Limba Română

So I felt like doing different blog posts based on particular subjects to tell people what life is like here in Moldova. Since I just got back from having lunch with some classmates in my Romanian class, I feel like this is a good time to talk about what Romanian is like as a language. I don't know when I first got interested in Romanian, but it's something I always wanted to try learning. As a Romance language it is similar to languages like Spanish and French, but I feel like it's often forgotten about since it's not in Western Europe. That's probably why I first got interested in it because I like to learn things and visit places most people don't think about.
I think it's pretty remarkable that it was able to survive as a language while being surrounded by Slavic languages in Eastern Europe. Those languages have definitely had an influence on the Romanian language though. For example, "Da" is yes in both Russian and Romanian. Also another word for German is nemțesc which comes from the Russian word for mute apparently. I guess there was an enclave of German speakers near Russia that never spoke Russian so mute became synonymous with German. Obviously, that is not a great term to use now so Romanian speakers have switched over to german to mean German. I played a Romanian music video for a Polish friend and they thought it sounded like some weird form of Russian. So even though my students are always shocked that I don't know if they are speaking Russian or Romanian during break time, I feel better knowing apparently to an untrained ear it isn't so clear.

As you saw from the ț in nemțesc there are some special letters in Romanian which makes the pronunciation a bit tricky in particular ă and â. These two letters have been the bane of my existence in class as they sound very similar. Â is not so bad I guess as long as you pronounce it like you are being punched in the gut and ă is like a mix of a schwa and a short e sound I guess. A schwa being the word for the sound we make with e in the word "the" but it's not exactly the same.

All of my students tell me if I know a Romance language already it will make Romanian that much easier to learn because of grammar and vocabulary. For sure there are some similarities. For example "la revedere" sounds a lot like "arrivederci" in Italian for goodbye. And "eu" for I is a lot like "yo" in Spanish.

Another cool thing about studying Romanian here in Moldova is that it is the first time I have studied a language in a multilingual classroom. There are a few Americans, some Ukrainians, a Turk, and even a Moldovan. Yes a Moldovan. That's another fascinating thing because of the Romanian/Russian language divide among the population here that there could be some cities in Moldova that just speak Russian primarily. But what I find cool is that there isn't a common language all of the students share except for Romanian. Our teacher speaks Russian, English, and Romanian so she can translate but for the most part she just speaks Romanian to us even when someone asks a question in Russian or English. So when people ask me how I teach English without knowing the local language I think this setting would be perfect for them to see. Ideally, we shouldn't need to use a second language. Of course students could translate for each other but only half of the class is going to be able to understand Russian or English depending on where they are from. So we are all forced to communicate in Romanian. And we were able to put that into practice today when we went out to lunch at a Turkish restaurant. Fortunately, the Turkish guy speaks English and Russian so we had a translator if we were at a loss for words but for the most we tried to only communicate in Romanian to include everyone in the conversation. It must have been amusing for anyone listening in at our table to hear a mix of Turkish, English, Russian, and Romanian all being spoken at our table.

Also if you want to hear what Romanian sounds like, this song is my new favorite
Carla's Dream

New year in Moldova

So finally sitting down to talk about the move to Moldova. It's been over a month since I came here. So unfortunately some first impressions may not be so fresh, but oh well. I gotta get the ball rolling. Moldova has become the 26th country I've seen and the 6th place I've lived. It's the little orange country nestled in between the purple countries of Ukraine and Romania. This cool app shows purple countries as places I want to go, orange for regions lived in, and green for traveled to. Some countries you can even specify the province/state you've visited within a country.

"The Gates of Chisinau" as we come
into the city

Anyway, Moldova is a really small place and takes a couple hours max to get from one part of the country to the other. When the weather gets better, I hope to see more of it, and then go to some other countries as well.

After the first few weeks of living here, it was easy to get into a routine. The only drawback about work is that it's 6 days a week, however it does make the days fly by that much quicker. I meet each class 3 times a week for 2 hours. Despite the heavy workload, the students are some of the best I've had out of all the places I've been. They are adults and teenagers in upper intermediate classes so their English should be good anyway, but also I've been impressed with how they always try to use the new vocabulary instead of playing it safe like students I've had in other countries. It reminds me of teaching in Austria, so I think it's a European thing.

Mini Arc de Triumph

My students love to ask why I would want to come to Moldova. Moldova is often cited as the poorest country in Europe and the least traveled to by tourists. Some teachers I talked to before moving here described the capital of Chisinau as more of a large town than a city. But I think it's been a fun adventure so far. For such a small country, it's a really interesting place to see the legacy of the Soviet Union. Apparently, during the Cold War, a lot of Russian families were forced to move to Moldova, and around the former Soviet states I'm sure, so the next generation of these families still maintains their identity as more pro-Russian. I think for the most part, this isn't really an issue. Most people understand both Russian and Romanian and choose one to speak in. It's pretty crazy to hear people speaking in one language and others reply in the other. However, I believe there are some people who insist that Russian should not be spoken in Moldova. And even though Moldovan is widely referred to as Romanian in other countries, some Moldovans insist that it should not be called Romanian. I'm curious to know more about the history between Moldova and Romania as they were apparently united at one time before the Soviet Union. A lot of Moldovans can even get Romanian passports in order to work in EU countries. 

Anyway, there's a lot to cover about Moldova, so I think it would be better to devote future specific articles about each of them.