Talk:Romanian verbs

Future tense, popular

There are several so-called "popular" ways to put a verb in the future tense. The two widespread forms use the subjunctive and an additional auxiliary:

am să fac	ai să faci	are să facă	avem să facem	aveţi să faceţi	au să facă
o să fac	o să faci	o să facă	o să facem	o să faceţi	o să facă

Sources:

• Cojocaru's Romanian grammar
• "a face", at Verbix

Although I did hear the form "or să facă", I suspect it is a mixture of "o să facă" with "vor face", possibly in order to avoid a disagreement in number. — AdiJapan ☎ 14:24, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I stand corrected -- thank you, AdiJapan! (for future reference, the above is AJ's explanation for his revert on a change I made recently.) --Gutza ^{T T+} 16:05, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Past participle and adjectives

There is a small inaccuracy in the article:

"Verbs in the past participle usually behave like adjectives, and thus must agree in number, gender, and case with the noun they determine."

When a verb in the past participle agrees with a noun, it is not a verb but an adjective obtained from the past participle form of the verb ("participial adjective"). This can be easily seen within the table of conjugations: wherever the conjugation asks for the past participle form of the verb, the form used is always the correct, non-agreeing form (e.g. "ea să fi făcut" not "ea să fi făcută"; "ei au făcut" not "ei au făcuţi").

I shall delete the phrase above and make the appropriate corrections within the table to reflect this. If there are any objections, post them and I will look for a source for the correction. Reject 666 6 (talk) 19:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

What about the passive voice? If you turn the active voice "Copilul desenează casa" into its passive voice equivalent "Casa e desenată de copil", we're still talking about verbs, not adjectives, but the form depends on gender and number. Also, please check out what the dictionaries say about the participle: "Mod verbal impersonal şi nepredicativ, cu forme deosebite după gen şi după număr, denumind acţiunea suferită de un obiect." [1]

I agree that some details should be given about when the feminine and plural forms are used, but simply deleting any mention of this peculiarity of the participle them doesn't solve things. — AdiJapan ☎ 14:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Good point! I forgot about the passive voice. I'll edit the article then to reflect the different usage for the two voices. Reject 666 6 (talk) 21:08, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I corrected your edit a bit. — AdiJapan 07:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

You missed an indicative past paradigm.

You missed the Periphrastic (compound) Pluperfect, a popular and quite unliterary tense, but nevertheless a tense that exists in the language, that has more or less the same meaning as the Synthetic (Simple) Pluperfect, much like the Simple and Compound Perfect tenses have more or less the smae meaning, or SHOULD have the same meaning but their meaning may vary beacause of their usage. This Romanian tense is a close relative of the French "Anterior Past" (Passé antérieur), which is constructed in the very same way and has the same meaning, that of a Pluperfect. However, unlike the Perfect, where the Compound tense is much more used than the Simple tense, in the Pluperfect, the Simple tense (făcusem, făcuseşi etc.) is the only literary form, whereas the Compound tense (am fost făcut) is considered popular. Just like the Simple Perfect is used in "limba vie" (the natural spoken language) a lot in Oltenia instead of the Compound Perfect, the Compound Pluperfect is almost the only pluperfect tense used in the Moldavian region in "limba vie", in the contryside, instead of the Simple Pluperfect. This tense, the, Compound Pluperfect is formed by juxtaposing the Compound Perfect forms of the verb "to be" with the past perfect participle of the verb to be conjugated (ex. am fost făcut, ai fost făcut etc.). This has the same form as the Compound Perfect tense in the Passive voice. However, in the area mentioned (Moldavia), "am fost ucis", when used as a pluperfect means "ucisesem", "I had killed". Only usage and circumstances can make a difference between "am fost ucis" with the meaning of "I was killed" and "am fost ucis" with the meaning of "I had killed". However, the existance of the Compound Pluperfect is obvious in the case of intransitive verbs like "a merge", which don't have a Passive voice at all. "Am fost mers" can only mean "mersesem", "ai fost mers" can only mean "mersesei". The Grammar of the Romanian language by the Romanian Academy can testify the existence of this tense, as can any person that has a relative in the Moldavian countrside. I am from Iaşi and my grandmother is from a village nerby Suceava. She often uses "am fost mers" instead of "mersesem" and sometimes has slight problems understanding my usage of the Simple Pluperfect (mersesem, venisem, făcusem). Other people from her village that don't have relatives in the city or that have never lived in a city any part of their lives use almost EXCLUSIVELY the Compound Pluperfect (am fost mers) instead of the simple one (mersesem) and may not comprehend even the meaning, not only the usage of the literary simple Pluperfect (mersesem). So this tense exists. If the Popular future with "o să" is in this table I think the Compound Pluperfect should be too, as there are related tenses in other Romance languages (in French for example). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.124.35.173 (talk • contribs)

You are right, the tense you describe does exist, not just in Moldova, but also in parts of Transylvania. But the article in its current state focuses only on the standard language, or at least on the forms that are used by a large portion of its speakers. There are other regional tenses or regional particularities of the Romanian verb morphology (such as o venit instead of a venit in the northern half of Romania, or the seemingly incorrect agreement in Wallachian verbs: ei a plecat) that have not been included in the article. Probably they should be gathered in a special section dedicated to regional facts. If you have a source (say a Romanian dialectological work) that gives a well structured view of the subject please feel free to add that section. — AdiJapan 09:53, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

did vs. have done

compound perfect in Romanian translates better to present perfect in English. and simple perfect in Romanian translates better to past tense in English. certainly NOT the other way around.

The fact that most people use the compound perfect for all kinds of past tense or present perfect tense actions and that Oltenians equally use simple perfect where another Romanian would use the compound perfect relates to dialect and usage rather than semantics.

In literature however simple perfect can describe only something that WAS, a state or action that happened at a time in the past, it doeas not indicate any raltionship with the present whatsoever, while the compound perfect, in some circumstances, might do that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.124.35.173 (talk) 12:36, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

The English present perfect tense (see that article) is used to express an action or state that occurred in the past but has a bearing on the present. In contrast, the Romanian compound perfect tense does not by itself imply any consequence on the present state. Thus it best corresponds to the English simple past tense. See also the first external link in the article, [2], which at section "4.2.1.2.2. Usage of the compound perfect indicative" gives details about this very problem. Now since Romanian does not have a present perfect tense, many times, depending on meaning, the English present perfect is translated in Romanian with a compound perfect or with a present. However, this article is supposed to give the English reader an idea about what the Romanian verb tenses mean, not about how English verbs are translated into Romanian.

As for the Romanian simple perfect, there are two sorts of usage, both of which have a relationship with the present:

• One use is dialectal (in Oltenia and around), for actions or states that occurred in the recent past, often to imply that those actions and states still have consequences on the present. For instance, if you say am mîncat, "I ate", it is unsure whether you got hungry again or not, but if you say mîncai, "I have eaten", then you probably are not hungry now.
• The other use is in the literature, for actions or states that occur at the narrative's present time, that is, the simple perfect is used instead of the present tense. Otherwise, for actions that occurred in the past of the narration, the compound perfect is normally used. Some historians use the simple perfect also for actions in the distant past, in a way similar to the French history writings, but this is not usual and is just a question of style.

So I think we should leave the Romanian compound perfect tense to correspond to the English simple past tense. As for the Romanian simple perfect tense, I think the best way to translate făcui is through I have done, I just did, I did recently, I did earlier, or something along those lines.

Whatever we do, the equivalence will not be perfect. Those English translations are given just as an approximation, and the article makes a clear point of that. — AdiJapan 15:50, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

PS. For details on the simple perfect tense see the same source, section "4.2.1.4.2. Usage of the simple perfect indicative". — AdiJapan 15:54, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Past/"Passe simple"

This is totally misunderstood on this page. I do not say I know better - but somehow the Wikipedia Securitate/Stasi has launched an attack on anyone who dare ask the question. In Romanian there IS a simple past. What does it mean? That is the only question I ask; for that I am damned by the self-appointed guardians of Wikipedia. The standard traditional view is that the simple past (used in books) is equivalent to the FRENCH. The Wikipedia editor (self-appointed and not even Romanian) seems not to address this issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.92.110 (talk) 15:28, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Mood

The article (first sentence, second section) mentions Romanian having 9 moods, but only 5 are actually moods. The infinitive, participle, supine, and gerund are non-finite forms that are deverbal nouns or adjectives, and are therefore not encoded for mood. Despite this sentence being cited [1], that source, though academic, is incorrect and not in line with the current understanding of verbal modality in Indo-European languages. This error persists in the two subsequent tables.

I am not a scholar of Romanian, and I would prefer not to edit this because I do not know a better source to cite to properly correct this. Wynn and thorn (talk) 04:57, 10 January 2024 (UTC)