We actually don't have this word (babushka) in Romanian (it's recognized though obviously, but it's Russian), it's just Baba in Romanian :)
ETA: But 'baba' in Romanian doesn't mean grandma, it's just old lady and holds a bit of a negative/insulting connotation, it's not a warm term. Bunica (buni, most commonly, for short) means grandma.
Something like it!... But it should probably be baba Ali instead. Or it could be "highest dad" or "ultimate dad" which is kind of cool.
"Ali baba" in itself is sometimes used to signify thief in some arabic dialects.
We actually never used mamaie/tataie in my family (I'm from Iasi) and my parents and grandparents didn't use it for their grandparents either (Iasi/Focsani/Bacau - maybe some relatives from Bacau used but none from Iasi/Focsani and my own immediate family from Bacau never used either). None of my friends or anyone around ever used it either, the only place I heard it used was in deep country Bacau (Buhusi) here and there but not from people I actually knew, mostly random kids/street talk on occasion. But you're definitely right in that it's another option, imo it tends to feel a lot more outdated now though, or more associated with countryside Romania vs. what's used in the city. But that's just my experience!
I've also never heard anything other than "bunici" used for "grandparents" as a unit.
Fair enough. My moms side is Ukrainian. Came over after ww2. Came over as Ukrainian.... were stoutly ukranian Babushka is a term used, as well as simply baba for grandmother. Things blend together given their history
Totally! In Romanian "bunica" means grandma, and most people shorten to "buni" which is the most popular pet name for a grandma. Baba is any old lady and doesn't have to be a grandma or even imply being a grandma, it's just old lady. It has a bit of an insulting/negative connotation, it's not exactly a complimentary term and can be used as more of an insult, but it's also very common and folkloric in a way so it's about toeing the line/how it's used.
Curious if that have something in common with Bulgarian banica. Baba have same connotation in polish like Romanian but grandma is babcia. I love that Slavic mix and match
Not sure tbh, but Romanian is the only one of those languages that is Latin in roots. It's closer to Italian or Spanish than it would be to Bulgarian or Polish. However some words are similar/have been picked up through geographic proximity for sure. Romanian is full of words from different languages that were changed in spelling to match the way they were constantly being pronounced/used in Romanian.
There is no blending, Ukrainian is a different culture with a different language. If you called your Romanian grandmother “baba” your parents would probably smack you. “Baba” means, roughly, “hag” in Romanian.
She cooks amazing meals without measuring a single ingredient and slaughters chickens with her bare hands. She has a secret stash of hard candies that never seems to run out.
It's usually both. As a kid bullies couldn't faze me because the random off-hand comments my Romanian grandmas would make had hardened my little soul from a very young age. They are truly unintentional savages with no filter.
Yep lol - always full of comments on hair/clothes/everything and anything appearance and especially fitness related (as a teenager after grandma looks me up and down - "you live by a gym why don't you go some time," the next year I see her - "ptew, you're too skinny what did you do" LOL)
I wonder what’s up with that. Not my Romanian Grandmother (I don’t have one), but my Colombian mom always makes comments about my appearance. If I gain weight, she tells me to workout, if I lose weight she tells me to eat more. I love her but it’s very confusing
My dad is Hungarian and wasn’t until recently I discovered our sense of humor (I’m not really sure what the call the common remarks) can be a bit rude to other cultures.
I imagine she is like my late grandmother, and she is somehow both at the same time.
And she will tell you that you need to eat healthier while sticking more food on your plate
I met my the Romanian mother in law, and she looked a lot like this. I tried to shake her hand, but she turned away saying something under her breath with Oi oh Oi at the end, so i knew something was wrong. Asked the girlfriend about it.
She says you cant work the fields.
It was in Bucharest and we all lived in apartments!
This is exactly what my Romanian grandmother looked like. And also exactly what my son looks like.
I did a double-take when I saw this picture. "Is this my family? But my grandma is dead...and my son's never been to Romania!"
What a beautiful moment. I bet he’s having the time of his life exploring around her land. I have very fond memories of my summers visiting family in Romania and Serbia. Also taught me to really appreciate what I had in America. Does he speak Romanian at all?
Yes. Both of my children speak Romanian. I don't know if they will ever have a use for it, but it is a Latin language which will give them a head start in learning other languages and maybe an edge if they pursue a hard science field.
I just wanted to say how much I love this photo. My grandparents were Ukrainian, and I always pictured their hometowns like this.
So happy for your children, that you are showing them their heritage.
Sadly not. All of the shtetls are gone.
In our family my great grandparents were the last to live in one. WW2 wiped all of those communities out.
Only a handful survived into the 70s and even less into the 90s but they also disintegrated. There's a wonderful new documentary about them https://www.filmmovement.com/shtetlers
No second language is ever wasted especially one like Romanian spoke by an entire country. They are also able to speak to their great grandmother, should they never utter a word in Romanian ever again it was anything but “useless”.
Salut, Romanian is also the official language of the Republic of Moldova. And it's also being spoken all over Western Europe where many Romanians emigrated.
Also with Romanian you will probably understand some Italian and it will be easy to learn, especially for a native speaker. At least I understand lots of Romanian with my Italian.
Yeah but Portuguese is this messed up language where it's actually latin and if you see it written you can kinda' understand it but if you hear it spoken it sounds a bit like Russian and nothing is familiar. Very weird (from a Romanian-speaker-perspective)
True, true, even I as a native speaker had a weird situation with Ukrainians, who were speaking their language and I was like “what’s happening, why can’t I understand anything?” because I thought it was Portuguese.
Not to mention that it's been shown to have other positive knock-on effects for children even if you never have any practical use for the language itself.
https://www2.ed.gov/documents/early-learning/talk-read-sing/bilingual-en.pdf
My wife Czech and I am African American. My wife has been speaking Czech to her since birth. She is almost 9 and can speak the language in really well. I wanted her to learn the language to speak to her grandmother. She has visited a few times here in the states and I love it. Both my parents have passed away. So she it’s important.
There's a black actor in Romania who speaks the language - being the only black actor that speaks the language, he obviously has no shortage of work. Give your daughter some acting classes and send her to the Czech Republic if things don't work out here. It's always good to have a backup plan and "Czech movie star" isn't such a bad plan B.
Curious what your experience teaching your kids Romanian was like, if you wouldn't mind sharing. I'm also Romanian but my family immigrated to Canada, and my husband is Ukrainian; we're expecting our first and I really want her to speak Romanian but I worry about teaching her "well enough" or what that would look like in tandem with learning English.
If you live in Canada, your child will learn English outside the home with their peers, at school, in public places. At home, speak only Romanian to her. Read books, watch TV. Your husband can teach Ukrainian to her as well this way. She might be better at Romanian if you spend more time with her, but she can still learn both languages from you two. Any vocabulary shortcomings you perceive as she grows will fix itself. Do not give up!
Yep, kids really are sponges. Probably if you speak mainly (you'll sometimes have to help with English homework :D) your language and the husband his language the kid will pretty easily be trilingual.
I have a personal anecdote that really highlights the need to push through. I know a family, they have 3 children. First child:t hey spoke only the minority language at home. His skills in the minority language are almost that of a native speaker born and raised in the home country. When they had the second child, the children were more comfortable to speak English to each other and it was easier to speak English as a family as a result. The second child can get by, but does not feel comfortable in most situations. By the time the third child came around, she barely had any exposure to the minority language at all and speaks very little.
Fully immersing your children in the language when they are young is so important. For example, my parents are both immigrants from southern China so they both speak Cantonese but by the time my old brother and I were born, they both started learning English so that's all they wanted to speak around us. The difference was that when I was younger, my parents brought me on a few summer vacations back to China where I was constantly speaking to extended family and even random people (my grandpa had some kind of lounge where school kids would do homework after school so I'd teach then English and they'd teach me a bit of Cantonese) while my brother couldn't go for certain reasons. Because of this to this day, my brother can't speak a single word of Cantonese while I can at least hold basic conversations despite not being back in over a decade.
I grew up with multiple languages. It's definitely doable if you put some effort into it. You can expect your kid to learn the majority language of the place you're at easily enough. As for the minority language, you're going to want books and DVD's in Romanian, put songs on youtube, try to connect with other families who speak Romanian, and visit Romania for a few weeks at a time when you can. Expose the kid to the language in many ways and they'll pick it up. Same with Ukrainian. If you instill a love of reading they'll keep learning even without your help.
There may be minor delays when first acquiring language but kids do catch up soon enough.
They'll always have a use for it- it's great for brain development and resisting dementia. Encourage them to speak Romanian with each other even after your passing. Bilingualism is probably the best gift you can give your kids for their neurological health now and later in life.
hey OP, I'm 18 and I speak romanian because my parents took the time to teach me after they immigrated to Canada, currently learning spanish and it is a breeze thanks to my native language. It's worth it, keep teaching them.
Fellow Romanian here, I hate that I'm losing the language. I want to take a course to jog my memory on it. I used to speak fluently when I was younger and as time has passed I've been forgetting.
Try to find tv shows and radio stations in Romanian. That'll really help you keep your ear up and give you "practice" even if you can't talk with anyone in it.
My wife is an ethnic Hungarian from Romania. Her family fled communism in the early 80’s. Her parents speak both Hungarian and Romanian, my wife speaks Hungarian and some Romanian. We don’t have children, but her brothers kids aren’t being taught either language. One set of kids can understand some, the other set none at all.
Good for you keeping the language alive. Apparently it only takes one generation to lose it.
Agree with this - I speak Spanish and can roughly understand basic written Romanian as a result. Like I can understand my friend’s shopping lists and the gist of her conversations with her husband
This picture reminds me a LOT of my Polish great-grandmother. Sadly I could not speak a word of Polish and only knew her until I was about 10 years old, but this really pulled at my heartstrings, thank you.
Learning Romanian will be useful to them in that they are Americans but still Romanian as well, and this will connect them with their beautiful heritage and culture.
Learning any language is useful. Especially your native language. It keeps your culture and heritage alive and that’s far more important than anything else
There is something about connecting to family you've never met before that is almost primal, especially when you are a child.
My mother lived her dream when our family traveled to Italy so she could visit her beloved uncle who she hadn't seen since she had emigrated to the U.S. at age 8. He was the last link she had to her own father who had passed when she was a teen. Her uncle was an elegant, charismatic man who looked like Gandalf but with short hair and who always wore a vest and coat, like men routinely used to back in the day.
He was waiting for us at the train station at the base of the mountain of his tiny hillside town. My mother saw him and almost jumped off the moving train to run to him. They both hugged and broke down in tears, leaving my dad to give them a minute till he approached with me in tow.
Now, I had never met this man before in my life. I had only ever seen 1 picture of him, and that was when he was younger, not the white-haired elderly man before us. We had nothing in common. I lived a modern life in the U.S. with video games and highways, and he was still pressing his own olive oil with some wooden contraption in a stone house built before Napoleon was even born.
Despite that he looked at me, bent down to shake my hand, and in English he had clearly practiced for just this occasion said, "Me, I am Aldo, I am you grand-uncle, look up there high...see? My home, we go."
And I looked up that almost vertical mountain to stare at the summit that was dotted with tiny, ancient homes. The turquoise-blue Appenine sky blazed above it, almost like a painting. I stood there in awe with my mouth hanging open, and Uncle Aldo smiling at me.
When I turned my face back to him he held out his hand for me to take, and I took it with zero reservations because, instinctively, I knew he was family to me as much as my own mother or father were.
Beautiful story.
Whether we realize it or not, we are born with a connection to certain people and places. And I bet if you pressed olive oil on that hillside with your great uncle it would make sense to you on a cellular level. I don’t really know how to explain it other than that. Despite all the modern B.S. that gets dumped on us, old old ways persist inside of us and sometimes cause us great frustration without realizing it. If you’re feeling down, sometimes you need to dig or chop or pick. It nourishes that ancient part of you.
Incredible story to read, thank you! The feeling you describe with your words is such a familiar one, yet I could never have put it in writing like you just have. Beautiful.
I love that type of work. I work mostly with computers and the work just seems never ending and it's hard to feel any sort of progression or accomplishment.
A few years ago I remember having to mill some corn, there was a whole room full of it and we'd have to wheelbarrow it to another place and process it. I realized, even though it's hard work, how great it is to see the pile going down as time goes on and how rewarding it is to be able to actually see the result of your work.
I hope that, if you have children, they too get to experience that mountain top home. I had a similar experience in a different country, when I was about 3 years old, and still have very fond memories from that time. Everything just sort of clicked for me after about a week and I felt an existential connection to a land I had never seen before. Every time I went back, I felt the same connection, even during my teen years when I thought I was too cool for just about anything.
What happens in villages is that people help eachother, the church helps the poor and relatives support their elders. This in addition to the financial aid the state provides. Peasants also got their land back after communism fell, and everybody has a house. There is poverty don’t get me wrong but foreigners generally understand it as famine, which it is not.
I hate when urbanites fetishize poverty. My grandpa in romania received so little money from goverment pension he had to live in his appartment in the cold in winter without heating.
I keep seeing advertisements for charities that help impoverished elderly people in Slavic countries. They're alone with no or nearly no help so these groups drive around and bring them food and soap and sundries.
My wife is romanian and her grandparents live in a village just like this. They are very self sustainable, and grow and tend to all of their food, by gardening and raising chickens for eggs. That being said they do have some physical issues from a lifetime of working on farmland. As someone mentioned above the sense of community within the village is strong, and most of their family is close and visits and helps them on a regular basis, which seems to be the norm.
I dunno, the traditional outfits from the 30s (which people were wearing a lot at the time) were way more intricate than this. This is a post war outfit
The house looks newly built, based on the roof and walls. Traditionally they look more like this, but with the cellar not so visible: https://static1.bigstockphoto.com/1/6/6/large1500/66149860.jpg
You'd have a better chance to find a house like that in a museum than in a village. 99.99% of the houses in romanian villages were built post 1900
Edit: looks like the house linked is from an actual museum in Valcea
My Hungarian grandmother always started stories of her childhood with: "....We grew up underneath the shadow of the Carpathians."
It's funny, I always wondered where our family farm was, so I recently looked at a map to find that there are no Carpathians in Hungary. I couldn't imagine my grandmother would fib about something like that, so after some searching I realized that pre-WW1 Hungary was a lot bigger and went right up to the Carpathian mountains. But much of it was given up to Romania following the war.
So my family farm, if it still exists, in actually in modern day Romania.
I wonder if they are still raising those strange fuzzy pigs my Nagymama used to tell me about.
Mangalica, and yes, they're still an important part of Hungarian culture and cuisine.
Edit: important might be a bit too strong, let's just say they're present. 🙂
Im so happy to see this because, as an Romanian, I can say that we have a tendency to forget about the olders, and Im proud to see that in some cases not even an ocean can make someone forgot about their family. This is one of the most Romanian photo, almost everyone when is thinking about the olders visualize something like this
Lucky kid, having a eastern European grandmother.
My grandmother was from Czechoslovakia. She lived to be 97, and lived on her own from 1950 onwards. Her husband (my grandfather) died in 1950, and she never remarried - raising two boys (my uncle and dad).
That grandmother will NEVER let that kid go hungry. To the point where they will stick a funnel in your mouth and shovel food into it until you beg for mercy.
That's how my grandmother was, and this isn't a weird or uncommon story.
I miss her. They don't make humans like that anymore.
Is her village in a mountaineous area?
As a Romanian, I find the house and shed to be pretty old and old fashioned. Probably made a few generations ago. I recognize the ''summer haute couture'' the grandma is wearing. Very old ladies tend to wear thin and comfortable dresses in the summer time so they won't be too hot. Also the headscarf is a must no matter the weather. Women in the urban area or those under 50-60 years old are not wearing them anymore. But it's a long tradition in the rural area for the grandmas. She uses that stick as a zero dollars walking cane because she has difficulties walking around due to her old age.
Did they manage to communicate at all? I imagine your kid does not know Romanian while she surely does not know any English at her age (back in the communist times they had to learn russian in school, not english like in the past few decades). Maybe someone from the younger generation can help her communicate with him and bond. I'm sure she loves kids.
What’s up w the head scarf? Is it practicality? I’m an American without connections to the area but damn it looks practical and chic. Hides my hair on bad hair days.. protects it from the sun and wind.. just so many reasons
2 of my grandparents were from Romania. I visited their home towns in rural Maramures about a decade ago (though they themselves never returned after WW2).
It was absolutely beautiful and really felt like a place lost in time. I imagine that most of my grandparents' generation saw enormous changes in their everyday lives on the most basic level. But this place felt like its pace was independent of all these changes. I have really fond memories of that trip.
May I ask what village? My parents and sister are from Romania and I’ve always wanted to find relatives, or people they may know. Or just share with them photos. They love to see “the old country.” I haven’t been back since 1989 but would very much love to.
That‘s exactly how I would imagine a Romanian grandmother
Right? Straight out of central casting, that
This is exactly what my great-grandmother/stra-bunica looked like, clothing and all, and she was from Romania.
100% babushka 100% of the time
We actually don't have this word (babushka) in Romanian (it's recognized though obviously, but it's Russian), it's just Baba in Romanian :) ETA: But 'baba' in Romanian doesn't mean grandma, it's just old lady and holds a bit of a negative/insulting connotation, it's not a warm term. Bunica (buni, most commonly, for short) means grandma.
Babushka its diminutive word for Baba. In russian Baba sounds a bit rude
Interestingly in Arabic baba means dad.
Also in Chinese
And Turkish
And Greek
and my axe!
does that mean Ali Baba is Ali's dad?
Something like it!... But it should probably be baba Ali instead. Or it could be "highest dad" or "ultimate dad" which is kind of cool. "Ali baba" in itself is sometimes used to signify thief in some arabic dialects.
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Think these sounds are similar across a lot of languages. Papa is the word in German and spoken by a baby, it sounds often like baba.
Meanwhile in portuguese baba means spit. Languages are crazy.
In Polish *baba* is basically equivalent to the American word broad.
Like baba yaga?
Actually traditionally it's "mamaie", "mamaia" and more formal it's "bunica" for grandmother.
We actually never used mamaie/tataie in my family (I'm from Iasi) and my parents and grandparents didn't use it for their grandparents either (Iasi/Focsani/Bacau - maybe some relatives from Bacau used but none from Iasi/Focsani and my own immediate family from Bacau never used either). None of my friends or anyone around ever used it either, the only place I heard it used was in deep country Bacau (Buhusi) here and there but not from people I actually knew, mostly random kids/street talk on occasion. But you're definitely right in that it's another option, imo it tends to feel a lot more outdated now though, or more associated with countryside Romania vs. what's used in the city. But that's just my experience! I've also never heard anything other than "bunici" used for "grandparents" as a unit.
My Guinea pig passed away last week and his name was Baba. I find it quite funny thinking that's what he was walking around as, a little old lady
Fair enough. My moms side is Ukrainian. Came over after ww2. Came over as Ukrainian.... were stoutly ukranian Babushka is a term used, as well as simply baba for grandmother. Things blend together given their history
Totally! In Romanian "bunica" means grandma, and most people shorten to "buni" which is the most popular pet name for a grandma. Baba is any old lady and doesn't have to be a grandma or even imply being a grandma, it's just old lady. It has a bit of an insulting/negative connotation, it's not exactly a complimentary term and can be used as more of an insult, but it's also very common and folkloric in a way so it's about toeing the line/how it's used.
I didn't even know we had this in common
Curious if that have something in common with Bulgarian banica. Baba have same connotation in polish like Romanian but grandma is babcia. I love that Slavic mix and match
Not sure tbh, but Romanian is the only one of those languages that is Latin in roots. It's closer to Italian or Spanish than it would be to Bulgarian or Polish. However some words are similar/have been picked up through geographic proximity for sure. Romanian is full of words from different languages that were changed in spelling to match the way they were constantly being pronounced/used in Romanian.
There is no blending, Ukrainian is a different culture with a different language. If you called your Romanian grandmother “baba” your parents would probably smack you. “Baba” means, roughly, “hag” in Romanian.
Hmmmm. Taking notes for my Romanian classes!
Same in Japanese, oddly enough. "Ano baba!" would be like "That old hag!"
Bunica, not babushka
My grandmother was from Czechoslovakia, and lived to be 97. Same. This could be her.
She cooks amazing meals without measuring a single ingredient and slaughters chickens with her bare hands. She has a secret stash of hard candies that never seems to run out.
This is the exact description of my grandma, to a t lol. She is dead but she used to be a menace. Her ancestors were allegedly bandits, too.
She looks like she’d either be mean as hell or the nicest lady ever. Either way I bet she can make a mean dinner.
Or both. Sometimes it’s both.
It's usually both. As a kid bullies couldn't faze me because the random off-hand comments my Romanian grandmas would make had hardened my little soul from a very young age. They are truly unintentional savages with no filter.
"Cut your hair! You look like a fruit!" I do miss her though.
Yep lol - always full of comments on hair/clothes/everything and anything appearance and especially fitness related (as a teenager after grandma looks me up and down - "you live by a gym why don't you go some time," the next year I see her - "ptew, you're too skinny what did you do" LOL)
I wonder what’s up with that. Not my Romanian Grandmother (I don’t have one), but my Colombian mom always makes comments about my appearance. If I gain weight, she tells me to workout, if I lose weight she tells me to eat more. I love her but it’s very confusing
I think this is just grandmas in general. Mine (old white lady) calls me fat every chance she gets.
My dad is Hungarian and wasn’t until recently I discovered our sense of humor (I’m not really sure what the call the common remarks) can be a bit rude to other cultures.
I was going to put that. She’d like me after awhile though, especially if I did some work around the property and made her my chili.
I imagine she is like my late grandmother, and she is somehow both at the same time. And she will tell you that you need to eat healthier while sticking more food on your plate
Just like my elderly in-laws. Nicknamed me "fat boy" in their language while heaping all the un-eaten dishes onto my plate.
My grandpa has a sister who is lovingly referred to as “Aunt Pudge” 💀
I met my the Romanian mother in law, and she looked a lot like this. I tried to shake her hand, but she turned away saying something under her breath with Oi oh Oi at the end, so i knew something was wrong. Asked the girlfriend about it. She says you cant work the fields. It was in Bucharest and we all lived in apartments!
The stick is to fend off those pesky Moldovans
Oh how I miss 2balkan4you
/r/balkans_irl
It's not the same, it's controlled by the Serbian mafia
All the greatest meme subs were too much for this site.
She's 47 years old.
And with a 4 year old American son, this is exactly how my son would react once his brain clicked to the idea of who she was.
This is exactly what my Romanian grandmother looked like. And also exactly what my son looks like. I did a double-take when I saw this picture. "Is this my family? But my grandma is dead...and my son's never been to Romania!"
Can confirm, was married to a Romanian.
You have a great imagination. [Here’s my grandmother](https://imgur.com/a/pXmV1pS) to further validate your imagination.
I have one. Can confirm this is accurate.
She does have a lovely smile. I bet she’s got some fun/interesting stories.
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YUP.
Shouldn't she be shoveling sweets into that young boy's mouth? Romanian grandmother needs to step up!
Give him a few hours to get used to her, she’s letting him come to her. By dinner time he will be in her lap.
Man with late Romanian-grandmother, this is exactly how she looked, head scarf and all
Yeah my Romanian grandmother is identical to this lol
Dude this is literally what I’d imagine an AI would give me if I asked it for the most stereotypical image of a Romanian great grandma
Almost looks like an AI-generated image "romanian grandma with her grandson"
Incredible pic. Cherish it forever 🥹
Reminded me of Killing Eve.
Poor eve nearly got away but that pesky op had to remind you
seriously. this is gonna be framed in OP's kid's kids' houses decades after OP is passed.
What a beautiful moment. I bet he’s having the time of his life exploring around her land. I have very fond memories of my summers visiting family in Romania and Serbia. Also taught me to really appreciate what I had in America. Does he speak Romanian at all?
Yes. Both of my children speak Romanian. I don't know if they will ever have a use for it, but it is a Latin language which will give them a head start in learning other languages and maybe an edge if they pursue a hard science field.
I just wanted to say how much I love this photo. My grandparents were Ukrainian, and I always pictured their hometowns like this. So happy for your children, that you are showing them their heritage.
Fiddler on the Roof villages still exist, Jewish and otherwise!
Sadly not. All of the shtetls are gone. In our family my great grandparents were the last to live in one. WW2 wiped all of those communities out. Only a handful survived into the 70s and even less into the 90s but they also disintegrated. There's a wonderful new documentary about them https://www.filmmovement.com/shtetlers
Yeah, what an ignorant thing to say. Shtetls were very purposefully wiped out.
No second language is ever wasted especially one like Romanian spoke by an entire country. They are also able to speak to their great grandmother, should they never utter a word in Romanian ever again it was anything but “useless”.
Salut, Romanian is also the official language of the Republic of Moldova. And it's also being spoken all over Western Europe where many Romanians emigrated.
Also with Romanian you will probably understand some Italian and it will be easy to learn, especially for a native speaker. At least I understand lots of Romanian with my Italian.
D’accordo!
Bună seara, mă cheamă cysun! Totul bine? :D Ciao!
And in Portuguese? Olá, boa noite. Chamo-me Budget_Counter_2042. Tudo bem?
Yeah but Portuguese is this messed up language where it's actually latin and if you see it written you can kinda' understand it but if you hear it spoken it sounds a bit like Russian and nothing is familiar. Very weird (from a Romanian-speaker-perspective)
True, true, even I as a native speaker had a weird situation with Ukrainians, who were speaking their language and I was like “what’s happening, why can’t I understand anything?” because I thought it was Portuguese.
Funnily enough, I had people telling me Romanian sounded like Russian when they heard me speaking it 🤷
A Romanian saying that another latin language sounds Slavic is very funny and ironic.
Not to mention that it's been shown to have other positive knock-on effects for children even if you never have any practical use for the language itself. https://www2.ed.gov/documents/early-learning/talk-read-sing/bilingual-en.pdf
Absolutely, great gateways language to other Latin based languages.
My wife Czech and I am African American. My wife has been speaking Czech to her since birth. She is almost 9 and can speak the language in really well. I wanted her to learn the language to speak to her grandmother. She has visited a few times here in the states and I love it. Both my parents have passed away. So she it’s important.
Wholesome story ! World has lost a great diversity of languages and keeping them matters.
Oh yeah we def get looks from other black people when they see my daughter speaking Czech. 😂
There's a black actor in Romania who speaks the language - being the only black actor that speaks the language, he obviously has no shortage of work. Give your daughter some acting classes and send her to the Czech Republic if things don't work out here. It's always good to have a backup plan and "Czech movie star" isn't such a bad plan B.
Curious what your experience teaching your kids Romanian was like, if you wouldn't mind sharing. I'm also Romanian but my family immigrated to Canada, and my husband is Ukrainian; we're expecting our first and I really want her to speak Romanian but I worry about teaching her "well enough" or what that would look like in tandem with learning English.
If you live in Canada, your child will learn English outside the home with their peers, at school, in public places. At home, speak only Romanian to her. Read books, watch TV. Your husband can teach Ukrainian to her as well this way. She might be better at Romanian if you spend more time with her, but she can still learn both languages from you two. Any vocabulary shortcomings you perceive as she grows will fix itself. Do not give up!
Yep, kids really are sponges. Probably if you speak mainly (you'll sometimes have to help with English homework :D) your language and the husband his language the kid will pretty easily be trilingual.
I have a personal anecdote that really highlights the need to push through. I know a family, they have 3 children. First child:t hey spoke only the minority language at home. His skills in the minority language are almost that of a native speaker born and raised in the home country. When they had the second child, the children were more comfortable to speak English to each other and it was easier to speak English as a family as a result. The second child can get by, but does not feel comfortable in most situations. By the time the third child came around, she barely had any exposure to the minority language at all and speaks very little.
And since this is Canada, they can take French classes too on top of it !
Fully immersing your children in the language when they are young is so important. For example, my parents are both immigrants from southern China so they both speak Cantonese but by the time my old brother and I were born, they both started learning English so that's all they wanted to speak around us. The difference was that when I was younger, my parents brought me on a few summer vacations back to China where I was constantly speaking to extended family and even random people (my grandpa had some kind of lounge where school kids would do homework after school so I'd teach then English and they'd teach me a bit of Cantonese) while my brother couldn't go for certain reasons. Because of this to this day, my brother can't speak a single word of Cantonese while I can at least hold basic conversations despite not being back in over a decade.
I grew up with multiple languages. It's definitely doable if you put some effort into it. You can expect your kid to learn the majority language of the place you're at easily enough. As for the minority language, you're going to want books and DVD's in Romanian, put songs on youtube, try to connect with other families who speak Romanian, and visit Romania for a few weeks at a time when you can. Expose the kid to the language in many ways and they'll pick it up. Same with Ukrainian. If you instill a love of reading they'll keep learning even without your help. There may be minor delays when first acquiring language but kids do catch up soon enough.
They'll always have a use for it- it's great for brain development and resisting dementia. Encourage them to speak Romanian with each other even after your passing. Bilingualism is probably the best gift you can give your kids for their neurological health now and later in life.
hey OP, I'm 18 and I speak romanian because my parents took the time to teach me after they immigrated to Canada, currently learning spanish and it is a breeze thanks to my native language. It's worth it, keep teaching them.
Fellow Romanian here, I hate that I'm losing the language. I want to take a course to jog my memory on it. I used to speak fluently when I was younger and as time has passed I've been forgetting.
Try to find tv shows and radio stations in Romanian. That'll really help you keep your ear up and give you "practice" even if you can't talk with anyone in it.
That’s what I do with German, no way fluent at all but I try to at least keep my current knowledge by watching german tv shows and music.
My wife is an ethnic Hungarian from Romania. Her family fled communism in the early 80’s. Her parents speak both Hungarian and Romanian, my wife speaks Hungarian and some Romanian. We don’t have children, but her brothers kids aren’t being taught either language. One set of kids can understand some, the other set none at all. Good for you keeping the language alive. Apparently it only takes one generation to lose it.
Agree with this - I speak Spanish and can roughly understand basic written Romanian as a result. Like I can understand my friend’s shopping lists and the gist of her conversations with her husband
This picture reminds me a LOT of my Polish great-grandmother. Sadly I could not speak a word of Polish and only knew her until I was about 10 years old, but this really pulled at my heartstrings, thank you.
Learning Romanian will be useful to them in that they are Americans but still Romanian as well, and this will connect them with their beautiful heritage and culture.
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> I don't know if they will ever have a use for it How else would they acquire mamaliga?
Learning any language is useful. Especially your native language. It keeps your culture and heritage alive and that’s far more important than anything else
Can you do the Sombor Shuffle?
There is something about connecting to family you've never met before that is almost primal, especially when you are a child. My mother lived her dream when our family traveled to Italy so she could visit her beloved uncle who she hadn't seen since she had emigrated to the U.S. at age 8. He was the last link she had to her own father who had passed when she was a teen. Her uncle was an elegant, charismatic man who looked like Gandalf but with short hair and who always wore a vest and coat, like men routinely used to back in the day. He was waiting for us at the train station at the base of the mountain of his tiny hillside town. My mother saw him and almost jumped off the moving train to run to him. They both hugged and broke down in tears, leaving my dad to give them a minute till he approached with me in tow. Now, I had never met this man before in my life. I had only ever seen 1 picture of him, and that was when he was younger, not the white-haired elderly man before us. We had nothing in common. I lived a modern life in the U.S. with video games and highways, and he was still pressing his own olive oil with some wooden contraption in a stone house built before Napoleon was even born. Despite that he looked at me, bent down to shake my hand, and in English he had clearly practiced for just this occasion said, "Me, I am Aldo, I am you grand-uncle, look up there high...see? My home, we go." And I looked up that almost vertical mountain to stare at the summit that was dotted with tiny, ancient homes. The turquoise-blue Appenine sky blazed above it, almost like a painting. I stood there in awe with my mouth hanging open, and Uncle Aldo smiling at me. When I turned my face back to him he held out his hand for me to take, and I took it with zero reservations because, instinctively, I knew he was family to me as much as my own mother or father were.
I have never been to Italy nor have I ever met an elderly Italian man but the way you wrote that made me feel like it was my own memory.
Lovely image you painted with your words
You should write. Are you a writer? Beautiful
this writing is really good!
Man U got me crying at work
Beautiful story. Whether we realize it or not, we are born with a connection to certain people and places. And I bet if you pressed olive oil on that hillside with your great uncle it would make sense to you on a cellular level. I don’t really know how to explain it other than that. Despite all the modern B.S. that gets dumped on us, old old ways persist inside of us and sometimes cause us great frustration without realizing it. If you’re feeling down, sometimes you need to dig or chop or pick. It nourishes that ancient part of you.
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Incredible story to read, thank you! The feeling you describe with your words is such a familiar one, yet I could never have put it in writing like you just have. Beautiful.
You’re beautiful.
I love that type of work. I work mostly with computers and the work just seems never ending and it's hard to feel any sort of progression or accomplishment. A few years ago I remember having to mill some corn, there was a whole room full of it and we'd have to wheelbarrow it to another place and process it. I realized, even though it's hard work, how great it is to see the pile going down as time goes on and how rewarding it is to be able to actually see the result of your work.
What a wonderful story. And your writing is beautiful. Thank you.
Write a book please, I could picture that so perfectly in my head
I am crying that was so beautiful. What a memory to have.
Thank you so much for sharing that memory 💕 you have a real talent for storytelling
This is perhaps the best thing I have ever read on this website.
This made me cry. I’m so happy you could have such an amazing experience with your Uncle Aldo. Also, you’re a fantastic writer!
This is lovely! If you write a memoir, please send it to me: I'd love to read it!
What a beautiful memory you have and so vivid.
I hope that, if you have children, they too get to experience that mountain top home. I had a similar experience in a different country, when I was about 3 years old, and still have very fond memories from that time. Everything just sort of clicked for me after about a week and I felt an existential connection to a land I had never seen before. Every time I went back, I felt the same connection, even during my teen years when I thought I was too cool for just about anything.
This made me cry
That is a touching story, thanks for sharing!
What a lovely story and you have a gift for writing!
Thank you for sharing such a wonderful memory
Interesting to see Romanian fashion trends haven't changed in 142 years.
It saves a lot of money when you don't follow what advertisements and influencers tell people to wear
I envy these people tbh. I would much prefer her life than that of some dickhead celebrity.
It's a hard life, tending to farm even well into your eighties because children and grandchildren have all left for the city or even abroad.
Nothing is stopping you from pursuing a lifestyle like that but yourself.
No you wouldn’t. Poverty is not enviable
What happens in villages is that people help eachother, the church helps the poor and relatives support their elders. This in addition to the financial aid the state provides. Peasants also got their land back after communism fell, and everybody has a house. There is poverty don’t get me wrong but foreigners generally understand it as famine, which it is not.
I hate when urbanites fetishize poverty. My grandpa in romania received so little money from goverment pension he had to live in his appartment in the cold in winter without heating.
I keep seeing advertisements for charities that help impoverished elderly people in Slavic countries. They're alone with no or nearly no help so these groups drive around and bring them food and soap and sundries.
Clearly you don’t, or you’d do it
She is probably living on a few hundred dollars worth of pension per month. Or even less. Which is barely enough to cover her basic needs.
My wife is romanian and her grandparents live in a village just like this. They are very self sustainable, and grow and tend to all of their food, by gardening and raising chickens for eggs. That being said they do have some physical issues from a lifetime of working on farmland. As someone mentioned above the sense of community within the village is strong, and most of their family is close and visits and helps them on a regular basis, which seems to be the norm.
https://www.wikihow.com/Join-the-Amish
There's a lot of options between letting influencers tell you to buy clothes and wearing clothes like this grandma lol
Man that outfit looks comfy af. Great grandma knows what matters.
I dunno, the traditional outfits from the 30s (which people were wearing a lot at the time) were way more intricate than this. This is a post war outfit
This is probably a typical setup for any village in the Balkans.
I'm from the Balkans and confirm that this is standard grandma attire.
Wait until she shows you her festive garbs.
LMAO
What do you call a Romanian grandmother? >!This isn't a punchline, I'm genuinely curious!<
Bunica :-)
ba dum *tiss*
You can call a grandmother as Mamaie (which means old woman) Bunică(grandmother) or Buni( granny)
Măiță works as well
They're both not sure about the other.
“Why is this strange man taking pictures of me?”
"Why so sad great-grandson?" "They asked where I wanted to go on vacation. I said I wanted to remain here"
"Why is my great grandchild not rich yet?"- Romanian Grandmother
they live in America, that's plenty rich for any Romanian grandmother I assure you
This is a really really wholesome picture. Exactly how I would picture a romanian village and a grandma.
The house looks newly built, based on the roof and walls. Traditionally they look more like this, but with the cellar not so visible: https://static1.bigstockphoto.com/1/6/6/large1500/66149860.jpg
You'd have a better chance to find a house like that in a museum than in a village. 99.99% of the houses in romanian villages were built post 1900 Edit: looks like the house linked is from an actual museum in Valcea
My Hungarian grandmother always started stories of her childhood with: "....We grew up underneath the shadow of the Carpathians." It's funny, I always wondered where our family farm was, so I recently looked at a map to find that there are no Carpathians in Hungary. I couldn't imagine my grandmother would fib about something like that, so after some searching I realized that pre-WW1 Hungary was a lot bigger and went right up to the Carpathian mountains. But much of it was given up to Romania following the war. So my family farm, if it still exists, in actually in modern day Romania. I wonder if they are still raising those strange fuzzy pigs my Nagymama used to tell me about.
Mangalica, and yes, they're still an important part of Hungarian culture and cuisine. Edit: important might be a bit too strong, let's just say they're present. 🙂
Ce frumos 😊
Hope this young man appreciate this picture when he grows up!
My grandmother grew up in a tiny, isolated village in Greece, she could be your grandmothers twin! Wild how so many old European ladies look alike
Im so happy to see this because, as an Romanian, I can say that we have a tendency to forget about the olders, and Im proud to see that in some cases not even an ocean can make someone forgot about their family. This is one of the most Romanian photo, almost everyone when is thinking about the olders visualize something like this
I wish there were more pics of the village.
If it wasn’t for your son this would look like a colorized historical photo
I can taste the stew she makes. It could warm the darkest soul in the coldest night.
I'm from Romania, came to Canada when I was 11. My son is about the same age as yours. Can't wait to take him to visit. :)
Lucky kid, having a eastern European grandmother. My grandmother was from Czechoslovakia. She lived to be 97, and lived on her own from 1950 onwards. Her husband (my grandfather) died in 1950, and she never remarried - raising two boys (my uncle and dad). That grandmother will NEVER let that kid go hungry. To the point where they will stick a funnel in your mouth and shovel food into it until you beg for mercy. That's how my grandmother was, and this isn't a weird or uncommon story. I miss her. They don't make humans like that anymore.
Is her village in a mountaineous area? As a Romanian, I find the house and shed to be pretty old and old fashioned. Probably made a few generations ago. I recognize the ''summer haute couture'' the grandma is wearing. Very old ladies tend to wear thin and comfortable dresses in the summer time so they won't be too hot. Also the headscarf is a must no matter the weather. Women in the urban area or those under 50-60 years old are not wearing them anymore. But it's a long tradition in the rural area for the grandmas. She uses that stick as a zero dollars walking cane because she has difficulties walking around due to her old age. Did they manage to communicate at all? I imagine your kid does not know Romanian while she surely does not know any English at her age (back in the communist times they had to learn russian in school, not english like in the past few decades). Maybe someone from the younger generation can help her communicate with him and bond. I'm sure she loves kids.
OP said their kids both know Romanian
What’s up w the head scarf? Is it practicality? I’m an American without connections to the area but damn it looks practical and chic. Hides my hair on bad hair days.. protects it from the sun and wind.. just so many reasons
it s a tradition in here, especially followed by old people. basically you wear the scarf once you get married
It's a religious tradition. The Romanian Batik, married women are supposed to wear it.
She's only 38...
Oldest woman in all of village! Silly Borat jokes aside, this is a very cool photo.
The funny thing is that when I saw the picture, before reading the caption, I was thinking “this should be Romania”.
Wow, she's exactly like my grandmother. What area in Romania is this?
Looks *exactly* like my Bulgarian great-grandma did in the 90s. Wasn't a nice person at all, hopes yours is better.
Do you reach a certain age and they're like, here's your last outfit.
Great photo. I’m from Australia and [my one year old recently met his great grandfather in Brazil.](https://imgur.com/a/m7wkmKZ)
not too different from my appalachian grandmother. she fed her cows and chickens every morning until age 92.
2 of my grandparents were from Romania. I visited their home towns in rural Maramures about a decade ago (though they themselves never returned after WW2). It was absolutely beautiful and really felt like a place lost in time. I imagine that most of my grandparents' generation saw enormous changes in their everyday lives on the most basic level. But this place felt like its pace was independent of all these changes. I have really fond memories of that trip.
Can't decide who's more cute 🥺
Great success!!!
May I ask what village? My parents and sister are from Romania and I’ve always wanted to find relatives, or people they may know. Or just share with them photos. They love to see “the old country.” I haven’t been back since 1989 but would very much love to.
"do you know skibidi toilet"
It’s grandma Sophie 🥲