This is a Romanian Lesson,
or Why I will soon be insane
Disclaimer: The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.

I've wanted to post a Romanain language lesson on here for a long time, but I couldn't pick and appropriate one. Now I've started studying Romanian again with a new tutor. For those of you who've been keeping track, it's been a while since I cracked the books. Since June. So while I've been a bit rusty, nothing could have prepared me for learning the words for This, These, That and Those.

I was recently explaining to Nicole that Romanian has a masculine, and a feminine, singular and plural way of saying my. That's right four different words each mean My, Yours, Ours, and Theirs. That's 16 words where english has 4.

Now, I set out to learn the formal way of saying This, That, These and Those, because there is also an informal way of denoting all of these things. Then I found out that when a word comes before a noun it is something called a demonstrative adjective. "This bike is mine."
If it follows the word is or are - it is considered a pronoun "This is my bike" - and is also a different word.

I was supposed to practice these words for my tutor before today's lesson but I waited until the last minute and became hopelessly confused so this morning she had to explain it to me all over again. So today I wrote the following 16 sentences to practice these words. You'll see they have a theme that has to do with kitten either sleeping in my lap or trying to eat my pen as I wrote them. Anyway, I post them here for you as an example of the Romanian lanugage.They are to the best of my knowlege correct.

Acest pisic este al meu. This (male) cat is mine.

Acesta este piciscul meu. This is my (male) cat.

Această pisica este a mea. This (female) cat is mine.

Aceasta este pisica mea. This is my (female) cat.

Aeceşti pisici sunt ai mei. These (male) cats are mine.

Aeceştia sunt piscii mei. These are my (male) cats.

Aceste pisici sunt al mele. These (female) cats are mine.

Acestea sunt pisicele mele. These are my (male) cats.

Acel pisic este al meu. That (male) cat is mine.

Acela este pisicul meau. That is my (male) cat.

Acea pisica este a mea. That (female) cat is mine.

Aceea este pisica mea. That is my (female) cat.

Acei pisici sunt ai mei. Those (male) cats are mine.

Aceia sunt pisicii mei. Those are my (male) cats.

Aceste pisici sunt al mele. Those (female) cats are mine.

Acestea sunt pisicele mele. Those (female) cats are mine.

In case you're wondering a group of cats of mixed sex would be denoted with the male adjective or pronoun. And again, there's also an informal feminine and masculine for saying This, That, These and Those.

And now, just for fun - an ametuer translation.

"Toate am să povestesc la tine este această lanternă este luna, eu sunt barbatul în luna,
această tufă spinosă, tufă spinosă mea şi acest câine, câine meu. "

"All I have to tell you is that this lantern is the moon, I am the man in the moon,
this thorn bush, my thorn bush and this dog, my dog."
-A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, sc.1

And just because I can't resist...

Aceasta este pisicuţa mea şi mine - This is my kitten and me.