Classroom lesson · Romanian: a Latin language in Eastern Europe · 🇷🇴 Romania

Romanian: a Latin language in Eastern Europe

A surprise relative of French, Spanish and Italian

What is it?

Romanian is the language spoken across Romania. If you've ever learned a few words of French, Spanish or Italian, you might recognise some Romanian words too - because it is part of the same family. Romanian is the only Latin-based language spoken in this part of Europe.

Tell me more

Most languages in Eastern Europe - like Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian - belong to a family called 'Slavic'. But Romanian belongs to a different family called 'Romance' - the family of languages that grew out of Latin, the language spoken by the ancient Romans 2,000 years ago. French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are all in the same family.

That happened because Romania, long ago, was part of the Roman Empire. Roman soldiers, builders and farmers moved into the area and brought their Latin with them. Over hundreds of years, that Latin slowly changed into Romanian. The country's name literally means 'land of the Romans'.

If you compare words across the family, you can spot the cousins. The word for 'water' is aqua in Latin, agua in Spanish, eau in French - and apă in Romanian. The word for 'good' is buenas in Spanish, bonjour in French, bună in Romanian. Once you spot the pattern, it's a bit like a code.

To say hello in Romanian, you can say 'Bună!' (BOO-nuh) for a friendly hi, or 'Bună ziua!' (BOO-nuh ZEE-wah) for a polite 'good day'. To say thank you: 'Mulțumesc!' (mool-tsoo-MESK). To say goodbye: 'La revedere!' (lah reh-veh-DEH-reh).

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Languages can be cousins, like people. How might tracing the cousins of a language help us understand history?
  2. 02Do any words in languages you know look like Romanian words?
  3. 03Why might it help to learn even a tiny bit of a language before meeting people from another country?
Try this

Classroom activity

On the board, write four words from a Romance language family: water, good, friend, school. Look up how they're said in Romanian, Spanish, French and Italian. Spot the family resemblance. Then pick three Romanian words from this lesson and practise saying them out loud.