Romanian Grammar - Nouns - Case

Case

Romanian has inherited from Latin five cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and vocative. Morphologically the nominative and the accusative are identical; similarly the genitive and the dative share the same form. The vocative is less used as it is normally restricted to nouns designating people or things which can be addressed directly; additionally, nouns in the vocative often borrow the nominative form even when there is a distinct vocative form available.

The genitive-dative form can be derived from the nominative. If the noun is determined by an indefinite article then the genitive-dative mark is applied to the article, not to the noun, for example un băiat - unui băiat (a boy - of/to a boy); for feminine nouns the form used in the singular is most often identical to the plural, for example o carte - unei cărți - două cărți (a book - of/to a book - two books). Similarly, if the noun is determined by the definite article (enclitic in Romanian, see that section), the genitive-dative mark is added at the end of the noun together with the article, for example băiatul - băiatului (the boy - of/to the boy), cartea - cărții (the book - of/to the book). Masculine proper names designating people form the genitive-dative by placing the article lui before the noun: lui Brâncuși (of/to Brancusi); the same applies to feminine names only when they don't have a typically feminine ending: lui Carmen.

In usual genitival phrases such as numele trandafirului (the name of the rose), the genitive is only recognized by the specific ending (-lui in this example) and no other words are necessary. However, in other situations, usually if the noun modified by the genitive attribute is indefinite, the genitival article is required, as for example in câteva opere ale scriitorului (some of the writer's works).

Romanian dative phrases exhibit clitic doubling similar to that in Spanish, in which the noun in the dative is doubled by a pronoun. The position of this pronoun in the sentence depends on the mood and tense of the verb. For example, in the sentence Le dau un cadou părinților (I give a present to parents), the pronoun le doubles the noun părinților without bringing any additional information.

As specified above, the vocative case in Romanian has a special form for most nouns, but for convenience reasons the form of the nominative is often employed. The traditional vocative is retained in speech, however, in informal speech, or by people living in the countryside. It is seen as a mark of unrefined speech by the majority of city-dwellers, who refrain from its usage. The forms of the vocative are as follows. (Note that the vocative does not have both definite and indefinite forms, as it is not used with any specific function within sentences. The following rules are to be applied for the indefinite form of the nouns):

• Singular feminine nouns and proper names ending in an unstressed -ă/-a take the ending -o e.g. fată → fato (girl!)
• Singular feminine nouns ending in an unstressed -e take the ending -eo e.g. punte → punteo! (bridge!)
• Singular feminine nouns ending in a stressed -a take the ending -auo e.g. nuia → nuiauo! (stick!)
• Singular masculine and neuter nouns ending in a consonant take the ending -ule e.g. băiat → băiatule! (boy!)
• Singular masculine and neuter nouns ending in unstressed -e/-ă take no extra ending (-Ø) e.g. frate → frate! (brother!)
• Masculine proper names take the ending -e e.g. Ștefan → Ștefane! (Stephen!)
• All plural nouns take the ending -lor e.g. mere → merelor! (apples!)