Nouns are the names of things, ideas and people, and adjectives tell you something about the nouns to which they belong. The more nouns and adjectives you know the more sense you can make of a foreign language, even if you don’t know the words in between and haven’t learnt much grammar. The meaning of many verbs can often be guessed from their resemblance to some noun or adjective, and vice versa:

glumă (joke)– glumeţ (funny, witty)– glumeşţi (‘You’re joking’) in Conversation. Small talk.

nume (name) - Numele meu este … (‘My name is…’) - Cum te numeşti? (‘What is your name?’ from numi, ‘to name’) in A first few words. 3.

Points to notice about Romanian nouns and adjectives:

They have 3 genders, masculine, feminine and neuter, with the adjectives agreeing with their nouns, which they usually (not always) come after.

They have case endings and plural forms.

Definite and indefinite articles (‘the’ and ‘a’) give you useful information about gender, and it is best to learn noun and indefinite article together.

Nouns which end in a consonant in the singular will usually be masculine or neuter, e.g. soţ (husband) and copil (child) are masculine, telefon and hotel are neuter.

However –u –e and –i can also be masculine or neuter endings, e.g. fiu (son) and lapte (milk) are masculine, timbru (stamp) and nume are neuter.

Feminine nouns end in a vowel: -a –ă –e and –ea: e.g. fiica (daughter), stradă (street), soţie (wife) and cafea (coffee).

Nouns that refer to male or female beings will be masculine or feminine e.g. soţ and soţie, and fiu and fiica above.

In practice there are two cases which vary according to the gender and number of the noun.