Breakdown of Tu aștepți trenul la gară.
tu
you
trenul
the train
aștepta
to wait
la
at / to
gara
the train station
Questions & Answers about Tu aștepți trenul la gară.
Why is there no word for 'for' in aștepți trenul?
In English, we say 'wait for', but the Romanian verb a aștepta (to wait) connects directly to the object. You do not need an extra preposition. You literally just say 'you wait the train' (tu aștepți trenul).
The English translation says 'at the train station', but gară doesn't have a word for 'the' attached to the end. Why?
In Romanian, when you use a preposition of location or direction like la (at/to) or în (in/into), you generally drop the definite article ('the') from the noun that follows it. You just use the plain dictionary form, so la gară naturally means 'at the train station'.
Does the preposition la change the spelling of the word gară?
No, it stays exactly the same! The preposition la requires the noun to be in the Accusative case. For A1 learners, this is great news because Accusative noun forms are identical to their basic dictionary forms. Gară is just the standard dictionary word for 'train station'.
As a quick review, how does the word trenul work?
Romanian attaches words for 'the' (definite articles) to the end of the noun. The base word for 'train' is tren. Because it is a neuter noun, we add the suffix -ul to the end to make it trenul, which means 'the train'.
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