"Tu ești un băiat, nu ești o fată."
Translation:You are a boy, you are not a girl.
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Is the second verb necessary here? In English, this translates as "You are a boy, not a girl." If the second esti were removed, would the sentence still read correctly or naturally in Romanian?
Yes, indeed, it is correct too in Romanian, as in English, without the second verb.
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I never knew Romanian was part of the Romance language family. It's interesting to see comparisons here to many other Western European languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese) but also see similarities to Slavic languages. Unless I'm wrong, I imagine esti (sorry I can't do accents now) is similar to "jestes" in Polish?
Esti/este sounds more like latin origin if you ask me. Romanian: El este un om. Spanish: El es un hombre. French: Il est un homme. (He is a man)
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It's very close to both origins it seems. spanish: tu estas, french: tu es, portuguese: tu es. But the 'e' at the beginning is pronounced like "ye", very similar to the slavic ones.
Seems to be quite common in Romanian that you pronounce some words that begins with an E with the Y-sound before. El = yel. Ea = ya. Ei = yey. Eu = yeu.
Edit: I did some research and the words themselves are of latin origin but the pronunciations of the j/y sounds were of slavic influence.
Yes, Romanian has a strong core of latin origin (with significant slavic grafts) but it is also a member of the "Balkan sprachbund" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_sprachbund ) where a lot of non related languages influenced each other.
Yes, of the 5 Major romanace languages, Italian is the closest to Romanian. There are a few less common ones, but I am not familiar with them and so I don't know if they are closer to Romanian than Italian, but I doubt it because Italian is pretty close.
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It turns out Italian is the closest major Romance language to Romanian with 78% lexical similarity. The percentages increase though when you look at regional Romance languages. Case in point: Sardinian, which is even more similar at 85%. Though I got these percentages from a social media post, so take them with a grain of salt.
The linguist Mario Pei actually did a study looking at percentage of deviation from Vulgar Latin (the Romance languages come not so much from scholarly Latin as from vulgar Latin, spoken by the commoners or "vulgum"). Thus, the lower the percentage, the closer the language is to vulgar Latin. I regret I don't have the percentages in front of me though...
Hi Vincemat, thank you for the information. If you happen to come across the sources and still can find this post or have access to it, please share those sources here. Thanks, Iul1
You are right, and as far as I know approx. 10% of Romanian vocabulary is derived from slavic languages.
My understamding is that Romanian is the closest language to latin that is still in use today
My girlfriend is romanian buy fluent in italian and a bit of Latin and says italian is the closest
Does Romanian do the whole formality thing in other Romance languages like Spanish (tú vs usted vs ustedes)?
Yes it does. I can't remember it off the top of my head but it is similar to that.
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I don't know as is usually in the live daily, but second personal formal and informal is true:
Formal Dumneavoastră sunteți (ru)= usted es (Spnish), você é (portuguese), Lei é (Italian), vous est (french) = you are
Informal Tu esti (ru)= Tú eres (Spnish), tu és (portuguese), tu sei (Italian), tu es (french) = you are
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Well of course it's okay! If that is what you want to do. However, because there are so similar you may easily get confused. But if you're dedicated it should be fine :)
I gave you a lingo, Because you won the bingo. This language is just like latin, Go on, go up, go in
(I just hope that go up and go in don't mean anything.)
The question didn't understand. It can easily be He is a boy and not a girl. However the answer is YOU are a boy??? Pls clarify. THank you
It says "Tu ești" not "El este/" or "El e" - that is what makes it second person (you are) rather than 3rd person (he is). Edit: Never mind, this is already answered. LOL
Or frumos for the masculine while frumoasă is feminine.
And of course, all the other endings depending on if it's indefinite/definite, singular/plural, nominative/accusative, genitive/dative or vocative...
