Romanian alphabet
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The Romanian alphabet is a modification of the Latin alphabet and is as follows:
A, a (a); Ă, ă (ă); â (â din a); B, b (be), C, c (ce); D, d (de), E, e (e); F, f (fe / ef); G, g (ghe / ge); H, h (ha / hať); I, i (i); Î, î (î din i); J, j (je), K, k (ka de la kilogram), L, l (le / el); M, m (me / em); N, n (ne / en); O, o (o); P, p (pe); R, r, (re / er); S, s (se / es); Template:Unicode, Template:Unicode (Template:Unicode); T, t (te); Template:Unicode, Template:Unicode (Template:Unicode); U, u (u); V, v (ve); X, x (ics); Z, z (ze / zet).
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Diacritical marks
Five of the above letters have diacritical marks:
- Ă ă - a with breve
- Â â - a with circumflex
- Î î - i with circumflex
- Template:Unicode - s with comma
- Template:Unicode - t with comma
The letters Q, W, and Y only occur in foreign words used in Romanian, such as quasar, watt, yacht.
The letters î and â are both phonetically and functionally identical. The reason for using both î and â is historical, denoting the language's Latin origin. During the communist regime, the Romanian government largely eliminated the letter â, replacing it with î everywhere except for the name of the country, which remained România. (initially also the country was spelled with "î" Romînia, but it was later reverted) For example, the Latin angelus (angel) became the Romanian ânger, but today it's spelled înger.
After the fall of the [[Nicolae Ceausescu|]] regime, the Romanian Academy decided to reintroduce â. However, most of the population had only learned î spellings, so the Academy proposed a new set of rules for it. The choice between î and â is currently based on a simple rule: the letter is always spelled as â, except at the beginning and the end of words where î is used instead. Exceptions:
- Proper nouns where the usage of the letters is frozen, whichever it may be.
- The components of portmanteau words are each subjected to the rule above, not the resulting word itself (e.g. ne+îndemânatic => neîndemânatic, not *neândemânatic).
Writing letters Template:Unicode and Template:Unicode with a cedilla instead of a comma is considered incorrect by the language academy. Actual Romanian writings, included books created to teach children to write, treat the comma and cedilla as a variation in font. Historically, computers have made no distinction between the cedilla and comma below; Template:Unicode and Template:Unicode were added to Unicode in September 1999 and hence still aren't in common use.
In some of the fonts shipped with Windows t-comma was replaced by t-cedilla, but s-cedilla was kept in its place, so sometimes texts are even written s-cedilla and t-comma.
(Note that not all computer systems can properly render these "comma-below" characters. However, they are included as special Romanian Unicode characters in the Unicode standard and in ISO 8859-16.)
Letters and their pronunciation
| Letter | Phoneme | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| A a | Like in 'Mars' | |
| Ă ă (a with breve) | Schwa: first sound of above | |
| Â â (a with circumflex) | ы like the first sound of insect | |
| B b | ||
| C c | Like in 'cat' | |
| D d | ||
| E e | Like in 'merry' | |
| F f | ||
| G g | Like in 'goat' | |
| H h | Like in 'house' | |
| I i | Like in 'machine' | |
| Î î (i with circumflex) | the same as â | |
| J j | Like French 'j': 'jour' | |
| K k | ||
| L l | Like in 'lamp' | |
| M m | ||
| N n | ||
| O o | Like in 'door' | |
| P p | ||
| R r | Trilled - like Italian, Spanish 'r' | |
| S s | ||
| Template:Unicode (s with comma) (also with cedilla: Ş ş) | like in sheep | |
| T t | ||
| Template:Unicode (t with comma) (also with cedilla: Ţ ţ) | like in nuts | |
| U u | Like in 'group' | |
| V v | ||
| X x | ||
| Z z |
HTML entities
When authoring HTML that uses the more unusual Romanian characters, the following information may be useful:
| Upper case | Lower case | Upper case encoding | Lower case encoding | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ă | ă | Ă | ă | |
| Â | â | Â | â | |
| Î | î | Î | î | |
| Template:Unicode | Template:Unicode | Ș | ș | s with comma, not widely supported |
| Ş | ş | Ş | ş | s with cedilla, alternately |
| Template:Unicode | Template:Unicode | Ț | ț | t with comma, not widely supported |
| Ţ | ţ | Ţ | ţ | t with cedilla, alternately |
See also
External links
Romanian language, alphabet and pronunciation (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/romanian.htm)ro:Alfabetul român ru:Румынский алфавит