Learn Romanian: Era un om nefericit. - He was an unhappy man.

Era is the imperfect tense of a fi (to be). In Romanian, the imperfect is used to describe ongoing states, habits, or background situations in the past. Because being unhappy was his continuous state rather than a single completed action, era is the natural choice for this sentence.

Does om mean man or human in this sentence?

Both! Om generally means human being or person, but in contexts like this, it is commonly translated as man. If you wanted to specifically emphasize his gender as a male, you would use the word bărbat instead.

Could I change the word order and say un nefericit om?

No, in Romanian, descriptive adjectives like nefericit almost always come after the noun. Placing an adjective before the noun is reserved for poetic or highly emphatic contexts, and with a basic noun like om, it would sound very unnatural.

How does the prefix ne- work in nefericit?

The prefix ne- is the standard way to form a negative adjective in Romanian, functioning just like un- in English. By attaching it to fericit (happy), you get nefericit (unhappy). You will also see this widely used in words like neclar (unclear) or neimportant (unimportant).