Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Arbitrary stuff from Romania - II - DA

'Da' is the most often spoken word in Romanian language(which also obviously, happens to be the national language of Romania). Anyone who picks up the phone invariably says 'Da' rather than 'Hello'. 'Da''s equivalent in English is 'Okay' or Yes' or 'Agreed' or 'Done' etc., I am told that similar to 'Da' in Romanian it is 'Ja' in Dutch. Romanians also have adopted quite a few French-origin words like 'salut'(a greeting equivalent to 'best wishes' or 'my regards' or simply put 'my salutes'), 'merci'(means 'apologies'). Romania also has a few Hindi/Sanskrit-origin words like 'chai' (equivalent to 'tea') and 'zaher'(means sugar in Romanian, while in Hindi 'zeher' means 'poison').

2 comments:

prasie said...

enna thalaiva edhu...nee romania poitu vandha, andha full experience pathi write pannuva nnu expect pannen, but all I get is trivia about the place. Please write up about all your experiences there.

p.s : the post ought to be funny...if the trip wasn't like that, make it so.

Anonymous said...

Hi there! I'm from Romania. My name is Razvan and I want to say that your post is not 100% accuracy. Here are the facts:

1) When on Romanian answer the phone he most probably use the Romanian word "Alo" means "Hello" rather then the word "Da" means "Yes".

2) "Salut" means in English "Hi" or "Hello". It is use when you meet your friends or familiar people.

3) "Merci" is a French word similar with Romanian word “Multumesc". Both of them mean "Thank you".

4) "Chai" is wrong. Correct is "Ceai" and it means "Tea".

5) "Zaher" is wrong. Correct is "Zahar" and means indeed sugar.

Best regards,
Razvan Teodorescu