Contractul individual de muncă începe luni.

Romanian usually puts the definite article at the end of the noun instead of using a separate word like English the.

• contract = contract / a contract
• contractul = the contract

So contractul individual de muncă means the individual employment contract.

A useful extra detail: contract is a neuter noun in Romanian, and neuter nouns behave like masculine in the singular, which is why the definite ending here is -ul.

In Romanian, adjectives often come after the noun.

So:

• contract individual = individual contract
• contractul individual = the individual contract

This is the normal, unmarked word order. English usually puts adjectives before the noun, but Romanian often places them after it.

Also, the adjective agrees with the noun. Here individual is the masculine/neuter singular form, matching contractul.

de muncă literally means something like of work or for work, but in this expression it is best understood as employment.

So:

• contract de muncă = employment contract

This is a very common Romanian structure: noun + de + noun.

For example, Romanian often uses de where English might use:

• a noun used like an adjective
• of
• or a more specialized term such as employment

So in natural English, contract individual de muncă is not individual contract of work, but individual employment contract.

începe is the 3rd person singular present tense of the verb a începe, meaning to begin or to start.

So:

• a începe = to start / to begin
• începe = starts / begins

It is 3rd person singular because the subject, contractul individual de muncă, is singular.

Romanian, like English, often uses the present tense for scheduled or clearly planned future events.

So Contractul individual de muncă începe luni is very natural and means:

• The individual employment contract starts Monday

This is similar to English sentences like:

• The meeting starts tomorrow
• My course begins on Monday

Romanian could also use a future form, such as va începe luni, but the present tense is very common for scheduled events.

Romanian often leaves out subject pronouns when they are not needed. This is called a pro-drop language.

Since the subject is already clearly stated as Contractul individual de muncă, there is no need to add a separate pronoun.

English needs:

• It starts Monday

Romanian does not:

• Contractul individual de muncă începe luni

Even when the noun is not stated, Romanian often still omits the pronoun if the meaning is clear from context.

There are two separate points here:

1. Weekdays are normally lowercase in Romanian.
So Romanian writes:

• luni = Monday
• marți = Tuesday
• miercuri = Wednesday

Unlike English, they are not normally capitalized unless they begin a sentence.

2. Romanian often does not need a preposition like English on.
So:

• începe luni = starts on Monday

This is a very common Romanian pattern with days of the week.

It can mean either one, depending on context.

• luni = Monday
• luni = Mondays

In this sentence, the meaning is clearly Monday, because we are talking about one specific contract starting on one specific day.

If the sentence were about a repeated action, then luni could mean Mondays.

The marks are not optional decorations; they are part of the spelling and pronunciation.

In this sentence:

• ă in muncă
• î in începe

These represent sounds that do not match normal English spelling very well.

A rough guide:

• ă sounds like the a in about for many English speakers
• î is a distinct Romanian vowel with no exact English equivalent

So yes, the diacritics matter. Writing munca instead of muncă, for example, is not the same spelling.

Romanian has somewhat freer word order than English, but the sentence as given is the most neutral and natural:

• Contractul individual de muncă începe luni.

You may sometimes see different word orders for emphasis, such as putting luni earlier, but that changes the focus rather than the core meaning.

For a learner, the safest pattern is:

subject + verb + time expression

So this sentence is an excellent model to follow.