The Romanian you meet in a textbook — voi veni, acesta, omul, the full conditional — is correct everywhere and required in writing and formal speech. But it is not what you will hear at a friend's kitchen table, in a group chat, or shouted across a football pitch. There, Romanians switch into a different gear: the colloquial register. The single most important idea on this page is that colloquial Romanian is not a degraded version of the standard. It is a coherent system with its own future tense, its own demonstratives, and its own conditional. A learner who only knows how to translate the textbook standard into casual settings will sound stiff and bookish; the goal is to recognize and produce the colloquial system for the people who expect it.
The colloquial o să future
In careful writing the future is voi/vei/va + infinitive (voi veni, "I will come"). In ordinary conversation, across every region of the country, people overwhelmingly use o să + subjunctive instead. This is not regional and not an error — it is simply the spoken future. (The full comparison of all the future forms lives on choosing the future forms.)
O să vin pe la opt, ne vedem atunci.
I'll come around eight, see you then. (casual — o să future)
Stai liniștit, o să rezolvăm noi cumva.
Don't worry, we'll sort it out somehow. (casual)
Mâine o să-i zic și ei ce s-a întâmplat.
Tomorrow I'll tell her too what happened. (casual, with clitic î-i contracted to -i)
There is a closely related variant, am să / ai să / are să + subjunctive (am să vin), heard everywhere with the same casual flavour. Both are spoken-register futures; voi veni in a chat with friends would sound oddly formal, almost ceremonial.
The colloquial demonstratives: ăsta, asta, ăla, aia
The standard demonstratives acesta / aceasta ("this") and acela / aceea ("that") have reduced spoken forms that dominate conversation:
| Standard | Colloquial | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| acesta / aceasta | ăsta / asta | this (m. / f.) |
| aceștia / acestea | ăștia / astea | these (m. / f.) |
| acela / aceea | ăla / aia | that (m. / f.) |
| aceia / acelea | ăia / alea | those (m. / f.) |
These are heard from Bucharest to Iași to Timișoara — they mark register, not region. Asta in particular is extraordinarily frequent as a neutral "this/that/this thing."
Ăsta-i telefonul tău? Credeam că l-ai pierdut.
Is this your phone? I thought you'd lost it. (casual: ăsta + contracted e)
Dă-mi aia de pe raft, te rog — aia roșie.
Give me that one off the shelf, please — the red one. (casual: aia = aceea)
The double-imperfect conditional
To say "if I had known, I'd have called you," careful Romanian uses the conditional in both clauses: Dacă aș fi știut, te-aș fi sunat. But everyday speech, everywhere, replaces both with the imperfect: Dacă știam, te sunam. This is the colloquial conditional, and it is the spoken norm — not a mistake to be corrected. The logic is intuitive once you see it: the imperfect already paints an unreal, "ongoing-in-the-past" backdrop, so speech recruits it for hypotheticals and drops the heavier conditional machinery.
Dacă știam că vii, făceam mai multă mâncare.
If I'd known you were coming, I'd have made more food. (casual — double imperfect)
Dacă aveam bani, plecam și eu cu voi în vacanță.
If I had the money, I'd come with you on holiday too. (casual)
Dropped final -l and clipped clitics
In speech the final -l of the definite article is simply not pronounced: omul → omu', băiatul → băiatu', cașul → cașu'. You keep the -l in writing; the apostrophe spelling only appears when someone is deliberately representing speech in print (a chat message, a transcript, a novel's dialogue). Frequent little words also get clipped — numai → numa', poate → poa'te — and unstressed clitics blur into the words around them.
Băiatu' lu' Mihai a luat permisul săptămâna trecută.
Mihai's boy got his driver's licence last week. (casual: băiatu', lu' = colloquial possessive)
Numa' un minut și sunt gata, jur.
Just a minute and I'm ready, I swear. (casual: numa' = numai)
Fillers and discourse particles
Casual Romanian is dense with small words that carry no dictionary meaning but manage the flow of talk — they soften, signal turns, buy thinking time, and mark attitude. A learner who omits them sounds like a textbook; one who deploys them sounds like a person.
- păi — "well…", a softening opener (Păi, nu știu ce să zic).
- deci — literally "therefore," but colloquially a near-universal filler/intensifier (Deci nu-mi vine să cred!).
- mă / bă / băi — vocative attention-getters, "hey / man / dude." bă is blunt and male-flavoured, can be friendly or aggressive depending on tone; mă is softer; băi is the most casual hail. (informal, and bă can read as (vulgar) toward a stranger.)
- gen — "like," a recent youth filler/approximator (Era, gen, super-aglomerat). (informal, youth slang)
- în fine — "anyway / in short," wrapping up a digression.
- hai — "come on / let's," all-purpose urging (Hai, că întârziem!).
Păi și ce-ai zis până la urmă, vii sau nu?
Well, so what did you decide in the end — are you coming or not? (păi opener)
Bă, ai văzut ce-a dat la știri? Deci nu se poate așa ceva!
Dude, did you see what was on the news? Seriously, this can't be happening! (bă vocative + deci intensifier)
Era, gen, plin de lume, n-aveai loc să arunci un ac. În fine, ne-am distrat.
It was, like, packed, no room to swing a cat. Anyway, we had fun. (gen filler + în fine)
Colloquial intensifiers and slang
Casual speech reaches for vivid intensifiers where the standard would use foarte ("very") or grozav ("great"): super- (super-bun, super-obosit), mega- (mega-tare), beton ("solid / awesome," literally "concrete"), mișto ("cool / nice"), tare ("cool," literally "strong/loud"). (All informal; mișto and beton are slang.)
Filmul a fost mișto, mi-a plăcut super-mult.
The film was cool, I liked it a lot. (slang: mișto + super- intensifier)
Petrecerea a fost beton, ne-am distrat de minune.
The party was awesome, we had a blast. (slang: beton)
When colloquial fits — and when it grates
The colloquial register is the right choice with friends, family, peers, and in chat — there, the textbook standard sounds cold and over-formal. It is the wrong choice in a job application, an email to a professor, an official letter, or any text where you'd use dumneavoastră. The clash is jarring: a single o să or ăsta in a formal email breaks the register the way a tracksuit breaks a black-tie dress code. (For the opposite pole, see formal register; for the deeper register-vs-region distinction, standard vs colloquial across regions.)
Common Mistakes
Using a colloquial future in a formal email:
❌ Vă scriu să vă anunț că o să vin la interviu marți.
Incorrect register — o să is colloquial; a formal email wants voi veni.
✅ Vă scriu să vă anunț că voi veni la interviu marți.
I'm writing to inform you that I will come to the interview on Tuesday.
Writing the spoken clipped forms in formal prose:
❌ Domnu' director, omu' de la pază mi-a zis că...
Incorrect — the dropped -l (domnu', omu') is spoken only; in writing keep domnul, omul.
✅ Domnule director, omul de la pază mi-a spus că...
Mr. Director, the security guard told me that... (full forms in writing)
Treating the double-imperfect conditional as an error to "fix":
❌ Thinking 'Dacă știam, veneam' is wrong Romanian.
Mistaken — this is the normal spoken conditional everywhere; it's casual, not incorrect.
✅ 'Dacă știam, veneam' is correct casual Romanian; use the full conditional only in formal/written contexts.
Correct framing.
Over-formalizing with friends — sounding bookish:
❌ [to a close friend] Acesta este restaurantul la care voi merge diseară.
Stiff — with a friend, acesta and voi merge sound like a news bulletin.
✅ Ăsta-i restaurantul la care o să merg diseară.
This is the restaurant I'll go to tonight. (natural, casual)
Misjudging the force of bă with a stranger:
❌ [to a stranger you're asking for help] Bă, știi unde e gara?
Too blunt — bă toward a stranger can sound aggressive or rude.
✅ Nene / Domnule, știți unde e gara?
Sir, do you know where the train station is? (polite to a stranger)
Key Takeaways
- Colloquial Romanian is a coherent system, not broken standard: it has its own future (o să vin), demonstratives (ăsta, asta, ăla, aia), and conditional (the double imperfect, dacă știam, veneam).
- In speech, the final -l of the article drops (omu', băiatu'), and frequent words clip (numa') — but only in writing meant to represent speech.
- Fillers (păi, deci, mă, bă, băi, gen, în fine, hai) and slang intensifiers (super-, mega-, beton, mișto, tare) are core to sounding natural — and are all informal, with bă edging into rude toward strangers.
- The markers travel as a cluster; mix the formal and casual sets and the register breaks.
- Produce the colloquial system for friends, family, and chat; switch to the standard for any formal or written context.
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Start learning Romanian→Related Topics
- Register and Style: OverviewB2 — Register is the formality-and-situation axis of Romanian — distinct from the regional/geography axis — and it is signalled not by a few polite words but by a whole BUNDLE of choices that move together: address (tu vs dumneavoastră), future form (o să vs voi), demonstratives (ăsta vs acesta), word-layer choice (Slavic/inherited vs neologism), clitic reductions, and sentence structure. Shifting register means shifting many small things at once. This page maps the main Romanian registers — colloquial, neutral, formal, literary, academic, journalistic, legal-bureaucratic — and the markers that scale across them, and previews the group.
- Formal RegisterB2 — Formal Romanian rests on a cluster of mutually reinforcing markers: dumneavoastră with the 2nd-person plural verb, the voi-future (voi veni, not o să vin), acesta over ăsta, full unreduced forms, a Latinate/neologistic vocabulary layer (a solicita not a cere, a achiziționa not a cumpăra), nominal style, and fixed politeness formulas (Vă rog, Cu stimă, V-aș fi recunoscător). Crucially, formality demands consistency — one slip into tu or o să breaks the whole register — so this page shows how to sustain it across a letter or email, not sprinkle it.
- 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'.
- Standard vs Colloquial Across RegionsB2 — Many 'non-standard' features of Romanian — the double-imperfect conditional (dacă aveam, veneam), the o-să future, the ăsta/asta demonstratives, dropped final -l (omu', băiatu'), reduced clitics — are pan-Romanian colloquial, heard everywhere across regions rather than tied to one dialect. They sit on the register axis (formal vs casual), not the geographic axis. A learner should produce the standard but recognize the colloquial, and must not mistake either for the other or for an error.
- The Politeness System (T/V) in UseB1 — When Romanians actually choose tu (intimacy, equality) versus dumneavoastră (distance, respect), who is allowed to propose the switch to tu, why dumneavoastră is the safe default with anyone unfamiliar or senior, and where the fading middle form dumneata fits — the social logic behind a choice English speakers don't have to make.
- Choosing a Future (voi / o să / am să)B1 — Which Romanian future to use — o să for everyday speech, voi for formal writing, am să for emphatic intention — and why the choice is about register, not meaning.