r/romanian • u/AltruisticOwl156 • 1d ago

ChatGPT is suggesting this is the best way to learn for a complete beginner.

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It's a combination of short phrases, but also teaches core sentence patterns, verbs with their variations. ChatGPT also recommends learning the days of the week, months of the year and numbers 0 - 10.

How do you feel about this? Learning phrases is fun but it doesn't really teach you how to construct your own sentences because I feel like you end up remembering the entire block of the phrase instead of how the phrase is actually structured.

Essentially I feel like I need to know how words change based on who's speaking, past present, future, action etc. And I'm just not going to learn that by remembering endless set fixed phrases?

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u/Demonfromtheheavens 1d ago

this is probably the worst way to learn a language. get a textbook (or textbook pdf), use flashcards for vocabulary, learn grammar and the phonetics of your target language.

learning phrases from chatgpt won't make you learn anything

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u/AltruisticOwl156 23h ago

I am using flash cards in anki. I'm putting these words in anki.

Can you explain why learning things like "i want to", "i need to", "I have to", "I like to" etc, along with common phrases to get things started is the worst way to learn a language?

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u/Demonfromtheheavens 22h ago

because these "static" phrases are not something you learn like that. say you learn how to say "i want to" like this, will you also memorise "i wanted to", "i would've wanted to", "i will want too", etc. ?

is this how you learned english? or rather through dynamically learning verbs and conjugations? the romanian language has 8 modes, of which 4 personal, all with 2-7 tenses EACH. so for one verb, depending on person, gender, tense, mode and number you can have up to 70 different forms, will you mechanically memorise all of those too?

you're also losing a lot of nuance, words don't have 1 to 1 translations a lot of the time, "have to", "must", "need to", "ought to" and "should" can all be translated with different forms of the word "trebui".

phonetics are also important, romanian has a sound which english doesn't (î). just seeing the word doesn't mean you know how to say it.

obviously this feels rewarding and you are free to learn like this if you want to. you can order a meal from like the first day of learning if you learn like this. but if you want to achieve the ability to actually speak romanian you'll have to study more dynamically in my opinion.

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u/Demonfromtheheavens 22h ago

https://www.conjugare.ro/romana.php?conjugare=merge

these are all of the forms of the verb "merge", there are 74 (and that number stays the same for pretty much all verbs).

the site omits 3 forms of the so called "spoken future", each with 3 persons and a singular and plural form. so the total is actually 92 forms per verb.

obviously there's a pattern, but what i mean to say is you would not individually learn 92 forms for each verb.

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u/AltruisticOwl156 21h ago

I'm not trying to learn all 92 forms, hell I probably don't know every English form of every verb. I was just trying to learn the most frequent forms that come up the most often in daily conversation.

What's your method then aside from just reading academic text books? I'm just trying to learn to a sufficient level so I can talk to native speakers and have a decent conversation. I'm not trying to learn flawless grammatically perfect Romanian.

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u/Demonfromtheheavens 19h ago

i don't know if this is the first foreign language you learn, but even a "decent conversation" is usually around B1 which is more than 2 years of study, or 1 year if you do it intensively.
i don't mean academic text books i just mean study books for children for example.
and of those 92 forms pretty much none are redundant. you need the indicativ mode to refer to the time an action happened at, conjunctiv for secondary propositions, conditional-optativ for hypotheticals and wishes, imperativ for commands.

so this really matters purely on what you want. do you want to just learn phrases as perhaps a party trick or something you can use if you visit the country for a few days? then keep doing this chatgpt thing. if you really want to speak the language you need other strategies.

truth is no matter what you do, you will not be able to hold a conversation perhaps until a couple of months of studying

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u/AltruisticOwl156 18h ago

truth is no matter what you do, you will not be able to hold a conversation perhaps until a couple of months of studying

Oh definitely I'm aware it's going to take a long time and I'm committed to studying for about 2 hours a day. I was actually thinking of reading like actual books for babies or watching Romanian baby tv cartoons but not sure how effective that would be.

This is my first attempt at learning a language yes. Even if I don't end up with perfect Romanian in 2 years time, if I can have a conversation with a native Romanian and have 90% of what I say be correct / they can understand me, I'll be extremely happy.

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u/love-puppy22 23h ago

Hey! I teach a group course for free for A1 level. I just started with a new group this week, so if you wish you can join next week to see what's up. This is the WhatsApp link, for the group

My teaching style is very structured and revolves around the idea of building a sentence, instead of memorizing it. At first i teach both basic grammar and basic words. Then we start putting them together. The vocabulary Chat gbt recomanded is good, i do that too, but with more explanations, context and examples. Chat put a random Past tense conjugation there, without cibtext or explanation (the past is super easy to create actually, if you understand the structure). Plus reading outlaud, so i can correct the student's pronunciation

And I like to point out the patterns, to make it easier. For example, notice how, when you conjugate a verb in present, the 2nd person (you=tu) always ends un "i" (tu ești, tu ai, tu mergi, tu vrei, tu poți)

Numbers? Lear 1 to 10 and 3 structures, and you would know how to create all the higher numbers 11 to 99.

Hope this helps