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
The other day I was riding a bus in Cluj through a specific neighborhood when I saw something that brought a smile to my eyes. Right there on B-dul Titulescu is a large sign for a small hardware store that sells tools and drills and those kinds of things. And through a slightly odd series of events, it was I myself who hung up that … Continue reading Slang Word of the Day: Profi
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
Muchisimas gracias to commenter Andrei for reminding me of one of the funniest “slang” words in Romanian. The word is ioi, pronounced “yoy” as if it rhymed exactly with “toy”. This word apparently doesn’t exist in the DEX but I’ve seen Romanians debate its origin and exact meaning. Nonetheless, it is almost identical to another Romanian word, vai (vye) which has the best definition in … Continue reading Slang Word of the Day: Ioi!
Speaking of absolutely no Slavic influence whatsoever in the Romanian language, it’s a good time to look at the word iar (yar). If you are a native English (or Italian/Spanish/French etc) speaker than you have to understand that in some *coughcough* languages there’s actually two ways to say the word “and”. If you’re a beginner student of the Romanian language the word you need to … Continue reading Word of the Day: Iar
All Things Romania 