Romanian orthography

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Romanian Orthography and Phonology

In general, Romanian is a fairly phonetic language, with a written word corresponding to the spoken form, and vice versa. Like any language, there are some peculiarities between the written and spoken forms.

Sounds

Romanian is made up of 28 basic phonemes, 21 consonants and 7 vowel:

		Stop	Affricate	Fricative	Glide	Semivowels
Labial	-voice	p	-	f	-	(w)
	+voice	b	-	v	-
	nasal	m	-	-
Dental	-voice	t	ts	s	-
	+voice	d	-	z	l, r
	nasal	n	-	-
Palatal	-voice	-	tS	S	-
	+voice	-	d3	3	-	(j)
	nasal	(ñ)	-	-
Dorsal	-voice	k	-	h	-
	+voice	g	-	-	-
		Front	Central	Back
High	-round	i	ï	-
	+round	-	-	u
Mid	-round	e	ə	-
	+round	-	-	o
Low	-round	-	a	-

<p> Note that the three sounds in parentheses are reflexes of other sounds, but are listed because they are morphophonemic. <p> There are also several diphthongs (vowel units in groups of two) in Romanian: <p> ai, au, əu, ei, eu, ïi, ïu, oi, ou, ua, ui <p> There are other orthographic diphthong and even triphthongs, which are discussed below.

Orthography

There are __ orthographic letters in Romanian. In the below, only entries in bold are part of the official alphabet. Light entries are spelling conventions:

Graph	Sound	Explanation
a	a	like 'a' in 'father': casă (house) /'ka sə/
ă	ə	like 'a' in 'ago', or 'u' in 'but'. In Romanian, this sound can occur in stressed position: cântăm (we sing) /kïn 'təm/ călătorie (trip) /kə lə to 'ri e/
â	ï	This sound, identical to î, has no English equivalent (though Turkish and Russian have this vowel). It is similar to the 'i' in 'bit' , but with lips spread (almost as if saying 'a' in 'father'): cânta (to sing) /kïn 'ta/ mână (hand) /'mï nə/
b	b	like 'b' in 'bath': basma (handkerchief) /bas 'ma/
c	k	before consonants, before vowels a, ă, â/î, o, u, and final position, like 'c' in 'cat': coborî (to lower) /ko bo 'rï/ cal (horse) /kal/ mic (small) /mik/
	tS	before vowels e, i, like 'ch' in 'church': cine (who) /'tSi ne/ cer (sky) /tSer/
ch	k	before vowels e, i, like 'c' in 'cat': chip (face) /kip/ chema (to call) /ke 'ma/
d	d	like 'd' in 'dance': dinte (tooth) /'din te/
e	e	like 'e' in 'get'. The sound /e/ is rare initially in Romanian: ev (age, era) /ev/ ea (she) /'e a/
	je	like 'ye' in 'yes'. This is found only in reflexes of fi (to be): e (is) /je/ eşti (you are, lit. "thou art") /jeStj/
f	f	like 'f' in 'fan': fierbinte (hot) /fjer 'bin te/
g	g	before consonants, and before vowels a, ă, â/î, o, u, like 'g' in 'gate': garaj (garage) /ga 'ra3/ gât (neck) /gït/ rog (I beg) /rog/ [cf. Vă rog "Please"]
	d3	before vowels e, i, like 'j' in 'juice': gimnast (gymnast) /d3im 'nast/ ger (frost) /d3er/
gh	k	before vowels e, i, like 'g' in 'gate': ghid (guide) /gid/ gheaţă (ice) /'gja tsə/