Learn Romanian: Mașina nu este în garaj. - The car is not in the garage.

In Romanian, the word for "the" is attached to the end of the noun instead of being a separate word before it. The basic word for "car" is mașină. By changing the final ă to an a, you get mașina, which means "the car".

The English translation says "in THE garage", but the Romanian sentence just says în garaj. Where is the word for "the"?

After short prepositions like în (in), pe (on), or la (at), Romanian usually drops the "the" ending when talking about a general location. So even though garaj literally means "garage", în garaj is the natural way to say "in the garage".

Where does the word nu go when making a sentence negative?

To make a verb negative in Romanian, you simply put nu right before the verb. Here, it goes directly in front of este (is) to mean "is not".

Is there a shorter way to say nu este in everyday conversation?

Yes! In spoken Romanian, nu este is very often shortened to nu e. Both are completely correct, but nu e sounds more casual and natural when speaking.