"Acest bărbat nu fumează."

Translation: This man does not smoke.

[ID-007]

Reported the faulty pronunciation of ”acesta”...

[MihailHancu]

Not just that, but she says "acestă bărbată" (which almost sounds like "această bărbată", which would almost be correct, but only in slang, if you're referring to a manly woman). The annoying thing is that the slow pronunciation is correct.

[ID-007]

Thanks. I did not want to dwell on ALL the gory details!-) On the other hand, if I would have put the audio clips together myself, I am not sure that I would have done a better job! Kudos to the team for the hard work...

[MihailHancu]

Agreed, making a course for Romanian is incredibly difficult. They did a fantastic job as-is.

[Renardo_11]

The notes say “the form of the proximity and distance pronominal adjective that is placed before the noun is with the final -a”. Now here the adjective “acest” is before the noun (bărbat), so why doesn't it have a final “a”?

[gustawsohn]

Because ”acest ”(bărbat) is a proximity pronominal adjective, without a final ”-a” and ”acesta” (with a final”-a”) is a demonstrative pronoun. See the difference: ”Acest bărbat nu fumează”=”This man does not smoke” vs. ”Acesta nu fumează”=”He does not smoke”.

[Renardo_11]

Thank you, Gustawsohn. So maybe the question should have been: Why do the notes say that “the form of the … pronominal adjective that is placed before the noun is with the final -a”? Doesn't your explanation contradict that?

[gustawsohn]

In my opinion there is a mistake: it's about ”the form of the ...pronominal adjective that is placed AFTER the noun is with a final -a”. See here: ”Acest bărbat nu fumează” (pronominal adjective before the noun) vs. ”Bărbatul acesta nu fumează” (pronominal adjective after the noun, so with a final ”-a”. ”Acel bărbat nu fumează” vs. ”Bărbatul acela nu fumează” (distance adjectival pronouns).