Exclamative Sentences (Ce..., Cât de...)

An exclamative sentence broadcasts strong feeling — admiration, shock, delight, irritation — and English splits the job between two openers: how before an adjective ("How lovely!") and what a before a noun ("What a house!"). Romanian collapses both into a single word, ce, and adds a second frame, cât de, for marvelling at the degree of something. The catch — and the thing that trips up every English speaker — is that ce is also the question word "what?" The same string of letters opens Ce vrei? ("What do you want?") and Ce frumos! ("How lovely!"); only the intonation tells them apart. This page is about assembling the exclamation as a full utterance; for the wider inventory of exclamative words (including cum-traps and intensifiers), see exclamative structures.

Ce + adjective: "How (lovely)!"

Place ce directly before an adjective (or adverb) and you have exclaimed over a quality. Nothing else is needed — no verb, no article. This is the quickest, most spontaneous exclamation in the language.

Notice the second and third examples carry a verb (e, "is"): ce + adjective slides naturally into a full clause — Ce frumos e aici! ("How lovely it is here!"). The exclamation can stand bare (Ce frumos!) or run on into a complete sentence; both are everyday Romanian.

Ce + noun (+ adjective): "What a (house)!"

Put ce before a noun and you get the "What a (noun)!" exclamation. Crucially, Romanian uses no article — Ce casă!, never a calque with o. You can hang an adjective after the noun for "What a (big house)!"

The adjective follows the noun in its usual postnominal slot (casă mare, "big house"), exactly as it would in a plain phrase. The exclamative ce simply latches onto the front of that ordinary noun phrase and the whole thing becomes an outburst.

Ce de + noun: "What a lot of (people)!"

When the exclamation is specifically about quantity — how much, how many — Romanian inserts de: ce de + noun. Ce de lume! = "What a crowd!"; Ce de oameni! = "So many people!" That little de is the quantity marker, and it changes the meaning.

The contrast with plain ce + noun is real and worth feeling: Ce oameni! exclaims about what kind of people ("what sort of people!"), while Ce de oameni! exclaims about how many ("what a crowd!"). Drop the de and you flip the meaning from quality to quantity.

Cât de + adjective/adverb: "How (well)!"

A second, slightly more deliberate way to say "how...!" is cât de + adjective/adverb. Where ce bine! is a quick burst, cât de bine! foregrounds the degree — it marvels at the extent of the quality, and it is the natural choice when the exclamation continues into a clause.

So ce and cât de both translate "how...!", but they sit on different ends of a spontaneity scale: ce frumos! is the off-the-cuff reaction, cât de frumos! is the measured one, and cât de is what you reach for once the sentence runs on ("...how much I missed you").

Ce mai...!: the colloquial intensifier (informal)

In casual speech, slotting mai after ce ramps up the exclamation: Ce mai...! — roughly "What a (real)...!", "What an absolute...!" It adds a layer of expressive emphasis, often slightly ironic or admiring.

This mai is the same expressive particle that peppers colloquial Romanian; here it intensifies the exclamation without changing its structure. Keep it for informal contexts.

Statement + intonation: no special word needed

You don't always need ce or cât de. Any plain statement becomes an exclamation through intonation alone — a rise then an emphatic fall — marked in writing with an exclamation mark. The word order stays declarative; the feeling rides on the voice.

Telling the exclamation from the question

Because ce heads both, the difference between Ce frumos? and Ce frumos! is entirely prosody and punctuation. A question rises at the end and takes a question mark; an exclamation falls with emphasis and takes an exclamation mark. In writing, the mark is your only cue — so use it deliberately.

Common Mistakes

Using cum ("how?") to build the exclamation — the single most common error. Cum only asks questions; to exclaim "how (lovely)" you need ce:

Inserting an article after exclamative ce, calquing English "what a...":

Dropping de in the quantity exclamative, so "what a crowd" collapses into "what (sort of) people":

Putting de before an adjective, where bare ce is correct (the de belongs only to the quantity-with-a-noun frame):

Ending an exclamation with a question mark because the ce fooled you into reading it as a question:

Key Takeaways

• ce is the all-purpose exclaimer: ce + adjective = "How...!" (Ce frumos!), ce + noun = "What a...!" (Ce casă!) — English splits these into "how" and "what a," Romanian uses one word.
• Use no article after exclamative ce before a noun: Ce zi!, never "ce o zi."
• ce de
  • noun exclaims about quantity (Ce de lume!, "What a crowd!"); the de flips ce from quality to amount.
• cât de
  • adjective/adverb foregrounds degree and is the natural choice when the exclamation runs on (cât de mult mi-a fost dor).
• Colloquial ce mai...! intensifies (informal); any plain statement can exclaim through intonation alone.
• Never use cum to exclaim, and let the final punctuation mark distinguish the exclamation (!) from the question (?), since ce heads both.