English mistakes Romanian speakers make in meetings
Romanian is a Romance language with Slavic neighbours, and English comes out with a little of both: Latin false friends plus a few article habits.
“Actual” for “current”
The actual version is 2.4.
The current version is 2.4.
“Actual” means current. English hears you contradicting something.
Definite article where English wants none
The quality is our the priority.
Quality is our priority.
Romanian attaches the article to the end of the noun, which produces doubled or stray articles in English.
“At” for “in”
I work at a startup in Bucharest at the moment.
I’m working at a startup in Bucharest right now.
Usually fine — worth watching when two prepositions land in the same sentence.
Doubled conditional
If I would have known, I would have said.
If I’d known, I’d have said.
The conditional belongs in one half of the sentence in English, not both.
Questions Romanian speakers ask
- What is the most common English mistake Romanian speakers make in meetings?
- The one that shows up most — “Actual” for “current”. It comes out as “The actual version is 2.4.” where a fluent colleague would say “The current version is 2.4.”. “Actual” means current. English hears you contradicting something.
- Why do Romanian speakers say “The quality is our the priority.”?
- Romanian attaches the article to the end of the noun, which produces doubled or stray articles in English. The version that lands is “Quality is our priority.”. It is interference from Romanian rather than a gap in your English, which is why it survives years of fluency.
- Do these Romanian patterns matter if everyone understands me anyway?
- Being understood and sounding authoritative are different bars, and in a client meeting you are held to the second one. None of the 4 patterns on this page stop you being understood — that is precisely why nobody corrects them, and why they are still there after ten years.
- How do I find out which Romanian habits I actually have?
- Paste a transcript from a real meeting and say which speaker is you. Every finding quotes your own sentence back with the version a native speaker would have used, across 4 categories of Romanian interference, and the ones that keep recurring build into a profile so you can see the habit rather than a one-off.
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Which of these do you actually do?
Reading a list is not the same as knowing which habit is yours. Paste a transcript from a real meeting and find out.
Check a real meetingNo account, and nothing is stored.