My Progress in Romanian After a Month + Video

So it is more than a month. If I am serious with my C2 goal at the end of summer, there should be already some progress visible. I have not mentioned it before, but a huge inspiration for this blog was the blog of Benny, the Irish Polyglot: http://www.fluentin3months.com/. One of his advices for language learners is to make videos. So I made one. I know I did not post a video in the beginning of my trip, so you cannot really compare, but still, here you are. A video of me speaking Romanian:

I can hear how many mistakes I made. Mistakes are good, because I can learn from them. There are English and Romanian subtitles available. In Romanian subtitles, some of the mistakes are pointed out.

In what state was my Romanian one month ago and how is it now? Before, I would describe my level as being able to make myself understood. I had problems with grammar (personal pronouns in dative and accusative, for example), plurals. My vocabulary was not something fancy either. The area in which I improved after this month is vocabulary. On the other hand, I did not advance in grammar almost at all. I did not put much time into it. There are things like Romanian imperfect or past conditional that I want to get better at.

There is also a big difference in the quality of my speech, depending on if I speak in the aquapark, or talk to somebody above a beer. In the park, there is a loud music and if somebody jumps at me and starts speaking Romanian with a strong Italian accent, it is hard to catch everything at the first time. On the other hand, if I can speak for longer intervals of time, in a dialogue, my Romanian sounds much better. I go into a more advanced vocabulary and there I get a little stuck, but it is still better than exchanging a few sentences over the loud music in the park.

I know I need a bigger vocabulary, so that I can catch more keywords when listening to somebody, which will, in turn, lead to less requests to repeat the sentence for me. So I read and look up words I do not know. I feel that I am missing longer dialogues, as the work in the park takes a lot of my time and I have to decide between reading, revising the vocabulary, or going to talk to somebody. And I think that watching more TV in Romanian, or listening radio in Romanian would help. I will try to find a balance between these sources of language training.

And at the end, a song, which I usually put in the beginning, but now I put there my video. This lyrics of this song I learned by heart. Another excellent way of learning vocab. But more about that in one of my next posts.

România - 5 Likes and 2 Dislikes

Romania. What is the country like? What is good and what is weird for me? Some of the things I mention here will be a specific comparison with Slovakia/Czech Republic, so keep that in mind while reading this post.

What I like about Romania

Opening hours

There are so many shops with the basic groceries everywhere. And they close at 21:00 the soonest! A fifth of them are non-stops, so if you decide to buy yourself a chocolate in the middle of the night, no problem. The Czech word "Večerka" (a shop open in the evening, some of them only until 19:00) sounds so funny compared to this.

Food

Mămăligă, brânză, ciorbă ardelenească, salată de icre. All delicious pieces of Romanian cuisine. And of course: semințe (roasted, salty sunflower seeds)—my addiction, because of which I came to Romania.

Semințe, salată de icre and white Romanian bread

Shaking hands

People really do shake hands here when they meet. Every day. I love it.

Romanians know how to drink

Although the streets of Romanian cities are sometimes full of pieces of paper, cigarette buts and so on, you will not find any single puke on the sidewalk. People do not need to get drunk to unconsciousness to have fun.

Appearance of the restaurants

An example of a restaurant in Constanța

This might be specific only to the seaside, but the restaurants and pubs have beautiful seats in various shapes. They look interesting, each is different. A big contrast to the dull average look of a Czech or a Slovak restaurant.

What I did not get to be fond of in Romania

Fițe

This hardly translatable Romanian word means something like snobbish. Guys with bald heads, big arms and big bellies that try to look like mafia way too hard. Blond girls with 10 cm high heels. And Mamaia, the most famous resort here is for these people no longer a place to have fun, but to show up. They are not a majority, but they are still very visible.

Bread

This will be very Czech/Slovak specific. Actually, compared to the rest of the world, the Romanian bread is not that bad. But there is nothing in the world like freshly baked, heavy loaf of Czech/Slovak dark bread. I found pâine de vatră ("bread from oven") and it comes very close to CS bread, but it's still too light, still too much yeast.

Among other (more liked than disliked) things I have to mention: Girls and guys dress up here. When they go out, they always dress nicely, girls put make-up on. I was suprised, when Izabela, one of my newly acquired friends from the dorms put pretty clothes and make-up even for a late-evening walk on the beach.

I met very stupid people and I met very open and helpful people, just like everywhere else. All in all, I like it here. So far, it seems to me, that Romanians complain less, then people in Slovakia, where complaining is a national sport. They are used to the fact, that they must help themselves if they want to live better and they are willing to work hard for it.


Questions? Put them in the comments!

Romania—First Week

It's a week and it feels like a month already. Since my arrival, I managed to find accommodation, work and some fun people around. I left Kúty with my car, went through Hungary (Budapest, Szeged) and Romania (Arad, Sibiu, Râmnicu Vălcea, București) and arrived in Constanța, on Saturday, 16.06.2012.

The Valley of the Olt river

Thanks to couchsurfing.org, I spend first three days at a couch of Lavinia Lavinic. Now the mission was to find some permanent accommodation. I went to ask in the student dorms, met a nice guy in charge there, with name Andone, who, after hearing my story, told me that he would help me.

Lavinia—my first ever couchsurfing host

In between I bought newspaper Telegraf Constanța and called to all the numbers from reality estate advertisements that were promising a place for something below 200 euro. So many times I heard "Ofertă nu mai e valabilă" ("The offer is not valid anymore"), that I will never forget that phrase. I stopped at dorms again and they told me, the price will be 250. Luckily, it was in lei, not in euro (1 euro =~ 4,4 lei; 1 leu =~ 6 Czech crowns), as I originally thought it had been. I could have saved myself some phone calls, oh, but well, I had more choices in the end. I could choose between flat on my own with three rooms for 250 euro per month, or student dorms, where I share one bedroom with 4 people, but for 60 euros. I chose the dorms, it will save me some money and I can socialize more. The more I speak, the faster I improve.

The day I was to leave Lavinia's flat, I still did not have a place to go. The god of good luck wanted it that a Czech girl, Markéta, living here with her Czech boyfriend Honza wrote me via couchsurfing. I stayed with them overnight, they had a beautiful flat with a view on the sea. We talked about all sorts of things before we were too tired to do anything but sleep.

Honza from Constanța, the grillmaster 

Markéta with all the goodies that we made

Finally I moved to my room in the dorms. In between, I found out that the boss of the only place I left my CV at, a photo-center, wants to talk to me. I got a job! And again, it will have the smell of hot concrete and chlorine. I am now a photographer at the local water park, Aqua Magic. Take pictures of people for money, some pictures also go to the park for their facebook page. For 40 lei a day. Not much, but my boss does not know that he is actually paying me for a language course.

My boss Alex, with his son Andrei at the photo-center

Lazy River in Aqua Magic

Aqua Magic water park, my new workplace

I bought sci-fi novels in Romanian (only for 10 lei!) and a textbook of Romanian. At 8:00 I go to work, I am there until 16:00 or so. During the breaks, I go for the water slides. After work, I usually go to swim in the Black Sea. Then, I read, or talk to the guys here at dorms, or go out with some couchsurfers. This is how my days pass now.

Beach at Mamaia, near Cazino Mamia

Beach at Mamaia. Task: Find a Slovak

So much for the first week, see you with reports of my progress in Romanian.

Dream with Romanian in It

Ok, this will be a small post, but I have to write about what has happened to me. I had a shaworma yesterday at midnight, so my dreams were little more vivid, than usual, but I clearly remember that in my dream, I was thinking (or speaking, in dreams it is hard to make a difference) in Romanian! My inner voice is not entirely switched to Romanian, although I am trying to help it as I can, for example trying to think in Romanian. The entire dream was not in Romanian, but dreaming in Romanian after a week really surprised me. Cool, I am curious what will be next :)

Romanian mission

Done with the school, done with the work, now it's the time to fulfill my dream—to travel and to learn languages. I have a list of things I want to do in my life. And travelling and becoming fluent in several languages is one of them. For that, I needed to change my life a bit, leave behind work that I really liked: working on the Masaryk University Information System. I will miss friends I found there, some of them were the closest people to me.


My first goal is Romania and Romanian. That's why I decided to move for three months to Constanța, Romania. Why Constanța?

1. I have been there before, so I know it a bit
2. Constanța is a touristic center—really a great place to spend summer at

Why Romanian? I can communicate in it and I want to get it to C2 level. At the end of my travel, I will sit for the C2 certificate exam. I am telling you because public accountability will kick me into doing it in the end. I would feel really stupid promising something publicly and not doing it afterwards.

So stay tuned and fly with me!

Travel blog—The rules of the game

Packed and ready to go. Now, just not to forget something.

I will tell how this game is going to be played. This will be a blog about my language targeted travels. My travels will usually last for three months. I will keep posts short, because I know you want to read them in your short moments of boredom at work. I will post pictures.

NASA has a nice tradition since the days of Apollo. Every morning, the astronauts out in space are woken up by a song, that is chosen by their families. And because via songs it is easy to communicate emotions, every my post will contain such a song, which you can play in the background (recommended :) ), or after reading the post.

Let's kick it!