Romanian alphabet facts for kids
The Romanian alphabet is a variant of the Latin alphabet used by the Romanian language. It is a modification of the classical Latin alphabet and consists of 31 letters, five of which (Ă, Â, Î, Ș, and Ț) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language:
| Letter | Name |
|---|---|
| A, a | a |
| Ă, ă | ă |
| Â, â | î / î din a |
| B, b | be / bî |
| C, c | ce / cî |
| D, d | de / dî |
| E, e | e |
| F, f | ef / fe / fî |
| G, g | ge / ghe / gî |
| H, h | haș / ha / hî |
| I, i | i |
| Letter | Name |
|---|---|
| Î, î | î / î din i |
| J, j | je / jî |
| K, k | ca / capa |
| L, l | el / le / lî |
| M, m | em / me / mî |
| N, n | en / ne / nî |
| O, o | o |
| P, p | pe / pî |
| Q, q | chiu |
| R, r | er / re / rî |
| S, s | es / se / sî |
| Letter | Name |
|---|---|
| Ș, ș | șe / șî |
| T, t | te / tî |
| Ț, ț | țe / țî |
| U, u | u |
| V, v | ve / vî |
| W, w | dublu ve / dublu vî |
| X, x | ics |
| Y, y | igrec / i grec |
| Z, z | ze / zet / zed / zî |
The letters Q (chiu), W (dublu v), and Y (igrec or i grec) were formally introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982, although they had been used earlier. They occur only in foreign words and their Romanian derivatives, such as quasar, watt, and yacht. The letter K, although relatively older, is also rarely used and appears only in proper names and international neologisms such as kilogram, broker, karate. These four letters are still perceived as foreign, which explains their usage for stylistic purposes in words such as nomenklatură (normally nomenclatură, meaning "nomenclature", but sometimes spelled with k instead of c if referring to members of the Communist leadership in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries, as Nomenklatura is used in English).
In cases where the word is a direct borrowing having diacritical marks not present in the above alphabet, official spelling tends to favor their use (München, Angoulême etc., as opposed to the use of Istanbul over İstanbul).
Images for kids
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Pre-(top) and post-1993 (bottom) street signs in Bucharest, showing the two different spellings of the same name
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Old Bucharest manhole cover inscribed according to the etymologically prone spelling at the time, which reads BUCURESCI CANALISARE (meaning Bucharest sewers). Compare to today's BUCUREȘTI CANALIZARE.
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Inconsistent cedilla glyphs in Adobe Caslon (left). The correct Romanian rendering (right) can be obtained by activating the OpenType GSUB/latn/ROM/locl feature, which remaps the s with cedilla glyph to comma-below. The rendering on the right is visually indistinguishable from the rendering produced by comma-below code points for this font.
See also
In Spanish: Alfabeto rumano para niños
