Although I often write about the strange and mysterious aspects of the Romanian language (and its grammar), sometimes things are fairly straightforward. One example is the prefex “ne” in Romanian, which generally follows right along with the prefix “un” in English, to indicate an opposite meaning. adevarat/neadeverat – true/untrue placut/neplacut – pleasant/unpleasant However there are some words you need to know which – very importantly … Continue reading Double Plus Ungood
Since some of you cannot read more than 3 paragraphs, here is the summary of the rest of this article: Romanians starved and suffered (esp in the 1980’s) not because of bad luck or Communism but because the government decided to sell almost every scrap of food in order to pay off international bankers. And now the same thing is going on today. For those … Continue reading Going Hungry So A Banker May Eat Caviar
The other day, in talking with The Woman’s parents, they began to lecture me on how things were in the Communist days. Out of respect, I listened attentively and said nothing in disagreement. But the truth is that I’ve heard every word before (sometimes almost identically) from many other people, many times before. I’ve referred to this as the “narrative” before but in my own … Continue reading The Script
I don’t talk about Twitter too much but the truth is that I use it quite a lot. Amongst watching Markovian chains unfold in real time and other fun with ngrams, it’s an extremely useful tool to see what people (worldwide) are saying about Romania at any given time. Imagine one of those TV-style heart monitors in a hospital with the green background and the … Continue reading Let’s Talk About The Flipping Witch Tax
One of the interesting things about the Romanian language is that is has two words for “kiss” (either the noun or the verb), both of them coming from Latin, yet having two very distinct meanings. The first one – pup – comes from the Latin word for kissing someone, now only surviving in Italian (mostly in colorful phrases I won’t detail here) and Romanian. The … Continue reading When A Kiss Is Just a Kiss
All Things Romania 