Questions & Answers about Un tren rapid pleacă la ora opt.
What does rapid mean in this context?
The word rapid is an adjective meaning fast or express. In railway terminology, a tren rapid is an express train that makes fewer stops and travels faster than a local train.
Why is rapid placed after tren instead of before, as in English?
In Romanian, the default word order for adjectives is noun + adjective, not the other way around. So you say tren rapid (train fast) rather than rapid tren.
What gender is tren, and why do we use un before it?
Tren is a masculine noun (most Romanian nouns ending in a consonant are masculine). The word un is the masculine singular indefinite article (equivalent to English “a” or “an”), so un tren simply means a train.
What verb is pleacă, and what person and tense does it represent?
Pleacă is the third person singular present tense of the intransitive verb a pleca, which means to leave or to depart. Here it tells us that (it/he/she) leaves at a given time.
What sound does the letter ă represent, and how do I pronounce it in pleacă and oră?