Throw yourself in the deep end!

Immersing yourself in the foreign langauge you are learning is absolutely crucial when you start out - and this is no less true when it comes to Romanian!

It's no use just working your way through a textbook.  Even if you diligently learned every grammar rule and acquired a large vocabulary, you would fail to make the necessary linguistic links to speak fluently.  That's why it's so important to experience Romanian in its living context - you have to hear, read, speak, and write it as native speakers do.

Easier said than done! Romanian culture is rich and deep, but natives are not used to foreigners learning their language.  This combination means that while there are a lot of interesting (but not necessarily effecetive!) ways you could immerse in the language.

Here are our suggestions for where to begin:

Watch Romanian Films and TV

Beginner learners of Romanian need to try and expose themselves to as much Romanian content as possible. The 100% most important aspect here is to watch Romanian TV shows and movies.  Seriosuly.  Even if you don’t understand everything from the start (obviously you won't), it’s the best way expose yourself to the way native Romanian speakers talk to one another.  Find a cheesy soap to get started - the language is fairly simple and there are lots of dramatic pauses, allowing you to digest what you've heard

If you find it hard to understand and don't make much progress, then you may want to download the content and listen to it at a slower speed. This is a method that I've used for every language I've learned and it's always speeded up my listening comprehension.  Just keep replaying the same little clip - say five seconds - until you really begin to recognise the sounds, not just the words.

Learn how to use the verbs correctly

It can be hard to get started with Romanian. The reality is that the best thing you can do is to master the verbal system at first.  Although the weird Romance-Slavic-Turkic vocabulary mix can seem a bit alien at first, in reality it's only the verbs that will challenge you with Romanian.  Make this the focus of your grammatical efforts and everything else will fall into place.  

Listen to Romanian music

Another cool way to learn Romanian is to listen to local music. Even if it doesn’t seem particularly amazing at first, Romanian music can be really exciting and a great learning experience. It gives you a feel for the language, you can learn new words too. Many local songs aren’t that complicated, so even beginner learners will find it pretty easy to get into. That’s why listening to music can be one of the most rewarding experiences for language learners.

Browse Romanian Reddit pages

Reddit is very popular among Romanians and you can find lots of good content  there. You can start improving your Romanian bit by bit -  slow and consistent is the best way. Most of the guys on the forums are friendly and appreciative of foreigners who want to improve their Romanian, so it should be easy for you to find language partners there.

Enter Romanian Facebook groups

This is a good option because it exposes you to Romanian content while also being simple and easy to do. The best part is that you can find Romanian Facebook groups on just about any topic, so you can easily find Romanians that share the same passion as you and talk with them about it. Even if you take a Romanian for beginners course, the best way to learn a language is to talk with natives.  Facebook is still the most populr social media network amongst Romanians.

Change your phone interface to Romanian

If you want to go a bit towards the extreme side and force yourself to learn and also speak Romanian, then doing this might help. Once you change the phone interface, this will make it easy for you to better understand specific words. Since the phone interface and menus are varied when it comes to the words they use, this approach can be very beneficial. It's a pretty passive way of learning, but every little helps!

Visit Romanian cooking blogs and sites

How can cooking recipes help you understand the Romanian language? It’s simple, you can speak Romanian by reading the ingredients aloud. You can also translate the ingredients and learn their name in the local language. Plus, recipes are meant to be simple, so even if you’re a complete beginner you can still learn quite lot with just a few basic verbs and nouns.

Read children's books in Romanian

Some people like doing this because it encourages you to read in Romanian without worrying about finishing a large book. You get to learn simple words and then go from there. Be careful though because some of the words used in fairy tales are actually a bit obscure, so it may not be worth doing this at first.

Play videogames with Romanian gamers

There are many Romanians that play games online. If you want to speak Romanian, a good way is to join Romanian gaming communities online and play with people. It helps you improve the way you speak, especially if masterning colloquial Romanian is your main priority.

Visit Romania and speak with locals!

This one trumps all the other tips! Being able to speak with locals is always the best way to learn a new language, and that’s exactly what makes it great to visit Romanian.  I swear you won't find more hospitable and welcoming people on this planet. This is of course the most testing way of learning a langauge, so be ready to make a billion mistakes, but that's the best way to learn. 

In conclusion...

Learning Romanian might sound difficult, but the reality is that if you keep going you will make progress surprisingly quickly. The most important aspect is to always try out some new ways to learn the language. Some of these ideas might sound a bit weird, but they do bring in results.