Is Romanian the Most Difficult Romance Language?

Secret   Sun Dec 14, 2008 1:29 am GMT
For native English speakers I mean. Its declension system is pretty similar to Latin's, right?
Chinese   Sun Dec 14, 2008 2:47 am GMT
Romanian is deeply affected by Slavic languages...
ASU55RR   Sun Dec 14, 2008 3:32 am GMT
only the vocabulary is slavicized, and not as much as people seem to say here. It's still very much a Romance language though (about 80% lexical similarity to Italian), but I would say it has the most complex grammar system, and the little I've tried of it's phonology is difficult.


Still, I think it is a very interesting sounding language, and if I had time I would like to try to learn more.
Secret   Sun Dec 14, 2008 3:33 am GMT
<<Romanian is deeply affected by Slavic languages... >>

That doesn't keep it from being a "Romance language."
???   Tue Dec 16, 2008 1:24 pm GMT
Is it a bit like English then in the sense that English belongs to one language family, but has a huge amount of vocabulary from a language belonging to a different language family?
romanian   Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:56 pm GMT
Yes, except that it isn't at all huge
Möchter   Tue Dec 16, 2008 9:35 pm GMT
French is way easier.
Sarmackie   Mon Dec 22, 2008 3:20 pm GMT
If you have any experience with other Romance languages, particularly Italian, it will really help. The only Romance language I'm close to proficient in is Spanish, and I can still get the gist of most Romanian I've seen.

I had a book for learning Romanian, but for the 'A' with circumflex, 'A' with breve and 'I' with circumflex, the description of the phoneme was something like 'cannot be described' or 'no equivalent'.
K. T.   Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:29 pm GMT
Colloquial Romanian (Second edition, Dennis Deletant with tapes) is excellent-hands down!
Secret   Tue Dec 23, 2008 5:22 am GMT
Romanian does not sound pleasant, it sounds like Esperanto.
yuck
along with Continental Portuguese and Catalan, the harshest Romance language
lica   Thu Dec 25, 2008 10:40 pm GMT
Romanian is not more difficult than any other romance language. Its declensions are rather simplified compared to Latin or some slavic languages and on the whole the verbal system is a bit easier than that of other latin languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and even French. It has just one tense to form all compound tenses and the subjuctive mood has fewer tenses. Besides the simple past has totally disappeared, even in literature or in the newpapers.
por-do-sol   Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:42 pm GMT
"along with Continental Portuguese and Catalan, the harshest Romance language"

I reckon Continental Portuguese is much nicer than Brazialian, you know tastes differ IoI
Q.E.D.   Wed Jan 07, 2009 9:52 pm GMT
The simple past in Romanian is widelyl used in Wallachia and I still use it where I live now.
It did not disappear and I doubt that it ever will.
amour   Wed Jan 07, 2009 10:13 pm GMT
The simple past in Romanian is widelyl used in Wallachia and I still use it where I live now.
It did not disappear and I doubt that it ever will.

It has disappeared in standard Romanian. That's a fact. The use of simple past in Wallachia doesn't even follow the rules of this tense in literary Romanian
Q.E.D.   Wed Jan 07, 2009 10:38 pm GMT
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It has disappeared in standard Romanian. That's a fact. The use of simple past in Wallachia doesn't even follow the rules of this tense in literary Romanian
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I always found very interesting that the ordinary people do not care about moot points that the academics love so much. The fact is that past tense is widely used in Wallachia, wheter you like it or not. This is enough, in my opinion, to invalidate your post. I also think that is normal for any scientific field to be challenged and its paradigms to be constantly changed, otherwise will end up with dogmas and we would still live in trees.

Just for fun, how about post modernism definition or post-post-post modernism definition?