This page is about numbers in the three places you use them every single day: saying how old someone is, telling how long or how much, and naming a price. Romanian gets you most of the way with rules you already know — but it hides one construction that catches every English speaker on day one: you don't say your age, you have it. "I'm thirty" in Romanian is Am treizeci de ani — literally "I have thirty years". Get that, layer the familiar de threshold on top, and age, measurement, and money all fall into place.
Age: a avea, not a fi
English uses to be for age ("I am thirty"). Romanian uses a avea ("to have") plus the number plus ani ("years"): Am treizeci de ani. The logic is that age is treated as a possessed quantity — a tally of years you have accumulated, not a state you are. This is the same family of "have" expressions Romanian uses for hunger and thirst (mi-e foame uses a different pattern, but a avea covers age, and you'll see the broader split on the a fi vs a avea page).
| English | Romanian | Literally |
|---|---|---|
| I'm 5 | Am cinci ani. | I have five years. |
| I'm 30 | Am treizeci de ani. | I have thirty years. |
| How old are you? | Câți ani ai? | How many years do you have? |
| She's turning 40 | Împlinește patruzeci de ani. | She completes forty years. |
To ask someone's age you mirror the same verb: Câți ani ai? ("How many years do you have?"), never *Cât ești de bătrân? And note a împlini ("to complete, to fulfil") for "to turn (an age)": Împlinesc treizeci de ani = "I'm turning thirty".
Am treizeci și doi de ani, dar mă simt mai tânăr.
I'm thirty-two, but I feel younger.
Câți ani ai? — Opt! a strigat fetița mândră.
How old are you? — Eight! the little girl shouted proudly.
Bunicul împlinește optzeci de ani sâmbătă.
Grandpa is turning eighty on Saturday.
The de threshold rides along — even in age
Look again at am cinci ani vs am treizeci *de ani. The age phrase obeys the exact same rule as every other counted noun: 1–19 take a bare noun, 20 and up insert *de. So a five-year-old "has cinci ani" but a thirty-year-old "has treizeci *de ani". The threshold doesn't care that the noun is *ani — it's the size of the number that decides.
| Age | Romanian | de? |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | cinci ani | no |
| 19 | nouăsprezece ani | no |
| 20 | douăzeci de ani | yes |
| 45 | patruzeci și cinci de ani | yes |
| 100 | o sută de ani | yes |
Fiul meu are doisprezece ani, iar fiica mea douăzeci de ani.
My son is twelve and my daughter is twenty.
Casa are peste o sută de ani și încă rezistă.
The house is over a hundred years old and still standing.
Telling the clock
Clock time leans on the same numbers. The full system — și for minutes past, fără ("without") for minutes to the hour — lives on the dates and time page; here, just note how the hour itself is named with la ora + cardinal for "at … o'clock".
| English | Romanian |
|---|---|
| at five o'clock | la ora cinci |
| at half past five | la cinci și jumătate |
| at a quarter to six | la șase fără un sfert |
| at two-fifteen | la două și un sfert |
Ne vedem la ora cinci în fața gării.
Let's meet at five o'clock in front of the station.
Trenul pleacă la șase fără un sfert, să nu întârziem.
The train leaves at a quarter to six, let's not be late.
Note that the hour uses the feminine două (la ora două, "at two o'clock") because oră ("hour") is feminine — a small but real agreement point.
Measurement: distance, weight, and the de threshold again
Distances, weights, and volumes follow the threshold with no surprises: under twenty the unit is bare, from twenty up it takes de.
| Quantity | Romanian | de? |
|---|---|---|
| 2 metres | doi metri | no |
| 5 kilos | cinci kilograme | no |
| 20 metres | douăzeci de metri | yes |
| 100 kilometres | o sută de kilometri | yes |
| 3 litres | trei litri | no |
Watch the gender of the unit, too: metru, litru, kilometru are masculine, so "two metres" is doi metri (masculine doi), while "two hours" is două ore (feminine). Only the one and two care — everything from three up is frozen.
Bazinul are douăzeci de metri lungime.
The pool is twenty metres long.
Am cărat un sac de cinci kilograme până la etajul trei.
I carried a five-kilo sack up to the third floor.
De la noi până la mare sunt cam trei sute de kilometri.
It's about three hundred kilometres from us to the seaside.
Money: lei and the threshold
Romanian currency is the leu (plural lei). Prices obey the threshold exactly: cinci lei (bare) but cincizeci *de lei (with *de). For amounts you'll hear bani ("money", also the subunit — 100 bani = 1 leu).
| Price | Romanian | de? |
|---|---|---|
| 5 lei | cinci lei | no |
| 19 lei | nouăsprezece lei | no |
| 50 lei | cincizeci de lei | yes |
| 200 lei | două sute de lei | yes |
Cafeaua costă cincisprezece lei, iar prăjitura douăzeci de lei.
The coffee costs fifteen lei, and the cake twenty lei.
Mi-au rămas doar cincizeci de lei până la salariu.
I've only got fifty lei left until payday.
Common Mistakes
Using a fi (to be) for age, copying English "I am thirty":
❌ Sunt treizeci de ani.
Incorrect — age uses 'a avea': Am treizeci de ani ('I have thirty years').
✅ Am treizeci de ani.
I'm thirty years old.
Asking age with "how old" literally instead of "how many years":
❌ Cât de bătrân ești?
Unnatural/rude — ask Câți ani ai? ('How many years do you have?').
✅ Câți ani ai?
How old are you?
Dropping de in a twenty-plus age, distance, or price:
❌ Are patruzeci ani.
Incorrect — 40 takes 'de': patruzeci de ani.
✅ Are patruzeci de ani.
He's forty.
Using the masculine doi with the feminine oră:
❌ la ora doi
Incorrect — oră is feminine: la ora două.
✅ la ora două
at two o'clock
Overcorrecting with de under twenty:
❌ cinci de lei
Incorrect — under 20 the noun is bare: cinci lei.
✅ cinci lei
five lei
Key Takeaways
- Age uses a avea, not a fi: Am treizeci de ani ("I have thirty years"); ask Câți ani ai?; "to turn (an age)" is a împlini.
- The de threshold rides along everywhere: bare noun for 1–19 (cinci ani, cinci lei, doi metri), de from 20 up (douăzeci de ani, cincizeci de lei, o sută de metri).
- Only 1 and 2 track the unit's gender: doi metri (masc.) vs două ore (fem.); la ora două, not *doi.
- Clock time uses la ora
- cardinal; the full și / fără system is on the dates-and-time page.
Now practice Romanian
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Start learning Romanian→Related Topics
- Cardinal Numbers 0–20A1 — Counting from zero to twenty in Romanian — the base numbers, why 1 and 2 are gendered (un/o, doi/două), and how the teens are transparent 'X-upon-ten' compounds (unsprezece, paisprezece, șaisprezece) whose spelling hides phonetic reductions.
- Cardinal Numbers 20 and AboveA1 — The tens (douăzeci…nouăzeci), compound numbers built with 'și' (douăzeci și unu = 21), hundreds and thousands, and the rule that defines Romanian counting above twenty: from 20 up, the number connects to its noun with 'de'.
- Telling Dates and TimeA2 — Dates use plain cardinals plus a month (pe 5 martie) — except the 1st, which is the special ordinal 'întâi'; clock time uses 'și' for minutes past the hour (trei și zece) and 'fără' ('without') for minutes to the hour (patru fără cinci).
- a fi vs a avea for States (E frig / Mi-e frig / Am dreptate)A2 — How Romanian expresses physical sensations and states — bodily feelings use a fi + a dative clitic (Mi-e frig, Mi-e foame), ambient conditions use bare a fi (E frig afară), and a few states like 'be right' and 'need' use a avea (Am dreptate, Am nevoie).
- Time Expressions (acum, îndată, din când în când)A2 — A practical inventory of the time phrases Romanians actually use — now, ago, right away, usually, suddenly, in advance, in an hour — including the trap that acum means 'now' alone but 'ago' with a duration, and that peste flips a phrase into the future.