A word you will often hear in Romanian is fleac (flay-ock) but what does it mean? Probably the most accurate English translation would be the word bagatelle, which today sounds fairly archaic and the only place I ever “heard” it regularly was in a Norwegian book. A more modern translation would be “a trifle” or perhaps the word “nothing”, as in the following exchange: Lady: … Continue reading Word of the Day: Fleac
One of the interesting things about studying the Romanian language is the number of lexical doublets, meaning that quite often two similar words are used, one from a Latin root and one from a non-Latin (usually Slavic) root. English has many of these, including lord and master, venison and deer, fire and flame or sheep and ewe. If you are familiar with other Romance languages … Continue reading Lexical Doublets
One word you’ll definitely never find in any dictionary is this word “nush“, occasionally written as “nuş”. Although when I say “written” I mean that only in online, “slangy” conversations will you ever see it in written form as it won’t appear in newspapers, magazines or books. It is however used in every day (verbal) conversations a lot more often. What is it? A contraction … Continue reading Slang Word of the Day: Nush
Today I went down to visit my (cats’) veterinarian, who is Hungarian, and asked her for another local slang word to pass on. Serendipitously, I ended up meeting an extremely nice Hungarian lady later on in a separate circumstance, so today I’ve been using more Hungarian than the last month combined. Today’s word is: gáz (goz). In it’s normal use as a noun it means … Continue reading Hungarian Word of the Day: Gáz
All Things Romania 