Actually I have a confession to make. In my last post I quoted a guy saying how “not even a genius” can learn Romanian without a teacher, which made me laugh. All that was and is true. But what I neglected to mention is that I did have (and still have) a “teacher” of sorts – manele music. I learned far, far more Romanian from … Continue reading Slang Word of the Day: Barosan
Gosh, for some reason, recently I was talking about why I blog, especially about all this tedious Romanian stuff (like grammar), since it clearly isn’t for monetary reward. Mostly it’s just a real fun kind of thing for me and I do it just because I enjoy it, I guess. Well that got me thinking so this morning I fiddled around Google for a while, … Continue reading In The Room The Women Come And Go (Not Talking Romanian Though)
Do you remember those three words which meant “cool” in Romanian, especially the word tare? If you do, you remember that the root meaning of the original word is “strong” or “heavy” or “tough” and the like. Today’s word is: vagány. Hopa! This is an entirely Hungarian word and never used in Romanian. I went down from my kingdom and visited a Hungarian friend of … Continue reading Word of the Day: Vagány
One of the few slang words I’ve been able to discover that have been created recently, as in just in the last 20 years or so, is the word naspa (nosh-pah). What’s interesting about naspa is that it is identical to a non-slang word, nasol, which just means anything ugly, unpleasant or of “low quality”. In other words, anything you don’t like is naspa or … Continue reading Slang Word of the Day: Naspa
You might remember my posts on the slang usage of the words marfa and tare, both of which mean “cool” or “awesome” or “brilliant”. Now here’s yet another word with similar meanings: beton (beh-tone). The standard meaning of this noun, borrowed directly from the French, is “concrete” as in the ancient mixture of sand and water to form a rock-like substance. Over time this got … Continue reading Slang Word of the Day: Beton
All Things Romania 