Person and Number: The Endings System | Romanian Grammar

A Romanian verb form does a lot of work on its own. The ending tells you who is doing the action and how many of them there are, which is why Romanian — like Spanish, Italian, and Latin, and unlike English — normally drops the subject pronoun entirely. Merg already means "I go"; you don't need eu. This page introduces the six person/number slots, shows the recurring endings that repeat across tenses, and flags the one pattern that confuses English speakers most: third-person singular and third-person plural often look identical.

The six slots

Every finite Romanian verb is conjugated for one of six person/number combinations. Here they are with their subject pronouns:

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	eu (I)	noi (we)
2nd	tu (you)	voi (you all)
3rd	el / ea (he / she)	ei / ele (they m. / they f.)

A note on the third person: el is "he," ea is "she," and in the plural ei refers to a group that is all-male or mixed, while ele refers to an all-female group. (There is no neuter pronoun for the subject slot, even though Romanian famously has neuter nouns — those take el/ele depending on number.) For the polite "you," Romanian uses dumneavoastră with the voi/2nd-plural verb form, a topic for the politeness pages.

Pronouns are dropped by default

Because each ending pins down the person, the subject pronoun is redundant and is normally omitted. You include it only for emphasis, contrast, or to clear up a genuine ambiguity.

Form	With pronoun (emphatic)	Plain (default)	Meaning
1sg	eu merg	merg	I go
2sg	tu mergi	mergi	you go
1pl	noi mergem	mergem	we go

Merg la magazin, vrei ceva?

I'm going to the shop, do you want anything? (no 'eu' — the ending says it all)

Mergem împreună sau te aștept acolo?

Are we going together or should I wait for you there?

Eu merg pe jos, tu poți lua autobuzul.

I'll walk, you can take the bus. (pronouns kept for contrast)

In that last example the pronouns eu and tu are doing real work: they set up an explicit contrast between two people. Drop them and the contrast goes soft. This is the normal reason to keep a pronoun — see the dedicated why Romanian drops subject pronouns page.

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Inserting eu, tu, el into every sentence the way English uses "I, you, he" is the surest sign of a beginner. Native Romanian sentences lead with the verb far more often than English does. Use a pronoun only when you'd stress it in English: "I'll go, you stay."

The recurring endings

Across tenses, certain personal endings repeat so reliably that they're worth memorizing as a set. Here are the present-tense endings for a regular verb, with the patterns that generalize.

Person	Ending	a cânta (I)	a merge (III)	a dormi (IV)
eu	-∅ / -u	cânt	merg	dorm
tu	-i	cânți	mergi	dormi
el/ea	-ă / -e	cântă	merge	doarme
noi	-m	cântăm	mergem	dormim
voi	-ți	cântați	mergeți	dormiți
ei/ele	-ă / -∅	cântă	merg	dorm

Three patterns are worth pulling out explicitly:

First singular (eu) is usually the bare stem with no ending (cânt, merg, dorm), or occasionally -u after certain consonant clusters (văd from a vedea, aflu from a afla). The defining feature is its shortness.
First plural (noi) ends in -m and second plural (voi) ends in -ți, and these two are rock-stable across virtually every tense and mood. If you learn nothing else, learn that noi = -m and voi = -ți.
The second singular (tu) typically ends in -i in the present.

Văd că ai terminat deja.

I see you've already finished. ('văd' = 1sg of a vedea, with -u dropping to a final consonant)

Cântați foarte frumos împreună.

You all sing very beautifully together. (voi form, -ți)

Dormim la bunici în weekend.

We're sleeping at our grandparents' this weekend. (noi form, -m)

The big one: 3sg and 3pl often look identical

Here is the syncretism that catches every English speaker off guard. In many present-tense paradigms, the third-person singular and third-person plural are spelled and pronounced the same.

Verb	el / ea (3sg)	ei / ele (3pl)	Same?
a cânta	cântă	cântă	yes
a merge	merge	merg	no
a dormi	doarme	dorm	no
a citi	citește	citesc	no
a lucra	lucrează	lucrează	yes

So class I plain verbs (cântă) and the -ez sub-pattern (lucrează) collapse 3sg and 3pl into one form, while classes III and IV usually keep them distinct. When the forms are identical, only the pronoun or the context disambiguates:

Ea cântă în corul bisericii.

She sings in the church choir. (3sg — only 'ea' tells you it's singular)

Ei cântă în corul bisericii.

They sing in the church choir. (3pl — same verb form, different pronoun)

Copilul desenează, iar părinții lucrează.

The child is drawing, while the parents are working. (subjects make number clear)

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When a verb's 3sg and 3pl are identical, the spoken sentence leans on the subject noun or pronoun to mark number — and so do object clitics elsewhere in the clause. This is the one place where dropping the pronoun can genuinely create ambiguity, so Romanian tends to keep the subject explicit when number would otherwise be unclear.

This syncretism feels alien to English speakers because English marks the opposite: it adds -s precisely in the third singular ("he sings" vs. "they sing"), giving you a clear singular/plural contrast there. Romanian erases that contrast in a large class of verbs, which is exactly why you can't always drop the pronoun in the third person the way you freely can in the first and second.

Anchoring the tables ahead

Every present, past, and future paradigm you'll meet later is just these six slots filled in with class-specific material. Once you have the slots memorized — eu / tu / el-ea / noi / voi / ei-ele — and the stable anchors (-m for noi, -ți for voi, near-bare eu), the conjugation tables stop looking like lists to memorize and start looking like the same frame, refilled. That frame is what makes the present indicative learnable.

Common mistakes

❌ Eu merg, eu mănânc, eu beau apă, eu sunt obosit.

Wrong — stacking 'eu' before every verb is unnatural over-marking.

✅ Merg, mănânc, beau apă și sunt obosit.

Correct — drop the pronoun; the endings already mark first person.

❌ Noi mergi la film.

Wrong — 'mergi' is the 'tu' form; 'noi' needs the -m ending.

✅ Noi mergem la film.

Correct — 'noi' takes -m: mergem.

❌ Cântați frumos, dragă! (to one person)

Wrong — the -ți form is plural/polite; to a single friend use the tu form.

✅ Cânți frumos, dragă!

Correct — 'tu' takes -i in the present: cânți.

❌ Cântă (meaning 'they sing', with no subject in an ambiguous context)

Risky — 'cântă' is both 3sg and 3pl; without a subject the listener can't tell number.

✅ Ei cântă / Ea cântă.

Correct — keep the pronoun when the verb form doesn't distinguish singular from plural.

Key takeaways

Romanian verbs inflect for six slots: eu, tu, el/ea, noi, voi, ei/ele.
Subject pronouns are dropped by default and used only for emphasis or contrast.
Stable anchors: eu ≈ bare stem, noi = -m, voi = -ți.
In many verbs 3sg and 3pl are identical (cântă / cântă) — keep the subject explicit there to mark number.

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