Thread: Romanian
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Old January 27, 2011, 11:47 AM
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It all depends on the register of speech. Romanian has a great deal in common with English and Spanish at the most technical, academic register, and some in common with Spanish at the most basic level, if you are good at recognizing highly distorted forms. As an English speaker with some Spanish, reading Wikipedia Romania articles is certainly harder than reading Portuguese articles, but not by that much. Just read it slowly, concentrating on each word, and try to understand what it's trying to say. You should be able to at least get the gist of it. Remember that words can undergo vowel changes like "o/oa", etc., "la" isn't the same as in Spanish--I believe it is a preposition, and ignore endings on words that contain the letter "l"--it's just the suffixed definite article. Then try reading the Croatian Wikipedia, and you will be absolutely convinced that Romanian is closely related to Spanish! You will get nada out of the Croatian Wikipedia, unless you have some knowledge of a Slavic language. So, yes, if you really needed to, I can imagine it would be possible to converse with Romanian with you speaking Spanish and with them speaking Romanian--if both of you spoke very slowly and used mostly technical and scientific words.
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