Odată ce ordinea serviciului este gata, începe meciul.

to be

Breakdown of Odată ce ordinea serviciului este gata, începe meciul.

• gata: ready
• a începe: to start
• odată ce: once; now that

Questions & Answers about Odată ce ordinea serviciului este gata, începe meciul.

What does odată ce mean here?

Odată ce is a conjunction meaning once, as soon as, or sometimes given that / now that, depending on context.

In this sentence, it has a time meaning: after one thing is settled, the next thing happens.

So:

• odată ce = once / as soon as
• Odată ce ordinea serviciului este gata... = Once the service order is ready...

It is a fixed expression, so it is best learned as a whole.

Why is it ordinea serviciului and not something simpler like ordinea serviciu?

Because Romanian often shows of relationships with the genitive case.

Here:

• ordinea = the order
• serviciului = of the service

So ordinea serviciului literally means the order of the service.

This is similar to English noun relationships, but Romanian usually marks the second noun grammatically instead of using a separate word like of.

A helpful breakdown:

• serviciu = service
• serviciul = the service
• serviciului = of the service / to the service

So the sentence uses the genitive form because the phrase means the service order or more literally the order of the service.

Why is ordinea definite? Why not just ordine?