Spelling of Loanwords

Every language that borrows has to decide: do you respell the foreign word to fit your own sound-and-spelling system, or do you keep it as it came? Romanian has done both, at different times, and the result is a vocabulary with a visible historical seam. Loans that arrived a century ago through French, German, or Turkish were thoroughly nativized — football became fotbal, chauffeur became șofer, Bureau became birou — so completely that they no longer look foreign at all. Loans arriving now, mostly from English, are largely kept in their original spelling — weekend, site, mouse, manager — pronounced approximately as in English and written exactly as in English. Knowing which strategy applies to a given word, and how the Romanian article and plural endings clip onto an unadapted loan, is the B2 skill this page builds.

The fully nativized layer: fotbal, meci, șofer, tramvai

The older borrowings were respelled so that the writing matches Romanian's phonemic spelling rules — each letter has its predictable sound. Once a word is in this layer, it behaves like any native word: it takes a definite article seamlessly, pluralizes by the normal rules, and uses Romanian diacritics. These words feel completely Romanian to a native speaker, and many people are surprised to learn they were ever loans.

Notice that the nativized loans respell the foreign sounds with Romanian letters: English sh in chauffeur's region becomes ș, the ck of Stecker becomes c + ă + r. They also acquire Romanian diacritics, which is the clearest visual sign that a word has crossed fully into the language.

The kept-as-is layer: weekend, site, mouse, manager

Recent English borrowings — especially from technology, business, and pop culture — are kept in their original English spelling, even though they are pronounced with an approximate Romanian accent. The Romanian Academy's dictionary (DOOM) lists these with their English spelling. So you write weekend (not uichend), site (not sait), mouse (not maus), manager, marketing, job, trend, brand. The pronunciation is roughly English; the spelling is fully English.

There is a gray zone here. Some kept-it loans have an informal phonetic respelling that circulates in casual writing but is not the dictionary norm. Site is sometimes written sait (informal), mouse as maus, cool as cul. These are recognizable and common in texting but flagged as nonstandard; in (formal) or (academic) writing, use the English spelling.

The seam: how articles and plurals attach with a hyphen

This is where the two strategies become visible in a single word. When a Romanian ending — the definite article -ul / -le or a plural suffix -uri / -i — attaches to an unadapted loan whose spelling doesn't end in a way Romanian endings glue onto cleanly, the ending is joined with a hyphen. This keeps the foreign stem readable and signals that it's a borrowing.

The deciding factor is whether the loan's ending lets the Romanian suffix attach transparently in pronunciation. Blog and mail end in sounds that take -ul / -uri cleanly, so they're written solid (blogul, bloguri, mailuri). But site ends in a silent -e and link ends in a consonant cluster whose pronunciation would be obscured by a glued-on vowel, so the hyphen is used to preserve the foreign reading: site-ul (read "sait-ul," not "sit-eul"), link-uri.

The letters k, q, w, y live here

Romanian's native vocabulary essentially does not use k, q, w, y — their jobs are done by c, cv, v/u, i. These four letters exist in the alphabet almost exclusively to write loanwords and international vocabulary. So seeing a k, q, w, or y in a Romanian text is a near-certain sign you are looking at a borrowing, a brand name, or a technical term: kilogram, weekend, watt, yacht, quasar, hobby, whisky, kebab.

How to decide for a word you haven't met

There is no perfectly clean rule, and you should be honest about that — the boundary between "respell it" and "keep it" is partly a matter of how long the word has been in the language and what the dictionary decided. A practical heuristic: older, everyday loans (sport, transport, household, food) are usually nativized, while recent English loans from tech, business, internet, and youth culture are usually kept as-is. When you genuinely don't know, the dictionary norm (DOOM) is the authority — but in informal writing, the kept-it forms dominate and phonetic respellings circulate freely.

Common Mistakes

Inventing a Romanian phonetic spelling for a loan that the dictionary keeps in English:

Conversely, writing a fully nativized loan in its foreign spelling:

Gluing the article or plural solid onto a loan that needs the hyphen, hiding its reading:

Forgetting the -uri plural that most English loans take (not adding -s as in English):

Key Takeaways

• Romanian uses two strategies: older loans are fully respelled (fotbal, meci, șofer, tramvai, birou); recent English loans are kept as-is (weekend, site, mouse, manager, marketing).
• Nativized loans take Romanian diacritics and endings seamlessly; the dictionary (DOOM) is the authority on which spelling is standard.
• Romanian endings attach to unadapted loans with a hyphen when gluing them solid would hide the reading: site-ul, link-uri, show-ul — but solid when transparent: blogul, bloguri, mailuri.
• Most English loans pluralize with -uri, not English -s: linkuri, mailuri, bloguri.
• The letters k, q, w, y appear almost only in loanwords and international vocabulary.