Personal pronouns in Romanian - Accusative Case
While in the previous lesson we dealt with the Nominative case, in this lesson we'll be focusing on the personal lesson in the Accusative case. The two next lessons will cover the Dative and Genitive cases.
First of all, what is the Accusative case? It's the case of the direct or indirect object.Let's take this sentence: Eu am mâncat iaurt acasă dimineață (I ate yogurt at home in the morning).
"Iaurt" is the direct object, and is in the accusative case.
"Acasă" and "dimineată" are indirect objects still in the accusative case.
Personal pronouns in the Accusative case
Romanian has two forms of the personal pronouns in the Accusative case, an unstressed shorter form and a stressed one.
Just to help you we have added as a reference point the Nominative form of the personal pronouns:
| Number | Person | Nominative | Accusative Unstressed |
|---|---|---|---|
| singular | 1st | eu (I) | mă, m- |
| singular | 2nd | tu (you) | te |
| singular | 3rd (masculine) | el (he) | îl, -l, l- |
| singular | 3rd (feminine) | ea (she) | o, -o, o- |
| plural | 1st | noi (we) | ne |
| plural | 2nd | voi (you) | vă, -v, v- |
| plural | 3rd (masculine) | ei (they) | îi, -i, i- |
| plural | 3rd (feminine) | ele (they) | le |
As you can see above, and in the examples below, it is quite frequent, especially in spoken Romanian, that there is only one letter (m,t,l...) that refers to the personal pronoun.Moreover this letter is pronounced together with the preceding or the following word.
This means that you need to listen attentively!
6 comments
3rd Person Plural Nominative Incorrect
3rd Masc. Plural should be "ei"
3rd Fem. Plural should be "ele"
Romanian Personal pronouns - Cases
Thank you very much,
I've corrected it. It was a wrong copy paste of the singular. Now it's correct.
Where is the accusative pronoun in your example sentence?
You gave an example of a sentence using the accusative case:
Eu am mâncat fulgi iaurt acasă dimineață
But where is the accusative pronoun in that sentence?
the accusative
She just used that sentence to illustrate what the accusative case is before giving the accusative pronouns.
Accusative and Dative cases
The accusative case is only the case of the direct object. The indirect object takes the *dative case (with different pronouns: îmi, îți, etc.).
Hi,
Hi,
You are right, and actually it goes beyond that. In Romanian the dative case is the one of the indirect object but only the indirect objects that indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action.
In the example
Marius i-a trimis un mail Georgianei de la șeful lui.
Georgianei is in the dative case whereas "de la șeful lui" is in the accusative case.
Typically the indirect object without preposition in Romanian is in the dative case whereas with preposition would be in the accusative case.
I like this topic quite a lot, since it is a rather complex one. The mapping of accusative and dative in other languages is not the same as in Romanian.
Romanians learn in school that the a noun or pronoun in dative case is the one answering to the question "Cui?" "To whom" thus as I was saying above indicating the recipient or beneficiary of an action.
Happy to help!
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