Help:IPA/Romanian

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The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Romanian language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles.

See Romanian phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of Romanian and Romanian alphabet for the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation.

Consonants
IPA	Examples in Romanian	Examples in English
b	ban	boy
d	dop	day
dʒ^[1]	ger	gender
f	foc	face
ɡ	gol, unghie	good
h	horn	hat
k	cal, chip, kilogram, quasar	skip
l	lună	love
m	mic	moon
n	nor	name
ŋ^[2]	lung	long
p	pas	span
r	rac, mare	curd (Scottish English)
s	sare	sun
ʃ	șarpe	shape
t	tare	stop
ts^[1]	țară	cats
tʃ^[1]	cer	choose
v	val, watt	voice
z^[3]	zid	zone
ʒ	jar	measure
Non-native consonants
ɲ	Saligny	roughly like canyon

Vowels
IPA	Examples in Romanian	Examples in English
a	apă	roughly like father
e	erou	roughly like bet
ə	ăsta	about
i	inel, mie	beet
ɨ	înspre, cârnat	roses (for some English dialects)
o	oraș	law (British English)
u	uda, dual	fool
Non-native vowels
ɑ̃	Henri	roughly like croissant
ɵ	chemin de fer	roughly like sir
ø	bleu, loess	roughly like sir
y	ecru, fürer	roughly like few

Semivowels^[4]
IPA	Examples in Romanian	Examples in English
j	iarnă, creioane, rai, yacht	you or boy
w	băcăuan, dulău, Twitter	wine or cow
Diphthongs^[4]
e̯a	beată, Andreea	short [e] followed by full [a]; similar to yard
e̯o	vreo	short [e] followed by full [o]; similar to yawn
o̯a	foarte, găoace	short [o] followed by full [a]; similar to wagon

Other symbols
IPA	Examples	Explanation
ˈ	dulău [duˈləw]	Primary stress (placed before the stressed syllable)
ˌ	extraordinar [ˌekstra.ordiˈnar]	Secondary stress
.	mie [ˈmi.e]	Syllable marker, generally used between vowels in hiatus
ʲ^[5]	rupi [ˈrupʲ]	Palatalization (placed after the palatalized consonant)

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c The affricates may be written more precisely with tie-bars: [t͡s], [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ], but they are omitted in transcriptions as they do not display correctly in all browsers. However, the affricates contrast with the plosive–fricative sequences: [ts], [tʃ] and [dʒ]. Usually, the spelling of the Romanian word indicates the pronunciation, with the affricates spelled ț, c, g, with one letter, and the sequences spelled ts, tș, dj, with two. However, personal names are the most common exceptions.
^ Not a separate phoneme but an allophone of /n/ before velars.
^ [z] is also an allophone of /s/ before voiced consonants.
^ ^a ^b The approximants /j/ and /w/ can appear before and after vowels, including the diphthongs /e̯a/ and /o̯a/, in almost any combination.
^ Palatalization occurs only with a single final i.

References

Chițoran, Ioana (2001), The Phonology of Romanian: A Constraint-based Approach, Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 3110167662

[affricate-1] The affricates may be written more precisely with tie-bars: [t͡s], [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ], but they are omitted in transcriptions as they do not display correctly in all browsers. However, the affricates contrast with the plosive–fricative sequences: [ts], [tʃ] and [dʒ]. Usually, the spelling of the Romanian word indicates the pronunciation, with the affricates spelled ț, c, g, with one letter, and the sequences spelled ts, tș, dj, with two. However, personal names are the most common exceptions.

[2] Not a separate phoneme but an allophone of /n/ before velars.

[3] [z] is also an allophone of /s/ before voiced consonants.

[semivowels-4] The approximants /j/ and /w/ can appear before and after vowels, including the diphthongs /e̯a/ and /o̯a/, in almost any combination.

[pal-5] Palatalization occurs only with a single final i.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

v t e International Phonetic Alphabet keys
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