Learn Hardcore Romanian: Pe când eram mic, bunica era fericită pentru că ne jucam în grădină. - When I was little, Grandma was happy because we played in the garden.

Pe când eram mic, bunica era fericită pentru că ne jucam în grădină.

When I was little, Grandma was happy because we played in the garden.

Breakdown of Pe când eram mic, bunica era fericită pentru că ne jucam în grădină.

Elon.io is an online learning platform

We have an entire course teaching Romanian grammar and vocabulary.

Start learning Romanian now

Questions & Answers about Pe când eram mic, bunica era fericită pentru că ne jucam în grădină.

What is the difference between Pe când eram mic and Când eram mic? Is pe really needed?

Both Pe când eram mic and Când eram mic are grammatical and mean essentially When I was little.

Când eram mic is the neutral, most common form.
Pe când eram mic sounds a bit more story-like, nostalgic, or literary, and often suggests a longer period of time in the past.

You can think of pe când a bit like “back when / at the time when”.
You cannot translate pe separately here; it just adds that slight nuance and is often used in storytelling or contrasting sentences:

Pe când tu munceai, eu dormeam. – While you were working, I was sleeping.

Why is it eram mic and not am fost mic?

Romanian uses two different past forms here:

eram = imperfect (ongoing / background past)
am fost = compound perfect (completed past event)

Eram mic is used because being small in childhood is seen as a continuous state over a period of time, not a single finished event.
So:

Pe când eram mic ≈ When I was (generally) little (background state)
Am fost mic would sound strange in normal conversation, as if you’re saying I was small at some specific moment in the past (and that’s over now), or making a philosophical joke.

In narratives about childhood, imperfect (eram) is standard for these long-lasting states.

How do we know eram mic means “I was little” and not “we were little”, since eram can mean both I was and we were?

You’re right that eram is both:

1st person singular imperfect: eu eram
1st person plural imperfect: noi eram

The sentence is understood as “I was little” because of agreement with the adjective:

mic = masculine singular
If it were “we were little”, it would be eram mici (plural adjective).

So:

eram mic → singular subject (I)
eram mici → plural subject (we)

Context also helps: Pe când eram mic is a very typical way to talk about one’s own childhood.

Why is it mic (masculine) and how would the sentence change if the speaker is female?

Adjectives in Romanian agree in gender and number with the person or thing they describe.

Forms of mic:

Masculine singular: mic
Feminine singular: mică
Plural (both genders): mici

In the sentence:

Pe când eram mic – the speaker is understood to be male.

If the speaker is female, you would say:

Pe când eram mică, bunica era fericită pentru că ne jucam în grădină.
(When I was little (female), Grandma was happy because we were playing in the garden.)

The verb eram stays the same; only the adjective changes.

Why is it bunica era fericită and not bunica era fericit?

Bunica means grandmother, so it is feminine.
Adjectives must match the noun in gender and number.

For the adjective fericit:

Masculine singular: fericit
Feminine singular: fericită
Plural: fericiți / fericite (depending on gender)

So:

Bunica era fericită. – Grandma was happy.
Bunicul era fericit. – Grandpa was happy.

Using fericit with bunica would be ungrammatical, because the endings don’t agree.

What exactly is ne in ne jucam, and why isn’t there a noi for “we”?

In ne jucam, ne is a reflexive pronoun for the 1st person plural:

a se juca = to play (as children play, intransitive)
Imperfect, 1st person plural: (noi) ne jucam – we were playing / we used to play

Two points:

Reflexive pronoun:
- mă joc – I play
- te joci – you play (sing.)
- se joacă – he/she/they play
- ne jucăm – we play
- vă jucați – you (pl.) play
  In the imperfect:
- ne jucam – we were playing
So ne is required by the verb a se juca.
Dropping the subject pronoun: Romanian usually omits subject pronouns (it’s a “pro-drop” language):
- Ne jucam în grădină. – We were playing in the garden.
  (the “we” is understood from ne jucam)
- You can say Noi ne jucam în grădină, but that usually adds emphasis on noi (we).

In short: ne marks the reflexive verb a se juca, and noi is simply omitted because the verb form already tells you it’s we.

Why is it ne jucam and not ne-am jucat?

Both are correct Romanian but express different types of past:

ne jucam = imperfect → we were playing / we used to play
(ongoing or habitual action in the past)
ne-am jucat = compound perfect → we played
(a completed event)

In the sentence:

Bunica era fericită pentru că ne jucam în grădină.

Grandma’s happiness is related to what was going on at that time (or repeatedly), so the imperfect makes sense: the children were in the middle of playing, or they used to play there regularly.

If you said:

Bunica a fost fericită pentru că ne-am jucat în grădină.

it would feel more like: There was one occasion; we played in the garden, and Grandma was (at some point) happy about that completed event.
The original sentence suggests a more continuous, typical situation from the past.

What is the function of pentru că here? Could we use something else, like deoarece or just că?

Pentru că introduces a reason: it means because.

Bunica era fericită pentru că ne jucam în grădină.
→ Grandma was happy because we were playing in the garden.

You have several options in Romanian:

pentru că – very common and neutral
deoarece – more formal / bookish
fiindcă – also common, maybe slightly more informal
căci – literary, a bit old-fashioned in everyday speech

In this sentence, you could also say:

Bunica era fericită deoarece ne jucam în grădină.
Bunica era fericită fiindcă ne jucam în grădină.

You can also hear:

Bunica era fericită că ne jucam în grădină.

Here, că is shorter and more colloquial. It often feels closer to “happy that” rather than “happy because”, but in practice they overlap a lot and both are used.

Why is it în grădină and not în grădina or la grădină?

There are two issues here: the article and the preposition.

Article: grădină vs. grădina

grădină – “garden” (indefinite)
grădina – “the garden” (definite)

In context, în grădină can still correspond to English “in the garden”; Romanian often uses the bare noun for places when the exact identity is obvious from context (home, garden, yard, etc.).

You could also say:

...ne jucam în grădină la bunica. – we played in Grandma’s garden.
...ne jucam în grădina bunicii. – we played in Grandma’s garden.

Both în grădină and în grădina are possible; în grădină feels a bit more general, focusing on the activity rather than specifying which garden.

Preposition: în vs. la

în grădină – in the garden (inside the space)
la grădină would sound odd on its own; la is used more with:
- la grădiniță (kindergarten)
- la mare, la munte, la școală, etc.

So în grădină is the natural choice for physically being and playing inside the garden.

Is the comma after Pe când eram mic necessary, and can we move the clauses around?

Yes, the comma is standard, and the word order is fairly flexible.

Comma:
- When a subordinate clause (like Pe când eram mic) comes before the main clause, Romanian normally writes a comma:
  - Pe când eram mic, bunica era fericită...
In informal writing you might see it without a comma, but the comma is considered correct.
Word order: You can change the order of clauses, with small shifts in emphasis. For example:
- Bunica era fericită când eram mic, pentru că ne jucam în grădină.
- Bunica era fericită pentru că ne jucam în grădină când eram mic.
All are understandable and grammatical.
- With Pe când eram mic at the start, you first set the time frame (childhood).
- Moving când eram mic to the end makes it sound more like an afterthought: Grandma was happy because we were playing in the garden back when I was little.

In everyday speech, Romanians freely vary this order; writing tends to follow the comma rules a bit more strictly.