English insists that every verb have a subject, so when there's genuinely nothing to be the subject, it props up a dummy: It rains, it got late, it happens that... Romanian has no such requirement. A whole class of verbs simply runs subjectless, the verb standing alone in the third person singular, naming an event with no one and nothing performing it. This covers three overlapping zones: weather (plouă — "it's raining"), time and light (s-a făcut târziu — "it's gotten late"; se înserează — "evening is falling"), and occurrence (se întâmplă să... — "it happens that..."). The weather verbs in detail live on the weather and impersonal verbs page; here we broaden the lens to time and occurrence, where the same empty-subject logic operates.
Weather: the prototype (recap)
The clearest impersonals are weather verbs — plouă (rains), ninge (snows), tună (thunders), fulgeră (lightnings), burnițează (drizzles). They exist essentially only in the 3rd singular with no subject.
Plouă de azi-dimineață, ia-ți umbrela.
It's been raining since this morning — take your umbrella.
Ninge liniștit peste tot orașul.
It's snowing quietly over the whole city.
These are the model for everything else on the page: a bare verb, no "it," the event simply happening. The full weather inventory and the a fi/a face weather idioms (e frig, se face frig) are on the dedicated weather page.
Time and the failing/growing light
A large group of impersonals tracks the time of day and the changing light — dusk falling, dawn breaking, darkness coming on. These are among the most idiomatic subjectless verbs, and several are reflexive (se + verb).
| Expression | English |
|---|---|
| se înserează | evening is falling / it's getting dark |
| se întunecă | it's getting dark / night is coming |
| se luminează / se face ziuă | it's getting light / day is breaking |
| se crapă de ziuă | day is breaking (at dawn) — vivid/literary |
| s-a făcut târziu | it's gotten late |
| e ora trei / e (ora) târziu | it's three o'clock / it's late |
Hai să ne grăbim, se înserează deja.
Let's hurry, it's already getting dark.
Când se luminează de ziuă, pornim la drum.
When day breaks, we'll set off.
E aproape miezul nopții și încă mai lucrează.
It's almost midnight and he's still working.
Mergem acasă? S-a făcut târziu și sunt obosit.
Shall we go home? It's gotten late and I'm tired.
Telling the clock time uses a fi in the 3rd singular with the time as a predicate — e ora trei ("it's three o'clock"), e ora prânzului ("it's lunchtime") — again with no subject. And s-a făcut târziu uses a se face ("to get/become"), the same change-of-state verb covered on the verbs of becoming page: here it marks the transition into lateness, with nothing as its subject.
Occurrence: se întâmplă, se nimerește, se face
The third zone is occurrence and chance — verbs that say something comes about, happens to be the case, or turns out. These typically take a să-clause (subjunctive) naming what happens, and they stay rigidly in the 3rd singular.
| Verb | English |
|---|---|
| se întâmplă (să) | it happens (that) / sometimes... |
| se nimerește (să) | it (so) happens / it falls out that |
| se face (că) | it comes about / turns out that (also "pretends") |
| se prea poate (să) | it's quite possible (that) |
| se cuvine (să) | it is fitting / proper (that) |
Se întâmplă să mai uit câte o vorbă în română.
It happens that I sometimes forget the odd word in Romanian.
S-a nimerit să fim amândoi în oraș în aceeași zi.
It so happened that we were both in town on the same day.
Se poate să fi plouat noaptea, asfaltul e ud.
It may have rained during the night — the asphalt is wet.
The verb a se întâmpla is the workhorse: se întâmplă să... means "it (sometimes) happens that...", and in the past s-a întâmplat ceva means "something happened" (where ceva can be a real subject — so this verb has both an impersonal and a personal use). With a să-clause and no subject, it's purely impersonal. Note that se face că here means "it turns out / comes about that," distinct from the personal se face meaning "pretends" (se face că doarme — "he pretends to be asleep") — context and the că/să complement disambiguate.
Se cuvine să le mulțumim gazdelor înainte de plecare.
It's only proper that we thank the hosts before leaving.
Why there's no "it"
The unifying point is that these events have no participant to promote to subject. Rain isn't done by anything; lateness doesn't happen to a thing that could head the sentence; "it happens that..." reports a state of affairs, not an actor. English papers over this gap with the placeholder it, because its grammar forbids a subjectless finite clause. Romanian's grammar allows the empty subject directly, so the verb carries the meaning alone in the 3rd singular. Inserting a pronoun — el plouă, aceasta se înserează — doesn't just sound odd; it forces a nonexistent actor into the sentence and breaks it. For the broader family of subjectless and impersonal structures (the impersonal se, trebuie, merită să, and existential este/sunt), see impersonal constructions.
Common Mistakes
❌ El se înserează repede iarna.
Incorrect — 'se înserează' is subjectless; 'el' forces a nonexistent actor.
✅ Se înserează repede iarna.
It gets dark quickly in winter.
❌ Aceasta s-a făcut târziu.
Incorrect — no subject pronoun for impersonal time verbs: S-a făcut târziu.
✅ S-a făcut târziu.
It's gotten late.
❌ It se întâmplă des.
Incorrect — there is no English-style 'it' before a Romanian impersonal verb.
✅ Se întâmplă des.
It happens often.
❌ Se întâmplă că uit cuvinte (relaying a habit).
Incorrect for the habitual sense — 'se întâmplă' takes a 'să'-clause: se întâmplă să uit.
✅ Se întâmplă să uit cuvinte.
It happens that I forget words sometimes.
❌ E ora trei este acum.
Incorrect — no subject and no doubled verb; just 'E ora trei acum'.
✅ E ora trei acum.
It's three o'clock now.
Key Takeaways
- A class of verbs runs subjectless in the 3rd person singular — no "it," no pronoun — across weather, time/light, and occurrence.
- Time and light: se înserează, se întunecă, se luminează / se face ziuă, s-a făcut târziu; clock time with a fi — e ora trei.
- Occurrence: se întâmplă să, se nimerește să, se poate să, se cuvine să — typically with a să-clause and no subject.
- Distinguish state from transition: E târziu / E întuneric (a fi) vs s-a făcut târziu / se întunecă (the change into it).
- The test: if English needs a dummy it, Romanian drops it entirely.
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- 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 Subjectless ConstructionsB2 — Romanian has no dummy subject: there is no 'it' in plouă ('it's raining') or 'there' in se poate ('one can'), and the verb stands subjectless. Worse for English instincts, the logical subject of 'I need' surfaces in the DATIVE — îmi trebuie, îmi place, mi se pare — so the experiencer becomes a dative object, not a subject. This page maps weather verbs, the impersonal se, dative-experiencer verbs, and the trebuie / e bine + să patterns.
- Verbs of Becoming and Change (a deveni, a se face)B1 — Romanian splits English 'become' across several verbs — formal a deveni, everyday a se face, the 'end up / rise to' a ajunge — plus an inchoative layer where the prefix în-/îm- + an adjective lexicalizes 'become X' (a îmbătrâni, a se îmbolnăvi).
- Existential Verbs (este, sunt, există, a se afla)A2 — How Romanian says 'there is / there are' — inverted 'a fi' with no 'there', plus a exista and a se afla, and the contrast with locative a fi.
- Stative vs Dynamic Verbs and Tense ChoiceB2 — Why stative verbs (a fi, a ști, a avea, a iubi) lean to the imperfect for past states while dynamic verbs take the perfect compus — and how forcing a stative into the perfect compus coerces a bounded, inceptive reading (am știut = 'I found out').