Fortunately for the English speaker Romanian is reasonably phonetic, so there is a broadly consistent relationship between letters and sounds. Problems arise, however, with pronouncing Romanian vowels for two reasons: one is that the vowel sound represented by the commonly occurring â and î has no exact English equivalent, and the other is that Romanian uses many unfamiliar diphthongs and triphthongs, i.e. clusters of two and three vowels in succession. Another word of warning: Romanian has undergone several spelling reforms, the most recent in 1993 reversing changes introduced in 1949, as a result of which the î/â sound is usually represented by â, except at the beginning and end of words where î is retained. The earlier usage is still common however.
Another point to note: when you are looking up Romanian words in vocabularies or dictionaries, be prepared to hunt around! In general letters with diacritical marks come after those without, so for example, păcat (‘pity’) comes a long way after parc (‘park’); peşte (‘fish’) follows peste (‘over, beyond) and pâine (‘bread’) is some way after both because the â is treated as an î.
You will occasionally see a stress mark over a vowel, differentiating between two words which are otherwise spelt identically e.g. copii, ‘children’ and cópii, ‘copies’. In general, however, the stress in Romanian falls fairly evenly on each syllable.
Vowels
a - somewhere between the ‘a’ in ‘father’ and the ‘u’ in ‘cut’
ă - this is the so-called ‘schwa’ sound, like the ‘a’ in ‘about’. The breve above it indicates that the vowel is short or unstressed.
Listen to Mă scuzaţi in A few first words. 2, and Mă cheamă .. and Incântat să vă întâlnesc (A few first words. 3). This will also help you with the next vowel:
â /î - this is probably best approached at first as though it sounded like ă , though the purist will try to produce a sound higher and further towards the back of the mouth.
e - as in ‘pen’ or more like the ‘a’ in ‘bait’. Listen to Puteţi repeta? (Communication Problems).
Also sounds like ‘ye’ in ‘yet’ in some words beginning with an ‘e’ such as parts of the verb a fi, ‘to be’ and some personal pronouns such el, ‘he’: Aceasta este soţia mea (Small talk. Introductions).
o – like the ‘o’ in ‘or’.
u – like the ‘u’ in ‘put’
Diphthongs and Triphthongs
As in Italian, Romanian vowels usually retain a separate sound in diphthongs, e.g. in mai târziu and săptămâna viitoare. However this is by no means always the case: listen for example to în această dimineaţă (Days. General).
In triphthongs, sometimes the vowels retain their identity, in other cases one of the vowels takes on a ‘w’ or ‘y’ sound:
Trebuie să schimb? (Getting around. General phrases);
Am nevoie de ajutor (Emergencies);
Un ceai cu lămâie (Food and drink. At the bar or café. 2).
Note that in ceai as in această above the ‘e’ is ‘bound’ to the ‘c’ and loses its separate identity.
Consonants
Section 2 of this article, describes the pronunciation of Romanian consonants.
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Romanian Pronunciation
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