Romanian phonology

This article discusses the phonology of the Romanian language. For other details on this language (history, grammar) the reader is referred to that article.

The phoneme inventory of Romanian consists of seven vowels, two or four semivowels, and twenty consonants. In addition, as with all languages, other phonemes can occur occasionally in interjections or recent borrowings.

Vowels

There are seven monophthongs in Romanian:

Besides the consonants in this table, a few consonants can have allophones:
*Palatalized consonants occur when preceding IPA|/i/. [Harvcoltxt|Chitoran|2001|p=10] [Harvcoltxt|Petrovici|1956 argues that the palatalized consonants are underlying, though this analysis creates more problems than it solves.]
*IPA|/n/ becomes the velar IPA| [ŋ] before IPA|/k/, IPA|/ɡ/ and IPA|/h/;
*IPA|/h/ becomes velar or palatal depending on the following sound.

The Romanian consonant set is almost the same as that in Italian, with a few exceptions: The Italian palatal consonants IPA|/ɲ/, IPA|/ʎ/ and affricate IPA|/ʣ/ are missing in standard Romanian, which in turn has the fricative IPA|/ʒ/ and the "glottal" IPA|/h/.

Here are some examples, with an approximate indication of how each consonant is pronounced, intended for English native speakers.

A simple way to evaluate the length of a word, and compare it to another, consists in pronouncing it repeatedly at a natural speech rate.

Intonation

A detailed description of the intonation patterns must consider a wide range of elements, such as the focus of the sentence, the theme and the rheme, emotional aspects, etc. In this section only a few general traits of the Romanian intonation are discussed. Most importantly, intonation is essential in questions, especially because, unlike English and other languages, Romanian does not distinguish grammatically declarative and interrogative sentences.

In non-emphatic yes/no questions the pitch rises at the end of the sentence until the last stressed syllable. If unstressed syllables follow, they often have a falling intonation, but this is not a rule.

:— Ai stins lumina? [ai stins lu↗mi↘na] ("Have you turned off the lights?")

:— Da. ("I did.")

In Transylvanian speech these yes/no questions have a very different intonation pattern, usually with a pitch peak at the beginning of the question: [ai ↗stins lumi↘na]

In selection questions the tone rises at the first element of the selection, and falls at the second.

:— Vrei bere sau vin? [vrei ↗bere sau ↘vin] ("Do you want beer or wine?")

:— Bere. ("Beer.")

Wh-questions start with a high pitch on the first word and then the pitch falls gradually toward the end of the sentence.

:— Cine a lăsat uşa deschisă? [↗cine↘ a lăsat uşa deschisă] ("Who left the door open?")

:— Mama. ("Mom did.")

Repeat questions have a rising intonation.

:— A sunat Rodica adineauri. ("Rodica just called.")

:— Cine a sunat? [cine a su↗nat] ("Who called?")

:— Colega ta, Rodica. ("Your classmate, Rodica.")

Tag questions are uttered with a rising intonation.

:— Ţi-e foame, nu-i aşa? [ţi-e foame, nu-i a↗şa] ("You're hungry, aren't you?")

Unfinished utterances have a rising intonation similar to that of yes/no questions, but the pitch rise is smaller.

:— După ce m-am întors... [după ce m-am în↗tors...] ("After I came back...")

Various other intonation patterns are used to express: requests, commands, surprise, suggestion, advice, and so on.

References

Bibliography

*citation
last=Chitoran
first=Ioana
year=2001
title=The Phonology of Romanian: A Constraint-based Approach
place=Berlin & New York
publisher=Mouton de Gruyter
ISBN=3110167662
*citation
last=Chitoran
first=Ioana
year=2002
title=A perception-production study of Romanian diphthongs and glide-vowel sequences
journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association
volume=32
issue=2
pages=203-222
*ro icon Emanuel Vasiliu, "Fonologia limbii române", Editura Ştiinţifică, Bucureşti, 1965

External links

* [http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/stand_alone_romanian.pdf Very detailed Romanian grammar, with some notes on phonetics and morpho-phonology (PDF; 183 pages; 4.6 MB)]
*ro icon [http://dexonline.ro/ DEX online, a collection of Romanian language dictionaries; one-letter entries indicate the possible pronunciations]