active voice
Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages. A ...
. As part of a verb in the
passive voice
A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...
, the past participle behaves like
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s, and thus must agree in number and gender with the subject:
* Active voice: ''Am făcut curat în casă.'' (''I cleaned the house.'')
* Passive voice: ''Echipa adversă a fost făcută praf.'' (''The opposing team was laid to waste.'')
Conjugation groups
From an etymological point of view, Romanian verbs are categorized into four large conjugation groups depending on the ending in the infinitive mood, and this is the verb classification that is currently taught in schools.
Most verbs fall in the first conjugation group with another large number ending in ''–i'' (fourth group).
This classification only partially helps in identifying the correct conjugation pattern. Each group is further split into smaller classes depending on the actual morphological processes that occur. For example, ''a cânta'' (to sing) and ''a lucra'' (to work) both belong to the first conjugation group, but their indicative first person singular forms are ''eu cânt'' (I sing) and ''eu lucrez'' (I work), which shows different conjugation mechanisms.
A more appropriate classification, which provides useful information on the actual conjugation pattern, groups all regular verbs into 11 conjugation classes, as shown below.
Nevertheless, even such a classification does not consider all possible sound alternances. A full classification, considering all combinations of sound changes and ending patterns, contains about seventy types, not including irregular verbs.
Irregular verbs
There are various kinds of irregularity, such as multiple radicals whose choice is conditioned phonetically or etymologically and exceptional endings. The following is a list of the most frequent irregular verbs:
*''a avea'' "to have"
*''a fi'' "to be"
*''a vrea'' "to want"
*''a sta'' "to sit, stand, or remain"
*''a da'' "to give"
*''a azvârli'' "to throw"
*''a lua'' "to take"
*''a bea'' "to drink"
*''a ști'' "to know"
*''a usca'' "to dry"
*''a continua'' "to continue"
*''a mânca'' "to eat"
*''a întârzia'' "to come late"
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
*
* Maria Iliescu ''et al.'', ''Vocabularul minimal al limbii române'', Editura Didactică și Pedagogică, 1981
* Valeria Guțu Romalo ''et al.'', ''Gramatica limbii române'', Editura Academiei Române, 2005
External links
Romanian Reference Grammar with a good section on verbs, by Dana Cojocaru, University of Bucharest (183 pages) – 4.6 MB – pdfMost common Romanian verbs conjugatedalso with pronunciation and exercises
Verbix.com: Romanian verbs conjugation(Attention: Generally good output, but a few verbs are not conjugated correctly.)
DEX online allows you to look up words in a series of prestigious dictionaries of Romanian; contains a conjugator.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Romanian Verbs
Verbs
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descrip ...
Indo-European verbs