Nouns: Gender and Declension

01

The Neuter Trick

Romanian's neuter is not a third set of endings. A neuter noun simply behaves as masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural. So you never learn separate neuter forms - you learn that the word switches sides when it becomes plural:

• un scaun

  a chair (masculine-style singular)

• două scaune

  two chairs (feminine-style plural)

02

Telling the Gender

There is no perfect rule, but useful tendencies:

• Most nouns ending in a consonant or -u are masculine or neuter: băiat (boy), scaun (chair).
• Most nouns ending in -ă or -e are feminine: casă (house), carte (book).

A reliable habit is to learn each noun together with its article - o casă, un băiat - so the gender comes for free.

03

Forming the Plural

The plural ending depends on gender and on the noun's own ending. The common ones are:

• -i: băiat → băieți (boys), carte → cărți (books)
• -e: casă → case (houses)
• -uri: tren → trenuri (trains)

The vowel inside the stem often shifts as well, on top of the new ending: carte → cărți (a book, books) turns a into ă, and fată → fete (a girl, girls) turns it into e. These alternations are regular and quickly become familiar.

04

Endings Stack On

Romanian builds a lot onto the end of the noun rather than using separate little words. The definite article ("the") and the genitive/dative case endings are suffixes glued to the noun - those have their own topics. Whatever the noun does, its adjectives, articles and pronouns follow its gender and number.