Learn Romanian: Câți studenți au câștigat concursul?

Câți studenți au câștigat concursul?

How many students won the contest?

Breakdown of Câți studenți au câștigat concursul?

to win / to gain, to save (time)

Questions & Answers about Câți studenți au câștigat concursul?

Why does the past tense here use two words, au câștigat?

This is the Perfect Compus (Compound Perfect), the most common past tense in Romanian. It is made of two parts: a helping verb (here, au for the 'they' form) and the past participle of the main verb (câștigat). So au câștigat means 'they won' or 'they have won'.

How do we know to use au as the helping verb in this question?

The helping verb always has to match the subject doing the action. The subject here is studenți (students), which is a plural 'they' (ei). The 'they' form of the helping verb for the past tense is always au.

Why is it Câți instead of just Cât for 'how many'?

In Romanian, the word for 'how much' or 'how many' changes to match the gender and number of the noun it goes with. Because studenți is masculine and plural, we use the masculine plural form câți. If we were asking about a feminine plural noun like women (femei), we would use câte.

What is the -ul doing at the end of concursul?

That is the definite article, which means 'the'. In Romanian, 'the' attaches to the end of the noun. Concurs means 'contest', and because it is a singular neuter noun, it takes the ending -ul to become concursul ('the contest').