Rules for Past Participles

• add a 't' to verbs ending in 'i' or 'a'

• subtract last two letters of verbs ending in 'e', then add an 's'

Examples: "a alege" = "to choose" alege -> ales -> ales "a zice" = "to say" zice -> zis -> zis "a alerga" = "to run" alergat -> alergat "a şopti" = "to whisper" şoptit -> şoptit

To negate a past tense you add a 'nu' in front of the 'avea' helping verb. This often gets shortened to 'n-'. Nu am băut -> N-am băut I did not drink Nu ai venit -> N-ai venit You did not come One more thing you should know about Romanian negation is that they love double-negatives! We only say that in dialect in English so I have fun doing it in Romanian. Words you will need to form double negatives are: nimeni nobody nicăieri nowhere niciodată never nimic nothing

I do not expect this to make a whole lot of sense without a small sea of example sentences, so below you will find exactly that... Aţi venit ieri? Did you all come yesterday? Pisicile au mîncat şoarecii. The cats ate the mice. Noi n-am văzut nimic! We didn't see anything! Ea niciodată n-a auzit nimic. She never heard anything. Ieri am primit o scrisoare de la el. I got a letter from him yesterday Au mers pînă la vamă. They went up to the border. Am vorbit toata ziua. We talked the whole day. N-au spus nimic despre ţiganii. They didn't say anything about the gypsies. Maşina n-a fost nicăieri. The car wasn't anywhere.

And now for the simple past!

The simple past is used to denote an action that happened more than once or over a period of time. Examples in English would be "We were writing each other everyday" or "I went to the library on Sundays". It is constructed by adding a suffix* to the end of the verb infinitive. The suffixes used are as follows:

Person	Suffix
eu	-am
tu	-ai
el / ea	-a
noi	-am
voi	-aţi
ei / ele	-au

*If the infinitive ends in an i, change the i to an e when adding the suffixes. Example using a vorbi (to speak): Ea vorbea cu noi. She was speaking with us. These suffixes look familiar? They should! They are the same as the forms of 'to have' used in the compound past. Below you will see examples of some verbs with this suffix added:

merge "go"

singular	plural
eu mergeam	noi mergeam
tu mergeai	voi mergeaţi
el mergea	ei mergeau

avea "have"

singular	plural
eu aveam	noi aveam
tu aveai	voi aveaţi
el avea	ei aveau

fi (irregular) "be"

singular	plural
eu eram	noi eram
tu erai	voi eraţi
el era	ei erau

You may have noticed that with avea the letter 'a' is not doubled: avea + am = aveam. This is true for all verbs ending in a. To negate just put a nu before the verb and shorten to n- if the verb begins with an 'a'. Below are some examples. N-aveam cărţi. We didn't have books. Nu mergeau la bisercă.They did not go to church. Dimineaţă mîncam salata de ardei. I used to eat pepper salad in the morning. Primeai scrisori de la ea? Were you getting letters from her? Nimeni nu vorbea cu mine. Nobody would talk with me.

Lesson 9: Reflexive Verbs

As in probably all european languages, Romanian has reflexive verbs. In this lesson, you will learn how reflexive verbs are constructed in Romanian and we'll start you off with some of the most important ones you'll need to know. Following is a list of the forms for the personal pronouns as used in reflexive verbs.

Pronoun	Reflexive
eu	mă
tu	te
el	se
ea	se
noi	ne
voi	vă
ei	se
ele	se

The following are 5 of the most commonly used reflexive verbs:

a se uita (la)	to look (at)
mă uit	ne uităm
te uiţi	vă uitaţi
se uită	se uit

a se spăla	to wash oneself
mă spăl	ne spălăm
te speli	vă spălaţi
se spală	se spală

a se trezi	to get up / wake up
mă trezesc	ne trezim
te trezeşti	vă treziţi
se trezeşte	se trezesc

a se întoarce	to go back / return
mă întorc	ne întoarcem
te întorci	vă întoarceţi
se întoarce	se întorc

a se duce	to go
mă duc	ne ducem
te duci	vă duceţi
se duce	se duc

Mă spăl pe dinţi. I'm brushing my teeth. El se duce la piscină. He's going to the pool. Ne trezim la opt dimineaţă. We're getting up at eight in the morning. Ea se întoarce în Ungaria. She's returning to Hungary. La ce vă uitaţi? What are you looking at? Mă duc la bisercă. I'm going to church. Te speli? Do you wash? Se duc la şcoală să se uită la noua clădire. They're going to the school to see the new building. Vă întoarceţi răspoimîine? Are you coming back three days from now? O să te uiţi la televizor? Are you going to watch television? Te vei duce la criş acuma seară? Are you going to the river tonight? O să se trezească după mine. He will get up after me. Trebuie să se ducă şi Daniel. Daniel has to go too.

Lesson 10: Possessive

And now for something that should have appeared several lessons ago, we present THE POSSESSIVE! If you are using your Romanian, I'm sure you have needed to say "my car" or "my house" by now. There are three ways to denote possession. You will like two of them. The third...well, let's not talk about that till we have to. Overview:* 1. Possessive Adjective 2. The "AL" Construction 3. Dative Genitive *These terms were mostly created by us just to make us sound like real linguists. Don't be confused!