Questions & Answers about Cum faceți totul, doamnă?
Why is the verb faceți in the plural if we are only talking to one person (doamnă)?
In Romanian, formal politeness works by using the plural form of the verb, even when addressing a single person. It is as if the formal pronoun dumneavoastră (you, formal) is hidden in the sentence, and it always requires the plural verb form.
Where is the word for "you" in this sentence?
Romanian often drops the subject pronoun because the verb ending already shows who is doing the action. The -eți ending on faceți tells us the subject is "you" (formal singular or plural). Adding the actual word dumneavoastră is optional.
Why does the word for everything have an -ul at the end (totul)?
The base word tot means "all". When you use it all by itself as a noun to mean "everything", Romanian requires you to add the definite article -ul (the equivalent of "the"). You can think of totul as literally meaning "the everything".
Why do we say doamnă here instead of doamna?
Doamna means "the lady" or is used like "Mrs." when talking about someone. Because we are speaking directly to her in this sentence, we use the base form doamnă, which translates to "madam".