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Recommendations on Romanian course
Hi all,
I would like to share some recommendations on learning Romanian on Duolingo and elsewhere.
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Focus more on learning Romanian and less on the gamification elements of the Duolingo platform. In the end, (hopefully) your aim is to learn Romanian and less about winning hearts, streaks and the likes.
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Related to the above, take your time when doing lessons in order to enjoy them and also learn more. Learning a foreign language is a (very) long journey, doing the this tree in a hurry will not serve you well.
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Try to complement Duo lessons with other resources as well. Reading (books, articles), listening (music, news), watching (movies, shows) are of great help is learning any language, Romanian included. Also try to switch as many devices and as much software as possible in Romanian (if available).
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When in doubt, stick to the translation option provided in the hints. In time, we might add other options as well but for the time being it is better to focus more on the provided options, in order to advance with Romanian and avoid being annoyed.
Speaking of annoyance...
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It is better to stick with the standard American spelling of a word or expression (not all regional variants supported). We do not have the resources (partly time and partly knowledge) to add all possible spellings of a particular word but we tried our best. Moreover, the Duolingo itself recommends using American English. Sorry to all British, Aussies and others (even Americans sometimes) annoyed by the lack of their favorite spelling versions. Sometimes, you feelings are easily discernible from the reports.
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We are aware the other courses offer more variety when it comes to word order in a translation. However, we feel that it is better to stick with the most natural word order in order to teach you better Romanian. While other variants might be understandable to natives, they do not "sound" very Romanian in many cases.
Good luck learning Romanian!
Best regards,
Dan
91 Comments
These are good tipps, and you should take some of them for all courses and maybe also for everything you will ever learn.
But regarding the Romanian course, the pronunciation is not always totally perfect. I would recommend to search for videos and other resources online where you can learn to get better on understanding native people.
in general: Start to learn loudly and write down the words you didn't know. At least write it once a week. The more you repeat it reading/writing/speaking, the faster you will know a language.
There aren't many new Romanian TV Shows. However I can recommend older ones such as "Numai Iubirea", "Ingerasii", "Pariu Cu Viata" ,"Lacrimi De Iubire". Those are all more romantic TV Shows although they have some humorous scenes. If you want something funnier you should watch "Las Fierbinti" or "State de Romania". Also we have versions of American Shows such as The Voice (Vocea Romaniei) , The X Factor or Romania's Got Talent. Most of these are on YouTube or on various free websites.
Hey everyone; thanks for this course being here and all of the great commentary throughout! I really appreciate having this.
I'm curious where the "how are you?" sentences are. I realized I didn't have a strong grasp of those exchanges and the phrases section seems to mostly be the "hello" / "goodbye" stuff. Is it in Phrases and I just need to do more review to get some of them to come up? Or is it a later section?
I ask because I'm not seeing something obvious, and while I can swear I remember some "how are you" exercises somewhere in here, I can't recall where they were.
Thanks; cheers!
It's true, but also true of most of the other courses I have started, or continued with, here on Duolingo. It's useful to have more variety, but when you are an absolute beginner the repetition helps reinforce learning. I agree that it is a great new course, and something of gem, as quality, extensive and free Romanian courses such as this are a rare find.
I would like to disagree, as I am a native speaker as well and this course has many flaws, in my opinion. A lot of exercises were wrong, in the placement test I took, and some didn't even make sense. I tried it just to see if my English skills match my Romanian ones and if I were to base my knowledge on how well I did in this course, I wouldn't even know how to speak Romanian.
That's rather interesting to hear. I am at level 13 and nearly half way through the tree, coming to the course as a complete beginner. I don't think I could say anything in Romanian yet either. Although, I think you probably are setting very high standards for a very new course. I say this partly because of the quality of your written English. It is flawless. I am sure that the Romanian course will improve as more learners provide feedback and further "tweaking" is done.
Thank you so much for making the Romanian course possible! Learning this language has been my dream for a few years and now I feel like I can make it possible. But can I give you a suggestion? I'd love to see conjugation charts for the Romanian verbs, like they have in the Italian course. Thank you once more. <3
Hi! as a native speaker, I must tell you that there are not a lot of rules in the conjugation of Romanian verbs, and you cannot divide them in regular and irregular. I think that making a chart would be sooo damn difficult. Therefore, if you want to, I could help you, because I think that talking with a native speaker would make the learning process a lot easier
Posted this in a separate thread today, but it probably belongs here.
Hello everyone,
I just finished the Romanian tree averaging about two hours per day over 41 days. About halfway through the course, I realized that there were some youtube videos on the Romanian language that would have given me a much better base to utilize duolingo. But I did not have enough time to study that material and start over on duolingo.
I am aware of but not knowledgeable on spaced repetition learning. Because of time constraints before a potential trip next month, I decided to just go fast as possible through the Romanian tree. Some questions I have are:
1 Does duolingo incorporate SRS into the courses? 2 How much of the course material should I expect to have retained the first time around? 3 Any other good sources for SRS learning?
If my Romanian trip ends up being cancelled, I plan to start the Spanish tree and put further Romanian study off until next year.
Thanks
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I am really enjoying this Romanian Course. One problem I've encountered now I'm further up the tree is that my mobile gives me the Romanian answers without me having to pick any words, which I've worked out is because the sentences are longer. This means that I prefer using my computer (which also means I can add accents, which again my Android mobile won't let me), but alas I don't always have my computer on me, my mobile yes.
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Get Gboard by Google then add Romanian. Pressing space bar you can choose Romanian. When press and hold say a then a popup jumps up with all the Romanian a s slide to select. btw I use it for French as well.
While it's great to have a Romanian course it's really sad that ongoing improvements seem stalled and awaiting some mega-project.
Today's example (of a 1000 or so) is the request to translate the English sentence: Soccer is played ON stadiums. That is not English or even AmE. It was reported 3 years ago. All that's required (on the face of it) is a simple word change to: "Soccer is played IN stadiums". Why not DL?
It's great to have a free course, but most would assume that having gone to so much trouble, and apparently about to enter the commercial environment (off the back of the work of dozens of volunteers), DL would want to be as good as possible and the 1% extra effort of allowing these changes by volunteers would be a given. It's actually sad, very sad.
That would be nice. But until then, there is a way to do Romanian lessons on the app...as long as you're quick-fingered. Please allow me to explain:
I would have a Romanian lesson open on my web browser, but I noticed that if I opened the app (which would be on Spanish, German, etc.) and tapped the dumbbell button quickly enough--i.e., before it could show the message that says, "The language pair you are currently learning, X from Y, is not yet supported on mobile..."--it would allow me to strengthen Romanian rather than the language I had been on.
The lesson also had full functionality (voice, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks, typing, etc.) within the app. In an odd twist, part of the way through a lesson, it would sometimes switch to whichever language the app was on.
I've been able to do this at least ten times, and recently, I've been able to do this twice in the same session. After the second lesson, however, it immediately brings up the aforementioned message.
I hope this helps until Romanian does get released for mobile!
Today, a year later of your post, the Romanian from English course works on mobile devices but still don't have speaking exercises... And a lot of the existing pronunciation examples are hilarious. I don't understand why so less interest in Romanian language, as long as a lot of Americans are living in Romania. I understand Duolingo is an american business, so: dear, if you love your country, put a coin here to grow this course :)
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While on my andriod phone in the chrome brower the duolingo prompted something do you want doulingo to send notifactions. I selected yes. It created a shortcut duolingo notifactions. Using the shortcut it open up my romanian course in the mobile style website. I've only done the course from the phone in this manner.
I feel bad writing in Romanian. When my sister in laws can not read or write in Romanian and they were born there. Kind of depressing to be honest. The only reason you need to read or write in Romania is because of the insane bureaucratic BS. Trust me if you move there you will need a paper ans 20 stamps just to wipe your A##. Most menus are in English. Though sometimes they are hilarious. Because the translations are so bad. Speaking is what is important. But trust this if you ask for placinta you will not get a pie I have no idea what that is translated as pie. As it is really fry bread with cheese and sour cream dill. Anyway can see how many words Ive been speaking in another language thinking it was Romanian. So this course is very good for me. But some words my husband and his family do not use. Maybe because Bihor is closer to Magyar.
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Not my experience at all. Placinta is pie, and menus in Romanian are quite common. I'm mostly visiting the South: Bucuresti, Teleorman....
No it is plăcintă like a round fried bread with potatos or cheese inside it. You can put smentina and dill on it. Look it up placenta cu brenza si marar well known dating back to the Roman Empire. But they also call crepes plăcintă as well. Confusing people they are. But defiantly Langos and plăcintă are the same thing. Was living in Bihor Co. Closer to the Magyar border.
thanks for the info, I'm here a little over a year now in Bucharest so its finally time to really start learning which is why I'm on this. but as for convenience when on the bus or break etc i was wondering when will the Romanian language apps be available for download on the phone! and yes in case you're wondering by the hat in the pic, I'm Irish :) thanks in advance
I will not use American spelling.
This Romanian course use to be enjoyable now it just takes up huge amounts of time doing the same thing over and over while at the same time not using some words it has introduced,
Are you meant to be a mind reader when choosing which version of "but" or "because" and then when you choose the wrong one you are wrong?
there is a question - pick the correct translations from three - where there is NO correct answer but you have to pick one anyway to continue.
Why can't you get people to speak at normal pace?
Used to love it but am beginning to hate it. Used to learn a lot but now can't progress because of having to endlessly keep the colour bars gold.
If I have to use American spelling I will just leave.
One should not have to be clairvoyant to know which of the multiple meanings of some Romanian words one has to use to be "right". How are you supposed to know when they want "pretty" and not "beautiful" or "nice" and why should you be wrong if you fail to guess which one they chose to use?
Thanks so much for this course. I "completed" it a year or so ago but have found it invaluable for practicing regularly since.
Is there any plan to develop this Romanian course further ? I also did the "English through Romanian" course, and this was particularly interesting because it added grammar not covered here (e.g. Mai mult ca perfect). Maybe there's the possibility to merge the two together into the same place ?
Hello friends, I just started a Youtube channel to help people learn Romanian in a fun way. I've got a couple of videos up so far, but thought I'd see if there's any interest before I create more. Take a look at my channel here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfcRlfC0WqF01XW1b9taVkw Good luck on your learning journey :)