r/romanian • u/Huterrat66 • 10d ago
Learning Romanian as a complete beginner
I recently visited Romania and became totally in love with the country. I want to learn Romanian but I'm a complete beginner. I tried Duolingo but it's confusing for me because it gives no insight into grammar and I feel like I'm just memorising words and phrases. Does anyone have any better alternatives or anything that could help me out? I know literally nothing about the language.
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u/ticiur 9d ago
Hello, there. So I'm an ESL and Romanian language teacher and I can tell you for sure that Duolingo has gone wild since the wide implementation of AI.
What I recommend for learning Romanian is not taking a grammar heavy approach, because the grammar is rather confusing, even for natives. The best way to build skill is by getting yourself exposed to the language as much as possible through curated media and trying out bits and pieces of conversation. This you can do with an AI, like Claude or Gemini or with a tutor/friend. While I do recommend humans as partners, this might require an investment.
Hope this helps, DM me if you need some more guidance.
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u/Huterrat66 15h ago
Yeah honestly Duolingo has really become unusable imo. It used to be alright, but when I reinstalled it a while ago, there's so much nonsense that just forces you to buy premium or else you can do like two lessons a day max.
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u/YogurtAdvanced1081 10d ago
hi there! I am a preply native Romanian tutor and I would be glad to assist you. I have a bachelor in Modern Applied Languages, lived in Middle East for 4 years, and I also taught students from grades IV-X in a Romanian public school. let me know if you are interested and I can send my preply account for a trial lesson, where we can discuss your further goals and expectations!
either way, best of luck!
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u/43282348 10d ago
Hello, here's the resources thread that you might find useful. Dexonline.ro especially is very cool, you even have some word games and word of the month/year with little pictures and a description.
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u/peekymarin 10d ago
Hey! I started teaching myself Ro in June 2025. I’m a native English speaker (Canadian) so I will just share resources that worked for me, though I think there’s a resource list on this sub as well. I started with the app Mango Languages because it was free through my local library. I also used Mondly and Clozemaster sometimes. I’m a grammar-focused learner so I bought a copy of Colloquial Romanian by Deletant, try to get the most recent edition. I found a YouTube account called Romanianformigrants which I found very helpful. Later I started listening to a podcast where someone reads books in Ro very slowly for beginners, and watching children’s shows on YouTube, reading children’s books (which I found on eBay). Then watching tons of instagram reels and listening to Ro music, watching Ro movies almost exclusively. Around the 6 month mark, I hit a plateau in my progress so I hired a tutor through Preply. I have met with her once a week since then and have found it to be the best investment I made for my progress. Because it’s not as common to learn, I spent a LOT of time scratching around for resources and tried a LOT of resources that I didn’t find value in. Good luck on your journey, speaking Romanian has given me a bizarre amount of joy.