A ploua means to rain. It is the model weather verb, and weather verbs in Romanian are strictly impersonal: they describe an event that simply happens, with no one and nothing performing it. There is no rain-er. Because there is no subject, the verb has only one form per tense — the 3rd-person singular — and you never put a pronoun in front of it. You say Plouă ("It's raining") with nothing where an English "it" would go.
This is the heart of the page: where English needs a dummy subject ("it is raining"), Romanian needs nothing at all. The verb stands alone. Below, instead of a six-person paradigm, you get a single form for each tense — because that is the entire grammatical reality of a ploua.
The impersonal paradigm — one form per tense
There is no eu plouă / tu plouă / noi plouăm in real Romanian. A full personal table would be an invention. Here is the verb as it actually exists:
| Tense / mood | Form (3sg only) | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Prezent | plouă | it's raining / it rains |
| Imperfect | ploua | it was raining |
| Perfect compus | a plouat | it rained / it has rained |
| Mai-mult-ca-perfect | plouase | it had rained |
| Viitor (formal) | va ploua | it will rain |
| Viitor (colocvial) | o să plouă | it's going to rain |
| Conjunctiv | să plouă | (that) it rain |
| Condițional | ar ploua | it would rain |
Plouă tare afară, ia-ți umbrela.
It's raining hard outside, take your umbrella.
Ieri a plouat toată ziua, n-am ieșit deloc.
Yesterday it rained all day, I didn't go out at all.
Why only one form?
A normal verb agrees with a subject: eu cânt, tu cânți, el cântă. A ploua has no subject to agree with, so there is nothing to vary — the verb is frozen in the default 3rd-person singular, the form a verb takes when there is simply "no one" there. Linguists call this an avalent verb: zero arguments. Compare it to a costa, which is thing-impersonal (the price is the subject) — a ploua is impersonal in the stronger sense of having no subject whatsoever.
Se pare că o să plouă spre seară.
It looks like it's going to rain toward evening.
Dacă ar ploua acum, ar fi perfect pentru grădină.
If it rained now, it'd be perfect for the garden.
Non-finite forms
Even the non-finite forms exist (you meet plouând in narration), though they too carry no subject.
| Form | Romanian |
|---|---|
| Infinitiv | (a) ploua |
| Gerunziu | plouând |
| Participiu | plouat |
| Supin | de plouat (rare) |
Am mers spre casă plouând mărunt tot drumul.
We walked home with it drizzling the whole way.
Usage
The bare present Plouă is a complete sentence — the most natural way to report current weather:
— Iei umbrela? — Da, plouă.
— Are you taking an umbrella? — Yes, it's raining.
Plouă cu găleata, nu se vede la doi metri.
It's pouring (raining buckets), you can't see two meters ahead.
A vivid figurative use is a ploua cu ("to rain with / to shower with"), where some thing pours down in quantity. Here the verb stays impersonal — the thing arrives in a cu phrase, not as a subject:
După meci a plouat cu felicitări pe rețele.
After the match, congratulations poured in on social media.
La nuntă a plouat cu petale de trandafir.
At the wedding it rained rose petals.
Adding place, time, and intensity
Because a ploua never takes a subject, everything you add to the sentence is an adverbial — where, when, or how hard. Romanian places these freely, but the most idiomatic order puts the manner adverb right after the verb: Plouă tare ("It's raining hard"), Plouă mărunt ("It's drizzling"), Plouă torențial ("It's pouring"). Place follows with afară ("outside"), la munte ("in the mountains"), and so on.
La noi a plouat puțin, dar la munte a plouat zile întregi.
Where we are it rained a little, but in the mountains it rained for days.
A început să plouă chiar când am ajuns la mare.
It started to rain right when we got to the seaside.
Note the inchoative pattern in the last example: a începe să plouă ("to start raining") keeps plouă in the subjunctive (să plouă) after a începe, exactly as it would after any verb that governs the subjunctive — the impersonality does not change the grammar around it. The same holds for a sta să plouă ("to be about to rain"), a useful colloquial idiom:
Cerul s-a întunecat, stă să plouă.
The sky has darkened, it's about to rain.
Source-language note for English speakers
English props weather verbs up with a meaningless dummy "it" — "it is raining," "it rained." That "it" refers to nothing; it is there only because English sentences are required to have a subject. Romanian has no such requirement, so it simply omits the subject: Plouă. The error to unlearn is reaching for a pronoun. There is no Romanian word that translates the weather-"it," and inserting el, ea, or any equivalent is ungrammatical. Train yourself to start the sentence with the verb.
Common Mistakes
❌ El plouă afară.
Incorrect — a ploua takes no subject; drop the pronoun entirely.
✅ Plouă afară.
It's raining outside.
❌ Ieri ploua toată ziua.
Incorrect — for a completed past event use the perfect compus a plouat, not the imperfect.
✅ Ieri a plouat toată ziua.
Yesterday it rained all day.
❌ Cred că ploua mâine.
Incorrect — that's the imperfect form; for the future use o să plouă or va ploua.
✅ Cred că o să plouă mâine.
I think it's going to rain tomorrow.
❌ După concert au plouat aplauzele.
Incorrect — keep it impersonal with cu: a plouat cu aplauze.
✅ După concert a plouat cu aplauze.
After the concert, applause poured down.
Now practice Romanian
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Romanian→Related Topics
- Weather and Impersonal Verbs (plouă, ninge, trebuie)A2 — Romanian weather verbs take no subject at all — plouă, ninge, tună — plus the 'a fi' and 'a face' weather idioms and the impersonal trebuie.
- Impersonal and Defective Verbs OverviewB1 — Verbs that live only in the 3rd person singular with no personal subject — weather verbs, trebuie, există, pare — and why Romanian uses no dummy 'it' the way English does.
- a ninge — to snowA2 — Conjugation of the weather verb a ninge, impersonal and 3rd-person singular only (ninge, ningea, a nins, va ninge, să ningă), with the irregular -s participle nins.
- Why Romanian Drops Subject PronounsA1 — Romanian is a pro-drop language: the verb ending already names the subject, so eu, tu, and noi are normally left out — and adding them sounds emphatic, not casual.