Saying "yes" and "no" in Romanian starts off easy — da and nu — and then springs a trap English has no defense against. When someone makes a negative statement or asks a negative question, a plain da will not do the job of "yes, it is." Romanian has a dedicated contradiction particle, ba, that exists precisely to overturn a negative: ba da means "yes it is / yes I do" (against a "no" expectation), and ba nu means "no it isn't" (against a "yes" expectation). English collapses all of this into "yes" and "no" plus tone of voice; Romanian gives you a clean grammatical signal.
This page covers the full response system — da, nu, ba, ba da, ba nu — and then the family of adverbs that calibrate how certain you are, from the rock-solid sigur, desigur, firește ("of course, certainly") through poate ("maybe") and probabil ("probably") all the way down to cică ("supposedly, allegedly"), which signals that you're only passing along hearsay and don't vouch for it.
da and nu: the basics, and where they fail
Da ("yes") and nu ("no") answer a neutral question exactly as you'd expect.
— Vii diseară? — Da, sigur vin.
— Are you coming tonight? — Yes, I'll definitely come.
The trouble starts when the question is negative. Consider "Aren't you coming?" (Nu vii?). In English, the answer "Yes" is ambiguous and we lean on intonation. In Romanian, a bare da here is actually wrong for "yes I am" — it sounds like you're agreeing with the negative. You need ba da.
ba: the contradiction particle
Ba is the heart of this page. On its own it's an emphatic "on the contrary." Its two compounds do the real work:
- ba da — contradicts a negative: "yes (it is) / yes (I do)," overturning the "no" expectation.
- ba nu — contradicts a positive: "no (it isn't)," overturning the "yes" expectation, often correcting yourself or someone else.
— Nu vii la petrecere? — Ba da, vin, doar întârzii puțin.
— Aren't you coming to the party? — Yes I am, I'm just running a bit late.
— Tu n-ai fost niciodată la Roma. — Ba da, am fost acum doi ani!
— You've never been to Rome. — Yes I have, I went two years ago!
— Deci ești de acord. — Ba nu, tocmai asta voiam să spun.
— So you agree. — No, actually — that's exactly my point.
Use ba nu to walk something back, including your own slip of the tongue:
Ne vedem marți... ba nu, miercuri, marți am program.
Let's meet Tuesday... no wait, Wednesday — I'm busy Tuesday.
Here is the system at a glance:
| The cue | You mean | Say |
|---|---|---|
| Positive question (Vii?) | yes | Da |
| Positive question (Vii?) | no | Nu |
| Negative question (Nu vii?) | yes, I am (contradicting) | Ba da |
| Negative question (Nu vii?) | no, I'm not (confirming) | Nu |
| Positive statement, you disagree | no, that's wrong | Ba nu |
The certainty scale: from sigur to cică
Romanian has a graded set of adverbs that tell the listener how much weight to put on your statement. Learning them as a scale — from full commitment down to "don't blame me, I just heard it" — lets you sound exactly as confident as you actually are.
| Romanian | English | Commitment | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| sigur | surely, for sure | full | neutral |
| desigur | of course, certainly | full | neutral / formal |
| firește | of course, naturally | full | neutral / slightly formal |
| bineînțeles | of course, obviously | full | neutral |
| probabil | probably | high | neutral |
| poate | maybe, perhaps | open | neutral |
| cică | supposedly, they say | none (hearsay) | informal |
sigur, desigur, firește — full commitment
These mark you as certain. Sigur is the everyday "for sure"; desigur and firește are a touch more polished, common in writing and courteous speech; bineînțeles stresses that something is obvious.
— Mă ajuți cu mutarea? — Sigur, pe cine altcineva să suni?
— Will you help me move? — Of course, who else would you call?
Firește că am verificat de două ori înainte să trimit.
Naturally, I checked twice before sending it.
Bineînțeles că o să fiu acolo, am promis.
Of course I'll be there, I promised.
Note that before a full clause, these take the linker că — firește că, bineînțeles că, sigur că — much like English "of course (that)..." but obligatory.
poate and probabil — hedged
Probabil ("probably") leans toward yes; poate ("maybe") stays open. Crucially, poate is an adverb and takes the indicative, not the conjunctiv — poate vine ("maybe he's coming"), never poate să vină in that sense.
Probabil a uitat, îi dau un telefon.
He probably forgot, I'll give him a call.
Poate ne vedem la weekend, dacă scap mai devreme.
Maybe we'll meet this weekend, if I finish early.
cică — skeptical hearsay
Cică (informal) is a gem with no neat English word. It tags a statement as something you heard and quietly distances you from it — "supposedly, allegedly, they say, word is." It often carries a whiff of doubt or gossip. It's a contraction of zice că ("(s)he says that").
Cică se scumpește benzina de luna viitoare.
Word is petrol's going up next month.
Cică ar fi cel mai bun restaurant din oraș, dar nu m-a impresionat.
Supposedly it's the best restaurant in town, but it didn't impress me.
da and nu as more than answers
Both words also work inside sentences. Nu is the all-purpose preverbal negator (nu vin), and da can intensify or seek agreement, especially in the tag nu-i așa? ("isn't that so?") and the casual confirming da? at the end of a request.
Ne vedem mâine la zece, da?
We're meeting tomorrow at ten, right?
E frumos aici, nu-i așa?
It's lovely here, isn't it?
Common Mistakes
Answering a negative question with a bare da instead of ba da:
❌ — Nu ți-a plăcut filmul? — Da, mi-a plăcut!
Confusing — after a negative question, plain da sounds like agreeing with the 'no'. Use ba da.
✅ — Nu ți-a plăcut filmul? — Ba da, mi-a plăcut foarte mult!
— Didn't you like the film? — Yes I did, I liked it a lot!
Using poate with the conjunctiv as if it introduced a clause:
❌ Poate să vină mâine.
In the sense 'maybe he'll come,' this is wrong — poate takes the indicative. (Poate să vină actually means 'he's able to come.')
✅ Poate vine mâine.
Maybe he'll come tomorrow.
Dropping the obligatory că after bineînțeles / firește / sigur before a clause:
❌ Bineînțeles vin la nuntă.
Incomplete — before a clause you need bineînțeles că.
✅ Bineînțeles că vin la nuntă.
Of course I'm coming to the wedding.
Stating a rumor flatly when cică would distance you from it:
❌ Se închide fabrica luna viitoare. (when you only heard it second-hand)
Stated as fact — if it's a rumor, mark it with cică.
✅ Cică se închide fabrica luna viitoare.
Supposedly the factory's closing next month.
Confusing emphatic ba nu (a correction) with the plain refusal nu:
❌ — Vrei cafea? — Ba nu, mulțumesc.
Odd — there's nothing to contradict in a neutral offer; a simple nu is right.
✅ — Vrei cafea? — Nu, mulțumesc.
— Want some coffee? — No, thanks.
Key Takeaways
- After a negative question or statement, "yes, actually" is ba da and "no, it isn't" is ba nu — never a bare da/nu. This contradiction particle has no English equivalent.
- The certainty scale runs sigur / desigur / firește / bineînțeles (full commitment) → probabil (likely) → poate (open) → cică (hearsay, no commitment).
- poate takes the indicative, not the conjunctiv; the "of course" adverbs take că before a clause.
- cică (informal) lets you repeat rumors without endorsing them — a key tool for natural, deniable speech.
Related Topics
- Romanian Adverbs: An OverviewA1 — A survey of Romanian adverb types — manner, time, place, degree, sentence adverbs — and the central fact that most manner adverbs are simply the bare masculine-singular adjective, with no '-ly' suffix.
- Sentence and Modal Adverbs (poate, sigur, probabil)B1 — Romanian adverbs that comment on a whole clause — poate, probabil, sigur, bineînțeles, din păcate, oricum, totuși — and why poate takes the indicative, not the conjunctiv.
- The Negator 'nu' and Its ContractionsA1 — Where nu goes and how it contracts. The negator sits strictly BEFORE the verb, ahead of any object pronouns (Nu te văd, Nu îmi place). Before a vowel it elides to n- (nu am → n-am), and before clitics it fuses (nu îmi → nu-mi, nu îl → nu-l, nu este → nu-i). This page drills the placement and the everyday contractions in the present and perfect.
- Answering 'No' and Contradicting (nu, ba da, ba nu)A2 — Romanian answers yes/no with da and nu — but contradicting a NEGATIVE needs a dedicated particle. ba da overturns a negative ('yes it is!' — — Nu vii? — Ba da!) and ba nu emphatically denies a positive ('no it isn't!'). English leans on stress; Romanian has a grammatical signal. This page treats it from the negation system: how nu the answer relates to nu the negator, and the ba reversal.
- Alternative and Tag Questions (sau, nu?, nu-i așa?)B1 — Two kinds of question that offer the listener a choice or nudge them toward agreement: alternative questions joined by sau ('A or B?', with a characteristic rise-then-fall intonation) and tag questions appended with the invariable nu?, nu-i așa?, da? — Romanian's tag never changes to match the verb, person, or polarity, unlike English's conjugated isn't it / don't you / won't they.
- Spoken vs Written RomanianB2 — Medium (spoken vs written) and formality (informal vs formal) are two independent axes. Spoken Romanian favors the o-să future, ăsta/asta, dropped final -l, clitic fusion, fillers, repair, and dislocation (Cartea, am citit-o); written Romanian favors the voi-future, acesta, full forms, dense subordination, and — in narrative — the perfectul simplu. Crucially, even a formal SPEECH keeps some spoken features that a formal LETTER would not, so 'spoken vs written' is not the same cut as 'informal vs formal'.