Scurgerea este sub chiuvetă.

In this sentence, scurgerea means the drain or the drainage outlet/pipe under the sink.

A useful warning: scurgere can also mean leak, drainage, or outflow in other contexts. So the exact meaning depends on the situation. With chiuvetă nearby, learners will usually understand it as the drain.

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

• scurgere = drain / drainage
• scurgerea = the drain

So the -a is the definite article here.

Este is the 3rd person singular of a fi, which means to be.

So:

• este = is

In everyday speech, Romanians very often use the shorter form e:

• Scurgerea e sub chiuvetă.

That means exactly the same thing.

Sub means under, below, or beneath.

It is a preposition showing location:

• sub chiuvetă = under the sink

This is a very common thing that surprises English speakers.

In Romanian, after some prepositions, especially in everyday location phrases, the noun often appears without the definite article even when English uses the.

So Romanian can say:

• sub chiuvetă = under the sink

This is natural Romanian. English article use and Romanian article use do not always match exactly.

You may also hear sub chiuveta in some contexts, especially when the speaker wants to make the sink sound more specifically identified, but sub chiuvetă is very normal.

No. Romanian word order is fairly flexible.

Scurgerea este sub chiuvetă is the most neutral, straightforward order:

• subject + verb + location

You could also move things around for emphasis, for example:

• Sub chiuvetă este scurgerea.

That sounds more marked, as if you are emphasizing the location.

A rough English-friendly pronunciation is:

• Scurgerea ≈ skoor-JEH-reh-ah
• este ≈ ES-teh
• sub ≈ soob
• chiuvetă ≈ kyoo-VEH-tuh

A couple of helpful pronunciation notes:

• In scurgerea, the g before e sounds like English j.
• In chiuvetă, ch before i/e sounds like a hard k, not like English ch in chair.

Yes, both are feminine nouns.

You can see that in forms like:

• o scurgere = a drain / a drainage
• o chiuvetă = a sink
• scurgerea = the drain
• chiuveta = the sink

This matters because adjectives and some other words in Romanian must agree with the noun’s gender.