Clitic Contraction with Hyphen — Romanian Grammar

Romanian's little unstressed words - the object pronouns, the reflexive, , , the past helper - lean on the word next to them and merge with it in speech. Writing shows this merge with a hyphen. These joined forms are everywhere, so it helps to recognise them.

Why the Hyphen Appears

When one of these short words meets a vowel, one of the two vowels drops out and what is left is written as a single unit. is pronounced as one word, :

nu îl văd → nu-l văd
I don't see him. (î drops)
nu îmi place → nu-mi place
I don't like it. (î drops)
mă + am → m-am trezit
I woke up. (ă drops)

Common Patterns

With : (to tell me), (to see him)
With the past helper: (it happened), (I gave him)
In the "to me is" frame: (I'm hungry), (I'm cold)
On commands: (tell me), (give me), (go)

Also With Prepositions

The preposition (in) joins the articles the same way:

în + un → într-un birou
in an office
în + o → într-o bancă
in a bank

A hyphen inside a single word (such as a borrowed ) is a different thing - that is just the suffixed article attached to an abbreviation.

In the course

Sentences from Lingora’s Romanian course

59 of the course's 500 sentences use this, the first in lesson 34. A few of them, with the words “Clitic Contraction with Hyphen” is about in bold:

Nu te-am mai văzut de nouă ani!
I haven't seen you for nine years!
Lesson 175
Locuiesc într-un sat cu multe vaci.
I live in a village with many cows.
Lesson 487

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