Romanian Language History
Romanian should not be confused with Romani or Romany, which is the language of the European Gypsies, or Roma. The similarity is coincidental; the English word for the European Gypsy stems from an Indian/Sanskrit root. The name Romania or Rumania and its derivatives come from the Latin word 'Romanus', and are etymologically related to Rome, the capital city of the Roman empire and now the capital city of Italy.
In the past, Romania had a sizable German minority population, although nowadays the number of native German speakers is dwindling. However, the German language is still widely studied in Romania as a foreign language, and, due to the residual German cultural influence, it is used as a second (or third) official language in many parts of Transylvania.
Romanian tends to be easy for speakers of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan to learn, since all these languages share a common root and influences and are all written as they are pronounced. Romanian is sometimes challenging because of the influx of loanwords, mostly Slavic words as well as a few Hungarian, German and Turkish ones, even though most of these have fallen out of use for a very long time. Neologisms have been imported en masse from French, Italian, German, and recently English. The slang has either French, German or Gypsy origin. The language uses the Latin alphabet, and the Latinate roots can help tourists to understand some signs, such as Alimentara (a place where you can buy aliments, food) Farmacie (Pharmacy, Drugstore), and Poliţie (Police). Some signs, however, are false cognates or 'false friends' - for example Librărie means a bookstore rather than a lending library (as it does in French); Teatru means a stage theatre rather than a cinema; and so on, although if you have a decent conversation guide you can avoid such funny confusions. Coincidentally, these "false friends" also apply in all its sister languages.
Hungarian is used in Eastern Transylvania and in some cities like Miercurea-Ciuc, Targu-Mures, Oradea, Cluj-Napoca, Satu-Mare; if you know it, then you are at an advantage. Hungarian is widely used as a first language in counties such as Mures, Covasna and Harghita.
The Romanian language is generally seen as a language with somewhat complicated grammar, but far simpler for speakers of Germanic languages than any of its Slavic neighbours or even Hungarian. Romanian is a phonetic language so a person can look at a word and know how it is pronounced. Romanian is abundant in vowels, and it can have series of diphthongs and even triphthongs, that gives the language a melodious sound and makes it very musical.
A foreigner trying to learn or speak Romanian can expect mostly positive reactions from native speakers. Most Romanian people will certainly love you for it and will strongly appreciate the fact that you are making an effort to speak their language. Others, however, may sneer at you for not properly being able to speak what they see as a very easy phonetic language. The Romanian alphabet is nearly exactly the same as the English alphabet, except for five additional accented letters, or 'diacriticals': ă (like the 'a' in English word 'musical'), ş (pronounced as 'sh'), ţ (pronounced 'ts'), â, î (have the same reading, like a short ă).
English has effectively become a requirement for getting a somewhat better job, and it is usually the second most popular non-Romance language spoken (on par with German). Consequently, it is usually good to ask before starting to speak English, but more often than not it will be safe to go ahead. Other Romance languages (especially French, Spanish and Italian) are also learnt by most people in schools and are therefore spoken with a pretty good level of fluency by many people, but make sure you ask before you start speaking to people in foreign tongues. In general, Romanians prefer speaking other Romance languages than the others. Globalization and the fact that Romania joined the Latin Union (Uniunea Latină), a linguistic association created in 1954, has made these closely-related languages more attractive.
Some people feel that Romanian is an extremely easy language to learn if you already speak a Latin-based language such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, Catalan or Italian. This is especially so in contrast to Romania's Slavic and Hungarian neighbors.