Neologisms and Anglicisms

Every living language borrows, but the interesting question is what it does with a loan once it arrives. Romanian's answer is striking: it grabs the foreign word — almost always English, in the current wave — and immediately fits it with full native morphology. The English verb to download enters and within a sentence is conjugated like a Romanian first-conjugation verb: downloadez, downloadezi, am downloadat. The noun job takes a Romanian article and a Romanian plural: jobul, joburi. This is the key to understanding "Romglish": it is not code-switching, not dropping English words into Romanian speech as foreign bodies. It is grammatical assimilation — the loans are run through the same inflectional machine as native words. This page shows how that machine works, how the Romanian Academy pushes back with adapted calques, and how the two coexist as a register split.

The new layer, and where it comes from

The 19th century brought French and Latin (see the layers of Romanian vocabulary); the late 20th and 21st centuries bring English, through technology, business, the internet, and youth culture. Computer, online, email, site, smartphone, job, training, business, brand, deadline, manager, marketing, feedback, weekend, cool, trend. Some have a Romanian-built rival (often promoted by the Academy), some don't. The flood is concentrated in exactly the domains English dominates globally: IT, corporate work, and digital life.

Verbalization: turning a loan into a Romanian verb

The most impressive trick is how Romanian builds verbs from English bases. It almost always uses the first conjugation (the -a infinitive, -ez present type), which is the productive "default" conjugation for new verbs. So download → a downloada, to like (on social media) → a da like or a aprecia, forward → a forwarda, post → a posta, log in → a se loga, share → a da share / a distribui, save → a salva.

Notice two patterns. Single-word actions become a single integrated verb (a posta, a downloada), fully conjugable. But some loans resist verbalization and instead use the light-verb construction a da + noun — a da like, a da share, a da refresh — where the native verb a da ("to give") does the grammatical work and the English word stays an uninflected noun. Both are "Romglish," but they assimilate differently.

Spelling note: because the base keeps its English spelling, the past participle can look odd to an English eye — downloadat doubles nothing and just appends the Romanian -at. The pronunciation follows English for the stem and Romanian for the ending.

Noun integration: articles, plurals, and gender

Loan nouns are slotted into Romanian's gender and inflection system. Most English loans become neuter (the default for inanimate borrowings), which means singular like a masculine and plural like a feminine — and the plural ending of choice is -uri. They take the enclitic definite article like any noun: link → linkul, job → jobul, brand → brandul.

Recall from the spelling of loanwords that the ending attaches with a hyphen when gluing it solid would hide the foreign reading (site-ul, link-uri in careful spelling), and solid when it attaches transparently (blogul, joburi). Either way, the crucial point is that the Romanian ending is there at all — the loan is declined, not quoted.

The purist pushback: the Academy's adapted alternatives

The Romanian Academy and language commentators do not love unbridled Anglicism, and for many loans they promote a calque or an adapted form built from native or already-Latinate material. The classic example is download: the Academy-blessed form is a descărca (literally "to un-load," des- + a încărca), a perfect calque. Others: a încărca for "upload," a apăsa / a face clic for "to click," a salva for "save," legătură for "link," aplicație for "app," a distribui for "share." These compete with the raw Anglicisms in a clear register split.

The register reality: the raw Anglicism dominates casual speech, texting, and corporate/IT jargon; the calque dominates formal writing, official documentation, software localized into Romanian, and careful editorial prose. A software UI button says Descarcă; your colleague says downloadează-l. Both are current Romanian; they just live in different registers.

When NOT to over-anglicize

In casual and workplace speech, Anglicisms are normal and expected — nobody blinks at am un deadline la job. But in formal writing, academic prose, official documents, and journalism, piling up raw Anglicisms reads as careless or unserious, and editors will replace them with the established Romanian term. The honest guidance: Romglish is a real, fully assimilated register, not "bad Romanian" — but it is a register, and using it in a formal context is a register error, the same kind of mistake as wearing gym clothes to a wedding.

Why assimilation, not code-switching

A bilingual code-switcher drops in an English word as a foreign object and would have to switch back to English grammar to inflect it. Romanian does the opposite: it keeps speaking Romanian grammar and forces the English word to obey it. The proof is that the loans get Romanian tense, person, number, gender, article, and even the reflexive se (a se loga). A code-switched word cannot take -ez, -uri, or the enclitic -ul; a borrowed-and-assimilated word does. This is exactly the same process that long ago turned football into fotbal and meci — only now we can watch it happen in real time with a downloada and joburi.

Common Mistakes

Leaving an English verb uninflected instead of giving it Romanian endings:

Pluralizing a loan with English -s instead of Romanian -uri:

Over-anglicizing in formal writing where the Academy form is expected:

Forgetting the reflexive se that some loan-verbs require:

Misspelling the Romanian past participle of a loan verb:

Key Takeaways

• English loans are assimilated, not code-switched: they take full Romanian morphology — verbs conjugate (downloadez, am downloadat, a se loga), nouns take articles and -uri plurals (linkul, joburi, branduri).
• New loan verbs default to the first conjugation (-a / -ez); some loans stay nouns inside a light-verb construction with a da (a da like, a da share).
• Most loan nouns become neuter and pluralize in -uri, taking the enclitic article like any Romanian noun.
• The Academy promotes calques (a descărca for download, a distribui for share, legătură for link), creating a register doublet: Anglicism for casual/IT speech, calque for formal writing and localized software.
• Romglish is a real, fully integrated register, not broken Romanian — but using it in formal/academic/official contexts is a register error.