Erika Mustermann - Romanian

Romanian

In Romanian,

• chestie is used for objects and concepts,
• cutare for both persons and things.
• Cutărică, tip (masculine) or tipă (feminine) are sometimes used for persons. Popescu, Ionescu, Georgescu, the most common Romanian surnames, are commonly used to signify everybody, or most people. Ion Popescu, the most common Romanian name is used as an equivalent of John Doe or as a sample name for common paperwork.
• Drăcie ("devilish thing") is a derogative placeholder name for objects (but the derogative nuance is not diabolical, it may simply suggest unfamiliarity or surprise, rather like the adjective "newfangled" in English). A more emphatic form posed as a question is "ce drăcia dracului?" (lit. "what the devil's devilish ?", similar to "what the hell").

Other expressions used include

• cum-îi-zice / cum-se-cheamă ("what's-it-called"),
• nu-știu-cum/ce/care/cine/când ("I-don't-know-how/what/which/who/when"),
• cine știe ce/cum/care/cine/când" ("who-knows-what/how/which/who/when"), and
• un din-ăla (masculine) or o-din-aia (feminine) ("one of those things").

Placeholders for numbers include zeci de mii ("tens of thousands"), often contracted to j'de mii (or even țâșpe mii; from -șpe, an informal numeral suffix equivalent to "-teen" in "sixteen", attached to ț, a Romanian letter sometimes seen as "extra", analogue to the English "a zillion") and also mii şi mii ("thousands and thousands"). Diverse colloquial formulas for "a lot" exist, including o căruță (lit. "a cart-full"), o grămadă (lit. "a pile"), "căcălău" (vulgar; it doesn't mean anything other than "(really) lots of (smth.)"; it sounds both scatological and augumentative in Romanian; comparable with "shit-load") or the poetic "câtă frunză, câtă iarbă" (lit. "as many leaves and blades of grass", referring to a large number of people).

Cucuieţii-din-Deal is a name for obscure and remote places. La mama dracului or la mama naibii ("where the devil's mother dwells", lit. "at the devil's mother") also means a very remote place. For the same purpose, Romanians use also La Cuca Măcăii (an actual remote village in central Romania) and La dracu' in praznic (at the devil's celebration). Other place names may be used as generic placeholders, depending on the speaker's origins.

La paștele cailor (when horses will celebrate Easter), Când o face plopu' pere (when pears will grow in a poplar), Când o zbura porcu' (when pigs will fly) and La Sfântul Așteaptă (on Saint Wait's day) both mean "some day in the indefinite future, or quite likely never".