Romanian (limba română 'limba ro'mɨnə/) is one of the Romance languages that belong to the Indo-European family of languages that descend from Latin along with French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. It is the fifth of the Romance languages in terms of number of speakers. It is spoken as a first language by somewhere around 24 to 26 million people, and enjoys official status in Romania, Moldova and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Serbia). The official form of the Moldovan language in the Republic of Moldova is identical to the official form of Romanian save for a minor rule in spelling. Romanian is also an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations (such as the Latin Union and the European Union – the latter as of 2007). It is a melodious language that has basically the same sounds as English with a few exceptions. These entered the language because of the Slavic influence and of many borrowing made from the neighboring languages. It uses the Latin alphabet which makes it easy to spell and read. It is also a synthetic language, connecting the words with prepositions but adding possession, gender and number indicators to the end of the words.

Romanian speakers are also found abroad in many other countries (due to emigration), notably in Italy, Spain, the United States, Canada, France and Germany. Owing to a general lack of consistently-derived data, precise estimates for the total numbers of Romanian-speaking emigrants are not available. Some secondary sources claim for example that more than 3 million Romanian speakers live abroad as immigrants in Europe and North America; however, such census data as is available indicates that these numbers may be overestimates.

We hope you will find the following language lessons helpful and useful for getting a first grasp of what Romanian sounds and looks like. The language lessons contain survival elements that should support your arrival in our country. It is everything you need to get by the first days of orientation until commencing the proper language classes.

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