To make up for the fact that the second half of this year I’ve been posting less often, I have a treat for you. At least, for those of you who like hearing me speak Romanian. I’m including below two videos of me teaching a seminar in Romanian this winter. The seminar was about community fundraising and how to write grants and the audience is made up of the health volunteers that arrived last summer (the group after me) and their community partners. We are discussing how to write goals and objectives. Enjoy! (And native Romanian speakers, please don’t tell any of the Americans how shaky my grammar really is!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPujcZ_wn2I
Thanks for sharing. You make it look so natural. I am in the States taking baby steps to your fluency. Foarte Bine! Multumesc.
Warren
Thanks for sharing these video clips. It is amazing to hear and see you teaching in Romanian…way to girl!
Hello! I chanced upon your blog after searching for more information about Moldova
Anyhow~ It’s wonderful to see these videos! I’m glad you shared them since I’m also trying to learn Romanian because I’m going to Chisinau for an internship this summer. I’m a little nervous that I might not be able to adapt to the language well enough (though the huge distance away from my country to Moldova is also another reason I am nervous haha) but anyway I hope I can speak Romanian well like you soon.
Hi, Kei!
If you end up meeting any Peace Corps volunteers in Chisinau (there are a handful that live there and more of us come in almost every weekend for various things) they can definitely hook you up with some of our tutors, who are, seriously, some of the best language trainers in the world. Good luck!
Thanks! I’ll try to keep a look out for them when I get to Chisinau. ^^
Btw, I was wondering how long it took you to be able to communicate easily in Romanian? Did you start learning while in the States or did you have to start from scratch in Moldova?
I got on BYKI.com, which has free flash cards for just about any language. I did pay like 30 bucks for the extended version which I practiced with for a few months before coming. It does not have any grammar but I knew a couple hundred basic words when I got here, which helped me focus on grammar. I don’t know what your day to day life will be like once you are here, but the reason I was able to learn Romanian is because we did full immersion – I was sent to my village after 10 weeks of training and that was it. After that I had to get by speaking it 24 hours a day. Doing that, I felt fluent by about December (after being in site for about 4 months). THe best thing you can do to learn it, whether you study beforehand or not, is to immerse yourself once you are here. Good luck!