The Complete Insider’s Guide to Romania
I am the author of the awesome and amazing book, “The Complete Insider’s Guide to Romania“.
Right now there are several ways to get your hands on it.
Paperback Version
Amazon USA link
Amazon UK link
Amazon Germany link
Amazon Spain link
Amazon France link
Digital Versions
Coming soon!
Remember, ALL of the versions have a free preview!
If you are looking for the Christian Missionary Edition, click here.
Note: If this is your first time to this site, click on Home at the top of the page to see the rest of my site. If you like what you read here (for free), buy the book!
FOR SALES IN ROMANIA
Contact my colleague Iuliana, who handles all of these kinds of things for me. She’s Romanian and she’s very nice. You can either email her or call her (in Romania) at 0743-604-996.
She also speaks English and German by the way.
Would love the paperback version, or the pdf version. Also wrote you an email about distribution of the paperback version in Bucharest.
Is there a PDF or a plain text version available?
It’s coming :D
I’ve used the Kindle preview option to have a peek at the book.
Sadly the salt and pepper of the Romanian language was missing. There is a difference between „Brasov” and „Brașov”, „Iasi” and „Iași”, „Sighisoara” and „Sighișoara”, „Bistrita” and „Bistrița” and so on.
This is not just for correctness, the reader will be confused by reading the „English” pronunciation of Romanian words e.g. why whould „saracie” be pronounced as „sah-rah chee-eh”? „sărăcie” would make more sense, ă would be read as ah.
Other than that keep up the good work, hopefully there will many more „The Complete Insider’s Guide to Romania” in the years to come.
I can’t find the Kindle edition anymore on Amazone – the links are broken and the search gives no results. Do you have any ideas about what is happening?
I just bought your book for my Kindle and read it in two nights! It’s a great read and is really helping me prepare for my upcoming Peace Corps time in Romania (April 2011) Thanks so much!!
Awesome! Thanks :D If you want to do me a solid, log onto Amazon and write a review there.
I need to correct a couple of things in your book. First, German is not the second most-studied langauge in Romania after English. French is. That is, unless you consider that French is not a language but merely a method of mumbling.
Second, you left out entirely the fact that many Romanians speak three, four, five or six languages nearly fluently. This never fails to impress Americans and Brits, who rarely even speak one language well. However they also rarely take into consideration that Spanish and Italian are basically a subset of Romanian, French+Romanian is just 1.5 languages at most, and everyone in Romania speaks English anyways.
Always glad to hear from a reader :D
Do you have any statistics for the fact that French is #2? Maybe I’ve been living in Transylvania too long but around here (and in Timisoara), German is definitely the king over French.
I do believe I mentioned that SOME Romanians are multilingual… however esp in rural areas, they’re often not. As I mentioned here many times tho, believe me I’m always impressed by the multi-fluency of many Romanians. I barely learned Romanian because so many people here speak such excellent English.
Not sure about the statistics, but during the communism Russian was the language almost everyone was learning in school. And the second one was the French. Very few classes of German and English were available. I don’t think the situation is the same today. Most of the languages we speak are learned because many romanians work outside the country, so I guess Italian and Spanish are coming right after English, which is learned mainly to communicate on the Internet and by the PC users. All the latin languages, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese are easely learned because they are similar with Romanian language. Many people learn them from TV series and never use a dictionary.
hey Sam, French is indeed the second most studied foreign language in Romania. See the 2011 edition of the “Cultural statistics” published by the EUROSTAT at page 50:
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-32-10-374/EN/KS-32-10-374-EN.PDF
cheers
I was born in Brasov and lived there for a long period of time, and indeed, German language was learned in many Romanian schools from Ardeal/Transilvania. However, I would say that until in 2000, the French was the number one language studied all over Romania, while English and German were competing for the second place in Transilvania. Probably in the Northern Part of Moldova aka Fundul Moldovei aka Bucovina, German was also taught in schools, but in the rest of the country-Oltenia, Muntenia, Dobrogea, the rest of Moldova, German was not popular, and children were studying usually French, English and Russian in schools. Today, English had become the number one language studied in schools.
i would love to visit romania!! it has always been a dream of mine. i have been doing more research on the country since taking my economics class and doing a paper on the country. do you have any suggestions for sites that i can use to develop this paper? i would appreciate it.
You would also be surprised to see how many Romanians speak more unusual languages like Japanese, Chinese/Russian, Greek, Arab. I believe that French and German are tied. Since In the Brasov area German is more frequent, but where i grew up, we started studying french in the second grade. Russian is similar to an old relic and many people still speak Russian, before 1990 it was studied in school, almost like French is studied today.
Saying that everyone in Romania speaks English fluently is a gross exaggeration. According to a recent Eurobarometer report, Romania is one of the LEAST English-fluent nations in the EU (near 34% of Romanians are fluent in English), with the Scandinavian countries receiving the highest marks (upwards of 80%). Further, many EDUCATED Romanians might speak a smattering of the other Romance languages, but they, again, are the exception to the rule…As far as German being the most widely learned, it seems that each region is different. In the Ardeal, perhaps learning German is more prevalent (and one should also mention that Hungarian is even more widely spoken than German ni Transylvania), but overall, French is certainly the most widely learned behind English. With that being said, I love this country!
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Well that has really amused me and cheered me up no end. I have spent the last 3 years trying to master the Romanian language without the benefit of living there. Having read your observations I actually feel I am making positive progress!
I know this feeling. I’ve been studying with a remote tutor from Giurgiu for about 8 months. I’m loving every minute of this experience. I just wish I had more time to dedicate to my studies. What a wonderful language.
Mac
You made some nice points there. I looked on the internet for the issue and found most guys will approve with your site.
Hello everyone here!
Until 1989 the foreign languages were thought in romanian schools beginning with the 5-th grade. After 1990 they were introduced gradually starting with primary school (3-rd and 2-nd grades). Until mid ’90 the french language was the first foreign language studied in Romania, because of basic latin heritage and historical reasons, affiliation “avec notre soeure la France” since 1848 revolution, de facto language in arts, etc. English, german and russian were splitting the percentages for the second language, the russian being preferred by the education ministry to be thought in the country side, while the others in the urban area. My father is a gymnasium professor with major in romanian language, then french as foreign language, but he graduated high school in ’65 when russian was compulsory at bacalaureat and he speaks the language well to teach in school. Because in my village there was a shortage of russian language professors, he thought also russian along french and romanian until after 1990 or so, when it was removed from schools. With the reorientation towards NATO and west, proliferation of IT industry and web, english has gained much and much ground throughout country, with german language taking stakes in Transilvania because of local tradition and germanic population (I have relatives “by alliance” with german roots). I learned french as first language (8 years) and russian as second (7 years, never liked it because of its identification with communism, but it’s a beautiful language to listen poetry), in college I choose to take spanish classes for one year, and after college I learned english without a teacher in 3 months up to a conversation level, yeah, it was that simple and easy and I regretted I wasted 7 years on russian. Then I had the opportunity to travel and work in the US and went all the way up with it.
Good work Sam! Esti mai roman decat multi nascuti din greseala romani.
Read your book the day before yesterday. Loved it! Great job on noticing things we really don’t notice anymore.
I’m fascinated by your blog…especially by your linguistic observations. As a linguist and fluent speaker of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, I find your observations of Romanian interesting. It is a language with which I am familiar (I live in New York City…large Romanian community here).
I can also observe (just from reading the comments of your Romanian readers) some of the cultural observations that you highlight – the denigrating of the Slavic elements in the language, the over-importance placed on the obvious linguistic connections with Latin and the western Romance languages, often with wildly ludicrous statements.
There is no daughter language of Latin that hasn’t absorbed a substantial amount of vocabulary from another source. French has it’s plethora of Gaulish and (especially) Germanic words. Spanish and Portuguese have amassed a considerable amount of Arabic words. Italian dialects in the north are riddled with German terms while in the south they have absorbed copious amounts of Norman, Arab, Catalan/Aragonese and Spanish loans.
This is a normal linguistic process and applies to nearly every language on the planet.
For Romanians to try to disavow the obvious connections of their language with the Slavic branch of Indo-European is not only a disservice to the beauty and the history of their own language but shows a certain amount of cultural and national insecurity.
Dear Madame,
I am amassed that you show such a deep understanding of my nation only after reading a book. Let’s not forget that you are a linguist not a sociologist so please drop the subject as you are as superficial as a playboy icon stetting on Schopenhauer philosophical clarity.
Good day and good luck with understanding the world you are living in…
Where I live we have a word that describes you…it’s “asshole”. I’m sure you have the equivalent in Romanian.
“but shows a certain amount of cultural and national insecurity.”
Well of course. I mean no disrespect but you clearly do not understand Romanian history. Historically we have been forcefully magyarized, slavicized, and denied the basic right to exist. Under Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman rule, over the last 500 years, Romanians were not allowed an education, land ownership, and even the right to build with stone. We were denied our history and any act at self defense was treated as terrorism. The history is too long to explain on a blog post, but even today there is an incessant habit all over Europe to denigrate Romanians while our neighbors claim we don’t exist and that we are a “made up” nation. In Moldova the Russians and Ukrainians to this day deny the existence of Romanians and that the “Moldovan” (Romanian) language is in “fact” Latinized Slavic. In Transylvania the Hungarians claim similar and even some Bulgarians have made similar claims of (Wallachia), southern Romania.
Now with the internet things are getting even worse. Just read what some of our neighbors say about us; http://www.topix.com/forum/world/romania all nonsense of course, but it is incessant. There are people out there who have made it their life’s mission to spread lies about our people and history. As a Romanian where ever I go I am barraged with nonsense even to my face (in Europe, in the USA this is not a problem).
I’m not saying that denying foreign influences in our language is the right thing to do but this battle has historically been one sided for hundreds of years. Most official history which was almost entirely written by foreigners (mostly Germans and Hungarians) is false, and I’m talking about OFFICIAL history you can find in libraries and college campuses. Maybe you can, or maybe you will never understand, but when you are under constant malicious attack it is difficult to embrace the attackers.
It is one thing for countries like Italy or Spain, counties that have been historically powerful and are today economical modern to appreciate their foreign influences which for most of them came with benefits, (renaissance, new trade and lands discovery, etc) while for us our interactions with our foreign influences were destructive, and are still derogatory today in 2012. Excuse me for not loving and embracing those who spit on me.
The Spanish and Portuguese fought the longest war of independence, nearly a thousand years, to get rid of the Muslim Moors…taking back the peninsula bit by bit in a process that wasn’t complete until 1492, the very same year that Columbus discovered the Americas. And still to this day bombings occur because certain sections don’t want to be a part of Spain (the Basque provinces). So in a sense, the wars of independence are still not over in Spain. Yet it is unheard of to find a Spaniard that bemoans their country’s problems on the fact that they had to fight the Moors for 1,000 years.
Our national experiences can either be a tunnel that blinds us to the world around us or a prism that amplifies our understand of it.
Hello, do Romanians between 15- 20 speak fluent english ?
Today I will offer your book (my second copy of it) to a good Canadian friend. I can’t wait to hear what’s going to be his image about Romania after reading your book…
I’ll be leaving in 9 days for Calarasi. Thank you so much for these books. I read through the missionary version and feel like I’ve already been to Romania…..and don’t want to leave!
I bought the Nook version of the book. I enjoyed it very much but did have problems with the Nook formatting. There was little difference between chapter, section, and body formatting making it difficult to know when a new section had started. The other major problem was that the footnotes are not at the foot of the page, they are all the way to the end of the book. This made it very hard to check footnotes.
That being said, I am reading it for the second time now. I long ago found that a second reading will reveal a lot that was missed on the forst reading.
I am moving to Brasov in June/July from Richmond Virginia USA. My wife is native Romanian and we are looking forward to a new adventure for us.
I posted information about your book to a question on Quora.
http://www.quora.com/Romania/What-are-the-best-books-about-Romania
Keep up the good work! ;)
i am impressed how many comments romanians made here…. i am romanian living in arizona, i speak 4 languages, Transilvania is just a part of Romania, in fact i am surprised that the author mention german as seconday language and not hungarian…hahhahah due to the fact he is studying Romania from Transilvania point of view… FRENCH was secondary language and may i ad that the tendency to place worng information as in a book named The complete informations about Romania is a ……gross mistake
Lovely book. I’ve been hooked on Romania for over a year now and this is the best book I’ve found concerning the people as well as good information about getting around. Most of the books I’ve read so far just mention tourist spots with brief descriptions and not very much helpful information. Most enjoyable and worth every penny. Thanks.
Oh, what I neglected to say is have a Romanian friend who lives here in the USA. She thinks I’m kind of nuts for wanting to go to Romania. In our many chats to dissuade me she often points me to your blog. I’m still drawn. She has mentioned to me several times that your descriptions are spot on. I was hoping that some of them were a little exaggerated. I think any trip there is going to be golden. Cheers.
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