Word
Dacă plecai mai devreme, nu pierdeai trenul.
Meaning
If you had left earlier, you wouldn't have missed the train.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Dacă plecai mai devreme, nu pierdeai trenul.
nu
no / not
trenul
the train
devreme
early
pleca
to leave
Questions & Answers about Dacă plecai mai devreme, nu pierdeai trenul.
Why does this sentence use the imperfect tense (plecai, pierdeai) instead of a conditional tense for 'would have'?
In everyday Romanian, the imperfect tense is frequently used in both halves of a past hypothetical sentence (an unreal past 'if' clause). You could also use the conditional perfect and say Dacă ai fi plecat..., nu ai fi pierdut..., but the imperfect is much more common in spoken language and means the exact same thing.
Could I use the standard past tense (perfect compus) here and say 'Dacă ai plecat...'?
No, because that changes the meaning to a real possibility rather than a hypothetical one. Dacă ai plecat... means 'If you (actually) left...'. To show that it's a hypothetical situation that didn't happen, you must use either the imperfect (plecai) or the conditional perfect (ai fi plecat).
The English translation says 'missed', but doesn't a pierde mean 'to lose'?
Yes, a pierde generally means 'to lose'. However, Romanian doesn't use a separate verb for missing transportation. You use a pierde whether you are losing your wallet or missing a train, bus, or flight.
Why is 'earlier' translated as two words (mai devreme)?
In Romanian, comparatives are formed by adding mai (more) before the word. Since devreme means 'early', mai devreme literally means 'more early'. Unlike English, which switches between '-er' endings and the word 'more', Romanian consistently uses the mai structure for this.