Învățarea limbii române


Or, learning the Romanian language.

For the past year or so I have been attempting to learn Romanian as a hobby, making slow but steady(ish) progress while trying a variety of online resources.  My first stop was YouTube, but while the presenters were usually personable, I generally found the videos to be unstructured and not suitable for learning anything beyond single words and simple phrases.  On the whole, I don’t find looking at someone sitting in front of a video camera reading out lists of words helpful because the method lacks interactivity, and retention was an issue.

Several years ago I signed up for a Babbel online course prior to a visit to Russia, which was valuable preparation, but Romanian isn’t available from them.  If I lived in London I would consider enrolling on a courses run by the Romanian Cultural Institute, but participation in these is not feasible for me because of my location.  Instead, the online course I am following is provided by Duolingo.  It employs a ‘freemium’ business model but I only use those functions which are free and ignore the adverts.

The course is broken into themed modules, each with levels of increasing difficulty.  Lessons within a level have only a few elements, mixing type of task, and it is easy to do the odd lesson in a spare few minutes.  Tasks so far have been to translate written text either way, or write what I hear in Romanian in either Romanian or English.  There is a mixture of single words/phrases and short sentences of varying but generally increasing complexity.  Speech has two speed options, normal and slow, the latter handy when the former seems a blur, which in my case is often.  There is much repetition to reinforce memorisation of the vocabulary, and plenty of practice in word endings.

Modules are linked to pages of background information for that theme containing useful, if brief, tables and explanations of the sort found in grammars, and individual tasks have an associated user-generated discussion page, often helpful if something is unclear.  A ‘game’ aspect provides virtual rewards, and while I don’t bother with peripherals like ‘lingots’ and ‘streaks’, I find it is satisfying to complete a module, and that makes me want to finish one and move on to the next.  Discipline is provided by not allowing learners to move too far ahead, course sections only becoming accessible once a certain number of earlier modules have been completed.

Duolingo isn’t perfect by any means.  The accepted responses can be rigid and I have on occasion written what I considered a correct response to find it rejected as incorrect (a common complaint from users).  Some elements are multiple choice, and often the appropriate word or phrase to select is too easy.  The auditory component needs to be expanded to allow the learner to hear more examples of the spoken language (and there has been the odd complaint about clarity and the accuracy of pronunciation on the discussion pages).  Those minor criticisms aside, the Duolingo developers have done a good job.

Another freemium provider I have been trying is Memrise, again only the free element.  It contains a large number of mini-courses each ranging from a few dozen to hundreds of words.   The feature I have been sampling consists of ‘flashcards’, just lists of words and phrases you memorise.  Learning is reinforced by repetition, from Romanian to English and English to Romanian, and testing is by selecting the correct stimulus word from a list under time pressure.  The learner is awarded points for selecting the correct words and there is a leader board where one is ranked with other learners.

The huge drawback of this approach is that there is no context, so while one learns useful vocabulary it is not possible to build on it to generate grammatical sentences of any complexity.  Simply learning words is an arid exercise, and as with YouTube videos, retention is difficult.  Hence I use Memrise as a supplementary resource to Duolingo, but would not want to rely on it as my sole learning method.

(19 September 2018)


Duolingo update

I have now reached the end of the Duolingo Romanian course so am in a better position to judge its value.  The first thing to say is that the course is well organised and I have enjoyed the process, except when facing frustratingly complicated grammatical constructions.  There is a sense of achievement (though sometimes relief too!) on reaching the end of a module and it was motivating to see the number completed grow larger and the end of the course gradually approach.

While my experience has been positive, there is still work to be done on development of the course.  The ‘tips’ pages currently peter out about two-thirds of the way through, which means one has to rely on exercise-related comments from other learners.  They are extremely supportive, however, some contributors to the discussion pages are Romanians who can speak with authority but do not always pitch their comments at the appropriate level, and as they are responding to specific questions the answers are not always comprehensive.  In practice Duolingo tips pages vary in usefulness anyway and are no substitute for a proper grammar.

The quality of the English translations in the exercises occasionally leaves something to be desired and clearly have not always been double-checked by native English speakers.  This is particularly evident in the later stages of the course, resulting in some odd formulations.  As I noted earlier, sound quality is variable, and at times misleading.  The pool of sentences to work through within a module is often limited in number, and one can eventually memorise them without necessarily learning the principles.  On the other hand the course is free, so one cannot be too severe, and it is evolving so in time these weaknesses should be addressed.

In summary, do I think the course has been worth the effort?  Yes, I do.  Can I now carry out a conversation in Romanian?  No, but I never expected to, based on my limited exposure.  Duolingo has given me a decent foundation but to become really proficient I would need to do more speaking and listening (in the French Duolingo course one is given phrases to speak – though this is more to do with practising the accent than conversation skills – something missing in the Romanian one).  Finishing a Duolingo ‘tree’ gives an enormous sense of satisfaction, however in terms of learning a language it is but a baby step.

My plan now is to come back to the Duolingo course exercises regularly to retain the knowledge I have picked up, and carry on using the free element of Memrise to build and reinforce vocabulary, supplemented by studying printed grammars and trying to translate Romanian blogs/Facebook pages.  I shall continue watching subtitled videos to increase my familiarity with Romanian as it is spoken, though even now speed of delivery is a concern.

(29 June 2020)



Romanian Cultural Institute (London) online course

As normal face-to-face classes were suspended because of the Covid-19 pandemic, in May the Romanian Cultural Institute in London offered three free 12-week online courses: one for children (Salut, exploratori!), one for beginners (Salut, prieteni!) and one for intermediate learners (Salut, companioni!).  Each session was scheduled to last about an hour.  The first twenty people to register could participate via Zoom, but the sessions were also live-streamed on YouTube.

I was curious to see how they worked, and this was the closest I was likely to get to the classes the RCI runs in London.  I was not able to commit to participating on Zoom, or to watch the streamed session on YouTube, but I did watch all the recorded sessions later.  My first thought was to follow both beginner and intermediate classes, but I decided to focus on those for beginners and come back to the intermediate ones later, as my level fell somewhere in between.

The beginners’ tutor, Mrs Ciupală, was very engaging and full of cheerful encouragement, though the Zoom students were initially diffident in making contributions.  Those watching the streamed lessons were able to comment using a text bar, though this diminished as the course progressed.

The course assumed no prior knowledge and began with basics.  The first session focused on pronouncing the alphabet, and subsequent lessons explored vocabulary and grammar in a carefully structured way, covering such topics as greetings, how to give and receive personal information, the issue of word endings, numbers, conjugating the present tense of key verbs, and concepts of time and place.  There was plenty of variety in the exercises, spoken and written. 

A lovely surprise was the appearance of the Romanian Ambassador to the UK to chat with the class during the tenth lesson, which was much appreciated.  By the end of the course the students had visibly increased in confidence to the extent they were able to give short presentations about themselves in Romanian and answer basic questions.

I would recommend watching the YouTube recordings (unfortunately they are only available until 15 August).  They provide an insight into how the normal RCI classes work, and anyone able to attend the face-to-face courses once they resume will find them a valuable element of the language-learning experience.

Putting on the free online courses was a wonderful gesture, and the RCI, Mrs Ciupală, and her colleagues are to be applauded for the initiative.  I hope they will consider something similar in future, not least so I can get to grips with Salut, companioni!

(30 July 2020)