Compound Past

The Romanian past tense. After learning these you will understand a lot more of the Romanian speech as these are used a lot (of course the future is too, but we'll get to that later!). There are 4 forms of the past tense in Romanian (that's a lot), 1 one of the forms is the same meaning as another, just used more in the country side of Romania. You'll learn that later. Right now, we're gonna learn the first 2 important forms used in speech.
This lesson will be divided in 3 pages; first will be this one, second will be some verb vocabulary and conjugations of the verbs that are new to you in this lesson, 3rd will be the imperfect past lessons. The first is the compound past, (perfect compus in romanian), which describes an action already completed up to the point of talking.

The compound past starts out with the forms of "to have" kinda. It has a couple exceptions. We'll start learning the forms and the past participle formations of each verbs. It's formed with the auxiliary verb to have + past participle (a avea + trecut participiu).


Forms

Forms
Romanian English
Eu am I've
Tu ai You've
El/Ea a He's / She's
Noi am We've
Voi ați You've (pl)
Ei/Ele au They've

This form can both mean "I waited" and "I have waited". Basically anything that happened in the past and has been completed up to the present point.

Now we can learn the past participles of the verbs we've recently learned and how to conjugate them for others, starting with the basic and irregular verbs.

Verbs

Forms
Present Past English
fi fost was / been
avea avut had
face făcut did / done
vrea vrut wanted
da dat gave / given
lua luat took / taken
putea putut could
mânca mâncat ate / eaten
bea băut drank / drunk
ști știut knew / known
vedea văzut saw / seen
merge mers went / gone
veni venit came
sta stat stayed
vorbi vorbit spoke / spoken
scrie scris wrote / written

Good to memorize those. Now we can go into the fun part.... conjugations!

-a verbs: add t
(work) lucra, lucrat
(sing) cânta, cântat
(run) alerga, alergat

-ea verbs: replace -ea, with ut
(can) putea, putut
(appear) apărea, apărut

-e verbs: replace -e, with ut, (if final consonant is d, change to z)
(start) începe, început
(believe, think) crede, crezut

-e verbs: e changes to s. And if final vowel is i, change e to s
(write) scrie, scris
(understand) înțelege, înțeles
(laugh) râde, râs

-e verbs: change e to t
(tear apart) rupe, rupt
(boil) fierbe, fiert
(break) sparge, spart

-i verbs: add t
(exit, get out) ieși, ieșit
(sleep) dormi, dormit

-î verbs: replace î with ât
(hate) urî, urât

-a, -ea, -i, and -î verbs have the suffixes at, ut, it, and ât.
-e verbs don't have a set standard for their conjugations. The best thing to do for them is to learn their past participles by heart. Now, for some example sentences at last!

Ai băut ultima bere din frigider? - Did you drink the last beer from the refrigerator?
Da, de ce? N-am știut că ai vrut niște bere. - Yes, why? I didn't know that you wanted some beer. Ai spart masa! - You broke the table!
a fost spartă mai demult. - It was broken a while ago.

Sometimes the past tense conjugation of the verb can be used as an adjective as well.


Words in this lesson
Romanian English
Ultima The last (feminine)
frigider Refrigerator
Spart Broken


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