Pronunciation

    • I will be brutally honest : at first, yes. Shortly after : NO WAY ! It depends very much on the speaker though. Some speak with the musicality of Italia, and others with the harshness of Slavic Languages. One thing I really can't stand is the î sound.
     
    I do not know how "bl" sounds in russian.
    Speaking of sounds...it would be very nice if we could load sound files to this site/in our postings.
     
    I discovered just now that they already have this option when posting a msg.
    So maybe if you have a recording software ...you could send me a "bl".:)
     
    That is it:) however I think it sounds softer in romanian:) I might be subjective so we should ask Marcilanamus to listen to it as well and tell us what he thinks.
     
    MadameT said:
    I discovered just now that they already have this option when posting a msg.
    So maybe if you have a recording software ...you could send me a "bl".:)
    Click to expand...
    Hi MadameT

    For your information, the sound files are limited in size to upload here as follows: .WAV 200,000 Bytes; .MP3 50,000 Bytes

    Hope it helps.

    Lems
    __________________________
    43% of all statistics are useless.
     
    Hi everybody! So glad you started the Romanian forum, Marci... thanks.

    Leopold, I'm not too sure about this, but the Romanian î is not exactly like the Russian bl. I just called a colleague of mine, teacher of Russian, to ask her. She's not at home right now, but I'll tell you when she comes and tells me aaaaaaallllll about it...

    Boy, I'm glad about this!

    Doina
     
    Thanks Doina. :) Bou it's not worth such a bother! I don't think i'll start studying Romanian by now... unfortunately.
     
    It's not a bother, Leo, I'm curious myself... And you never know when you'll start studying something. You know what they say, "never say never"?
     
    Leopold, I am sorry but I can't listen to the russian sound you spoke of because I don't have speakers ! Madame T, I have no idea where pune botul is derived from, sorry :(
     
    I did listen to the sounds in the link Leopold told us about and also spoke to a colleague of mine who is a teacher of Russian. The Romanian sound is relatively close to the first two variants. The difference is that the Russian sound is usually pronounced more in the back of the mouth, while the Romanian one is pronounced closer to the lips. The same sound is pronounced differently depending on the neighbouring sounds. The old story of the allophones, like in every language.

    Hope this helps at least a bit. :idea:

    Doina
     
    As for "a pune botul", my guess is that it derives from the analogy with the way dogs eat. You know how happy they are when they come wagging the tail and stuff their muzzle in the pot. Just the same, when someone "pune botul", he's tricked into "swallowing" something which is not always what it seems to be.

    Just my guess. No harm done if it's wrong, ok?
     
    Hi everybody,


    I lived in Spain for one year and I used to get very angry when people mistook us for Russians. No way! For an untrained ear it may even sound like Chinese, but untrained ears are either bad ears, or ignorant ones, which is even worse.
    A Romanian forum would be nice and I'm eager to help.
     
    Hi, Marco, welcome!!!

    Nice to see our Romanian "community" is growing around here. Think we'll just have to wait for people interested in learning some Romanian or things about Romania. Or just think of how we can interest them in that :) . Any ideas?
     
    Hi Doina,

    Talking about suggestions, we would first have to wake them up, to do some advertising for this forum, or something like that. I'm new here myself and I'd been using the English-Spanish one for some weeks until I saw this. I also have some Spanish friends willing to learn Romanian, I'm sure they'll be happy to know about this forum.

    Bye
     
    The idea of advertising the forum among our colleagues and students is brilliant! I'm sure each of them will find interesting things to learn here. If people are willing to know things about the Romanian language and culture, we'll be here to give him a helping hand, right?
     
    Right! It's always difficult to reach an advanced level on your own, without a helping hand nearby. Such an interchange could have miraculous results, if you only knew where to search. Furthermore, this forum is highly interactive and I see there is a very helpful membership around here.
    So, keep up the good work, Doina! Let's make this work!
     
    Hi everybody!
    Is this thread dead? No post for almost a month now :(
    I am new here, I am a native Romanian speaker.
    As for the comparison Russian - Romanian, I was recently asked by an American if the language I was speaking was Spanish :) (I was talking in Romanian to a friend of mine)
     
    Hi Viovinti. Yes, this thread seems to be dead. Unfortunately. Anyway, I'm always here. Let's stop talking about Russian, it almost sounds like an excuse, which it shouldn't be.

    Looking forward to hearing from you.
     
    Hi all

    The post from kittenkaboodle asking to interview a Romanian was transformed in a new thread with the title "Romanian interview" to facilitate his seeking.

    Lems
     
    Hello Everyone!

    I know very little about this language, but I do have a pronounciation question:

    How do you pronounce the word: asteptare? I know it means "waiting," but I need to know how to speak it.
     
    It would be pronounced, something like this (OBS! I'm not that good at phonetics, so I'll be writing it like it would have been an English word :) ).

    Asteptare = [ashteptare]

    Does this help?? Good Luck! :D

    /Robbie

    + Think Italian when pronouncing it! It helps if you do!
     
    I think the more accurate way of writing it phonetically would be:
    "ash-tep-tah-reh".
    Otherwise English speakers might tend to ignore the final "e" and pronounce the final part of the word similarly to "fare".
    Cheers.
     
    Doina said:
    As for "a pune botul", my guess is that it derives from the analogy with the way dogs eat. You know how happy they are when they come wagging the tail and stuff their muzzle in the pot. Just the same, when someone "pune botul", he's tricked into "swallowing" something which is not always what it seems to be.

    Just my guess. No harm done if it's wrong, ok?
    Click to expand...

    Hello,
    I see nobody has answered your question, so I'll explain it.

    It means "to believe someone" "to be naive" or its english equivalent "to buy it" as in the example:
    -Elephants fly. - I don't buy that. (There's no way i believe you)
    In Romanian: Ai pus botul! You believed that!

    a pune botul :warn: means to be stupid enough to believe something which is obviously not true
    Pay attention, this is slang, it is somehow harmful to say that to someone

    Did this help? :)

    My mistake, Doina, I didn't carefully read your post before quoting it. Sorry
     
    aurette said:
    a pune botul :warn: means to be stupid enough to believe something which is obviously not true
    Pay attention, this is slang, it is somehow harmful to say that to someone
    Click to expand...

    I learned 'a pune botul' a long time ago but then forgot it. Now this post has reminded me of it again. :)

    Your English is excellent, but allow me to tweak it here and there so it's perfect. :) It would be better to say: "...it is somewhat insulting to say that to someone."

    I think we normally use "somehow" with a verb, e.g. "I somehow forgot to feed the dog this morning." (somehow modifies 'forgot' - verb)

    Contrast this with: "She is somewhat pretty." (somewhat modifies adjective 'pretty')

    "harmful" sounds a little odd here. Some things that are harmful could be:

    Watching violence on TV is harmful to young children. Too much Vitamin A is harmful to your body. etc.
     
    Thank you very much for showing me my mistakes. Much appreciated. It is very important to know this.
    Once again, thank you!:)
     
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