P1.3 How to pronounce combinations of Romanian vowels - Part 1

Hi,
Thank you, I have finalized a new grammar lesson, so I will invest some time in finalizing this lesson including the other combination of vowels (iu and ău and others). Btw you already have in the above lesson geamgiu which includes the combination iu, ău. I'll add more. To answer your question, străin is indeed a hiatus, thus ă and i are pronounced in different syllables (stră-in). Here is the International Phonetic Alphabet notation /strə'in/

All the best

Hi Robbie,

I like your question, it's one for the advanced level and actually quite an important one. Foreigners may have never heard a Romanian word before, and you need different types of cues and rules to guide you to understand when to pronounce vowels together in a diphthong / triphthong and when not.

I've started researching, as I have many books e.g. from the Romanian Academy, and actually there are many rules around the pronunciation. I'll write a lesson, or maybe even more, about it.

Rule 1 — "uie" pattern    Rule 2 — word-final "ia" / "ie"    â / î sounds

Rule 1

So far my research led me to the rule that the combination "uie" in any place of a Romanian word will always be pronounced u + ie (with the accent on e). It will never be pronounced as ui + e — thus you will never find "ui" in a diphthong followed by e. And this is a general rule, regardless of whether the Romanian word is a verb, noun...

This applies to all verbs that end in the infinitive in -ui, like: a trebui, a locui, a sfătui, a păcătui, a îngădui, a vărui, etc.

All these verbs follow the same conjugation pattern:

Rule 2

Second rule that I found is that whenever you have, at the end of a word, the last three letters consonant + ia, then ia is pronounced in hiatus, i + a:

• Farmacia
• Librăria
• Cofetăria
• a fortifia
• Livia (a forename)
• a expedia

The same rule applies when the last three letters are consonant + ie. The ie is always pronounced as i + e, thus separately — not in a diphthong, but in hiatus.

• farmacie
• librărie
• pălărie

I'll write a lesson about it — it's just that it would take me some time to do that.

It might be possible to generalize even further, but from the few hours of research so far I couldn't generalize that much, and the rules that I have found so far are many, including with exceptions.

The two rules above, I found them myself — they don't come directly from the textbooks, because Romanian textbooks rely on the fact that you have heard that Romanian word before, or that you might already know how to break it up into syllables — and as you rightfully pointed out, a foreigner learning Romanian actually cannot know these rules.

I find your question an important one, as I have seen many people trying to read and having difficulties pronouncing Romanian properly. Thus, many thanks for your smart, interesting question — I like the challenge.

Your understanding is correct about che·ie, foa·ie, ca·fea·ua. I'll try to see which rules apply around these combinations as well, and add them to the new lesson.

On î / â

I've noticed that many foreigners have challenges with î or â. What do you mean by "another example" — I can provide many other examples, including videos, but let me know what you mean: to have other words that contain îi, or to find the rules around it?

For other words, such as:

• pâine — pronounced pâi·ne
• lămâie — pronounced lă·mâ·ie
• mâine — pronounced mâi·ne

Yes, my rule number 2 is universally valid, including for the words that you mentioned
istorie is pronounced /is'to.ri.e/ = is+to+ri+e

I select carefully my videos to make sure that the quality is good and that the words are well spoken.

Just by knowing which is the stressed vowel is usually not sufficient to know how to pronounce that word.