The accent

Last evening I came back from a 2 days trip to Bistrita where I had to participate at a stock counting. I had another post about a local taxi driver and now I had another pretty amazing conversation with one of them.

" - You're from Bucharest, wright?

- Ya, we're coming from Bucharest.

- I could tell from your accent...

- :))))))) (what accent????)

- What? You didn't think you had no accent...as you say we have an accent, so do you."

And then I realized that he is wright. I always thought that I am on the right side and that the pother person was talking in a funny way, but never thought that the other person may think the same way.

Like most natural languages, Romanian can be regarded as a dialect continuum. The dialects of Romanian are distinguished by minor differences in pronunciation. Romanians themselves speak of the differences as accents or "speeches" (in Romanian: accent or grai). Several regional accents are usually distinguished:

• Muntenian accent (Graiul muntenesc), spoken mainly in Wallachi and southern parts of Dobruja.


• Oltenian accent (Graiul oltenesc), spoken mainly in Oltenia and by the Romanian minority in Timok region of Serbia. In Oltenia a notable dialectal feature is the preferred usage of the simple perfect rather than the compound perfect which is preferred elsewhere.


• Moldavian accent (Graiul moldovenesc), spoken mainly in Moldavia, northern parts of Dobruja and Moldova. Written (p) is at times realised as /k/, written before front vowels is sometimes realised as /ʃ/, written <ă>, in final position, is sometimes palatalized, written is rarely also pronounced /i/.


• Maramureșian accent (Graiul maramureșean), spoken mainly in Maramures.


• Transylvanian accent (Graiul ardelenesc), spoken mainly in Transilvania.


• Banatian accent (Graiul bănățean), spoken mainly in Banat. Written before front vowels is sometimes realised as /t͡ʃ/ and as /d͡ʒ/.

Over the last century, however, regional accents have been weakened due to mass communication and greater mobility.

At the end it's great that we can still manage to understand one another.

Love you. Take care.

The map of my adventures

Ever since I got back from my second euro-trip I wanted to buy a map of Europe in order to signal out the places I have visited so far. Last Saturday I finally managed to put the map on the wall and it looks like this:

The white dots present the cities I visited in the first euro-trip in 2007: Budapest, Viena, Praga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Barcelona, Cannes, Roma, Venezia and Rijeka

The blue dots present the cities I have visited during the second euro-trip in 2010: Munich, Koln, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Goteborg, Oslo, Stavanger and Hamburg

The red dots are isolated trips: 2003 - Lisbon, 2010 - Madrid, 2008 - Split and Belgrad, 2009 - Creta, 2007 - Athens.

That's the resume of my adventure though-out Europe. Hope to put some other dots on the map really soon.

Love u. Take care.

Holidays

Tomorrow is Saint Nicholas and the tradition says that all the children that have been nice will receive presents in their boots tonight but this day is also celebrated by a lot of persons who have this name, and in Romania there are a lot.

One of this person is my uncle, so I went home with a nice cake to celebrate him. Saturday rained all day long so I didn't to much, but today when I woke up around 9 am the sun was shining so bright like in a summer day.

I took my camera and I went to my aunt's. We had to wait for my cousin to get back from work to begin eating and celebrating and as I was quite bored I began taking pictures of the three cats my ant has in her yard: Vasilica, Mircea and Costica (named so by my uncle) and here they are:




They are very knotty and make a lot of mess, but everybody loves them because they are so sweet:))

Coming back to the main event of the day we had a lovely meal and a delicious cake in honor of my dear uncle Nicholas.


Counting the days to Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Love u. Take care.

Celebrating the national day

Today is the 1st of December, Romania's national day and it's a free day. Even though it was a Wednesday and tomorrow I have to get back to work I still insisted on leaving this ugly city for better landscapes.

And so, at 7 a.m. in the morning, me and 8 other people were buying train tickets to Sinaia. Unfortunately for us a 2 and a half train ride turned into one of over 4 hours because there were some troubles with the electricity.

When we got to Sinaia it was late, foggy and raining...but we still had to go up. So we took the cable cabin (i did not find another term for it) to 2000 m where there was quite a serious blizzard...we still insisted on going to Piatra Arsa...but unfortunately after half an hour we had to turn around because we couldn't see the track signs anymore.

That's the short version of the story because I am quite tired...I will leave the pictures to say the rest:

in Sinaia train station:


getting ready for action:


deeeeeeep, cold snow:


just a "little" windy:)



everything was frozen:


so after a while we froze too:))


the well deserved hot wine:


and bonus one big, fat cat living at 2000 m altitude:


Coming soon with more pictures.

Love u. Take care.