Yes/No Questions | Romanian Grammar

A yes/no question is one a person can answer with "yes" or "no." In Romanian, forming one requires essentially no grammar at all: you take the statement and raise your pitch at the end. The written sentence is identical to the statement except for the question mark — same words, same order, nothing added or moved. Vii. means "You're coming." Vii? means "Are you coming?" The only difference is the dot versus the question mark on the page, and the falling versus rising tone in the air. For an English speaker, used to summoning do, does, did or flipping the subject and verb, this is both a gift and a habit to unlearn.

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There is literally no question-formation step for yes/no questions — just prosody. Vii. → Vii? differ only by the punctuation and the rising intonation. Whatever the statement is, the question is the same string of words with a rising pitch.

Identical to the statement, plus a rising tone

Whatever the tense, whatever the subject, the question keeps the statement's exact word order. Watch how the past tense, the copula, and a full clause all stay put:

Statement	Yes/no question	English
Ești student.	Ești student?	You're a student. / Are you a student?
Mănânci.	Mănânci?	You're eating. / Are you eating?
Ai văzut filmul.	Ai văzut filmul?	You saw the film. / Did you see the film?
Vorbește românește.	Vorbește românește?	He speaks Romanian. / Does he speak Romanian?
Au plecat deja.	Au plecat deja?	They've left already. / Have they left already?

Ești student la medicină?

Are you a medical student? (ești = 'you are', unchanged from the statement)

Mănânci ceva sau aștepți cina?

Are you eating something or waiting for dinner? (mănânci with a rising tone — no 'are you')

Ai văzut filmul ăla nou cu prietenii?

Did you see that new film with your friends? (the past ai văzut is identical to the statement)

Notice especially the compound past: English did you see breaks the verb apart and inserts did, but Romanian ai văzut is one unbroken perfect tense in both the statement and the question. Nothing is added, nothing is split.

The optional particle oare — "I wonder…"

Romanian has one optional word you can slip onto a yes/no question to soften it into a musing: oare. Placed at the front (and occasionally mid-sentence), it adds the nuance of "I wonder…" or "do you suppose…?" It is not an auxiliary and changes no grammar — drop it and you still have a complete question. Its job is purely attitudinal: it marks the question as a thought turned over, a doubt, a rhetorical wondering rather than a direct demand for an answer.

Plain question	With oare	English nuance
Vine?	Oare vine?	Is he coming? / I wonder if he's coming.
A uitat?	Oare a uitat?	Did he forget? / I wonder if he forgot.
E adevărat?	Oare e adevărat?	Is it true? / Could it really be true?

Oare a uitat de întâlnirea de mâine?

I wonder if he's forgotten about tomorrow's meeting. (oare = musing, not a direct question)

Oare să-i dau un telefon sau să mai aștept?

I wonder whether I should call him or wait a bit longer. (oare with a deliberative subjunctive — pondering aloud)

Plouă oare la munte acum?

I wonder if it's raining in the mountains right now. (oare can also sit mid-sentence)

Because oare carries no grammatical weight, it pairs naturally with a deliberative tone and is common in inner monologue and rhetorical questions. It is broadly neutral in register — at home in both casual speech and writing.

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oare answers the question "what am I feeling about this question?", not "how do I build it?" It adds wondering, doubt, or rhetoric. Compare a blunt Vine? ("Is he coming?") with a pensive Oare vine? ("I wonder if he's coming"). You can always remove it.

Answering: da, nu, and the contradicting ba da / ba nu

To answer a yes/no question, the basic pair is da (yes) and nu (no) — straightforward. The interesting part, which English handles clumsily, is answering a negative question. When someone asks a question framed in the negative ("You're not coming?") and you want to contradict it — to insist "yes, actually I am" — Romanian uses ba da. To emphatically confirm the negative ("no, indeed I'm not"), it uses ba nu. The particle ba is a contradicting flag.

Answer	Use	Sense
da	confirming a positive question	yes
nu	denying a positive question	no
ba da	contradicting a negative question	yes (on the contrary)
ba nu	emphatically agreeing with / correcting toward the negative	no (on the contrary / no, in fact)

— Nu vii la petrecere? — Ba da, vin!

— Aren't you coming to the party? — Yes, I am (contradicting the 'not')!

— Nu ți-e foame? — Ba da, mor de foame.

— Aren't you hungry? — Yes I am, I'm starving. (ba da overturns the negative question)

— Deci vii cu noi? — Ba nu, am rămas fără bani.

— So you're coming with us? — Actually no, I'm out of money. (ba nu corrects an assumption)

This ba da / ba nu distinction is exactly what English lacks a clean tool for. English "yes" after "Aren't you coming?" is ambiguous — yes you are, or yes you're not coming? Romanian resolves it: ba da unambiguously means "contrary to your negative, the positive is true." The fuller treatment of nu, ba, and the negation system is on the no vs not page, and the inventory of affirmation and doubt words is on the affirmation and doubt adverbs page.

Source-language comparison

The English learner's whole task here is to stop doing things. English yes/no questions demand the dummy auxiliary do (when there's no other auxiliary) and subject-auxiliary inversion: You eat meat → Do you eat meat?; She is ready → Is she ready? Romanian discards both. There is no do to insert, and the subject (usually dropped anyway, since the verb ending shows the person) does not flip with the verb. The one genuinely new tool to learn is the answer system — ba da / ba nu for contradicting a negative question — which English speakers must build from scratch because their language never developed a dedicated contradiction word.

Common Mistakes

Don't insert a "do/does/did" — Romanian has no dummy auxiliary:

❌ Faci tu vorbești engleză?

Incorrect — no 'do'-support; the question is just Vorbești engleză? with a rising tone.

✅ Vorbești engleză?

Do you speak English?

Don't invert subject and verb as a question signal:

❌ Este el acasă? (as a neutral question)

Unnatural — keep statement order: E acasă? / El e acasă? Intonation does the work, not inversion.

✅ E acasă?

Is he home?

Don't split the compound past with a helper:

❌ Ai tu văzut filmul?

Incorrect — ai văzut stays whole; the question is Ai văzut filmul?

✅ Ai văzut filmul?

Did you see the film?

Don't answer a negative question with a bare da when you mean to contradict it — use ba da:

❌ — Nu vii? — Da.

Ambiguous/odd — to overturn a negative question, Romanian uses Ba da ('yes, on the contrary').

✅ — Nu vii? — Ba da.

— Aren't you coming? — Yes, I am.

Don't treat oare as required to ask a question:

❌ believing 'Oare vii?' is the only way to ask 'Are you coming?'

Incorrect — Vii? is already complete; oare only adds an 'I wonder' shade.

✅ Vii?

Are you coming?

Key Takeaways

A yes/no question is spelled identically to the statement — only the question mark and the rising intonation differ (Vii. / Vii?).
There is no do/does/did and no inversion; the compound past (ai văzut) stays whole.
oare is an optional particle adding an "I wonder…" nuance (Oare a uitat?); it is flavor, not grammar.
Answer with da (yes) / nu (no); use ba da to contradict a negative question and ba nu to correct toward the negative.
The English learner's job is mostly subtraction — drop the auxiliary and the inversion; the one new tool is ba da / ba nu.

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