Feminine Gender of Romanian nouns

Nouns ending in “a” or “ă” are feminine

All nouns ending in “a” or “ă” are feminine (singular). There are only a few exceptions, only one worth mentioning: “tată” (father) which is masculine.

English	Romanian translation	Romanian stress	Audio Pronunciation	Phonetic Transcription
coffee	cafea	cafeá		/ka'fe̯a/
couch or sofa	canapea	canapeá		/ka.na.p'e̯a/
artist (woman)	artistă	artístă		/ar'tis.tə/
italian (woman)	italiancă	italiáncă		/i.ta.li.an'kə/
brochure or leaflet	broşură	broşúră		/bro'ʃu.rə/
aunt	mătuşă	mătúşă		/mə'tu.ʃə/
sister	soră	sóră		/'so.rə/

All nouns ending in "a" or “ă” cannot refer to a word in plural, it can only be singular feminine. If you are at the very first steps with the Romanian grammar, please note that there are other words ending in "a" or “ă”, such as verbs(e.g.(el) pleacă), this rule states that all nouns ending in "a" or “ă” are feminine and singular.

Do you have difficulties recognizing or pronouncing the vowels "a" or “ă”?

Then you can try our Romanian vowels pronunciation lesson as well as the practice exercise to distinguish between "a" and "ă”.

Nouns ending in “ie” are feminine

Nouns ending in “ie” are feminine with only one notable exception: "tataie" (grandfather, old man).

Other nouns ending in "e"

Nouns ending in "e" but not following into the above category, can be feminine, masculine or neuter. There are some complex rules defining how to categorize them. It is better to learn the gender of these nouns by heart.

Nouns ending in "i"

99% of nouns ending in "i" are not feminine, they are either masculine or neuter. There are very few feminine nouns ending in "i", the most important being: zi (day), luni (Monday), marţi (Tuesday), miercuri (Wednesday), joi (Thursday), vineri (Friday).

Checking rule: All feminine nouns end in one of the following vowels: (“a”, “ă”, “e”, “i”)

If you believe that a word is feminine (in its singular dictionary form) then it must end in one of the vowels: “a”, “ă”, “e”, “i”. This also implies that all nouns ending in a consonant are not feminine.

English vs Romanian, gender neutral vs gender specific

As opposed to English that exposes many gender neutral nouns (e.g. teacher, professor), in Romanian all nouns have a gender, this is why you always have a word that refers to a male teacher (profesor) and another one to a female teacher (profesoară).