Monday, July 21, 2008

You say tomato, I say roşii - Pt 1

It is always interesting to observe the differences between languages. Native Romanian speakers seem to have difficulty with the wh and th sounds. Nu and I also presents some problems. For English speakers, the rolling Rs are the hardest to grasp. Romanian does somewhat flow a bit smoother off the tongue than English, as there are many vowel endings that make it easier to link words.

It is a testament to the predominance of the English language that many English words are remarkably similar in Romanian. One can indeed have surprising success simply by pronouncing English words with an Romanian accent, or by Romanianizing words by adding vowels as suffixes. This is primarily due to modern Romanian borrowing from English. English is very popular among youth and more and more words enter Romanian as neologisms everyday. This has both its benefits and harms and it is debatable whether it is desired and positive.

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