What writing system does Romanian use?

Latin script: the 31-letter Romanian alphabet, with five modified letters (ă, â, î, ș, ț). The Romanian Academy requires the comma-below ș and ț, not the cedilla forms.

Is Stichos suitable for complete beginners with zero prior knowledge (A0)?

Yes. A0 is a primary focus, designed for readers with no prior knowledge. A1 then adds basic everyday vocabulary and simple connected clauses as your foundation grows.

Are Stichos levels the same as CEFR levels?

Not exactly. Stichos levels use the familiar CEFR names, from A0 to B2, and are modelled on the CEFR (the Common European Framework of Reference), so a Stichos B1 is meant to feel close to a B1 in your course book. They aren't an official CEFR rating, and different books and exams draw the lines in slightly different places. A0 is Stichos's own addition, just below the framework's first level.

Are the stories written by AI, and how accurate are they?

Yes. Stories are generated by AI and then checked by further automated steps against the grammar and vocabulary rules for your level. That catches most problems, but it isn't a human editor, so an occasional unnatural phrase or slip can get through. Treat Stichos as practice material, and check anything you're unsure of with a teacher or a reference.

Can I read stories with explanations in my native language?

Yes. Stichos allows you to pair any target language with any native support language. You can read a Croatian story with French glosses, or a German story with Spanish explanations.

How does word lookup work while reading?

Tap or click any word for its meaning in that sentence, explained in your own language. In the full version, you can save any word to your Vocab Bank for later review.

Is the preview free, and what happens to my email?

Yes. The preview is free and needs no account. If you join the Reading List, we use your email to send your 3 free sample stories (PDF, after you confirm your address) and to let you know when we fully open. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle it.

Do stories include audio or narration?

Story narration isn't part of the preview. At launch, the Premium Audio add-on reads every story aloud in a natural-sounding AI voice, in 39 of our 40 languages (Esperanto doesn't have audio support yet).

Read Your First Romanian Story Today

Explore a free beginner passage generated live with interactive translations.

Generate a free A1 Romanian story live with tap-to-translate words and line-by-line translations in English.

Un apartament nou în București

Martin cumpără mobilă nouă.

Martin buys new furniture.

El este într-un apartament în București.

He is in an apartment in Bucharest.

Apartamentul este mare și alb.

The apartment is large and white.

Camerele sunt goale.

The rooms are empty.

Martin așteaptă un prieten.

Martin is waiting for a friend.

Prietenul lui se numește Mihai.

His friend's name is Mihai.

Mihai aduce o canapea mare.

Mihai brings a big sofa.

Canapeaua este grea și albastră.

The sofa is heavy and blue.

Bărbații pun canapeaua în sufragerie.

The men put the sofa in the living room.

Mihai aduce și mâncare tradițională.

Mihai also brings traditional food.

El are o pungă mică.

He has a small bag.

Punga are covrigi calzi.

The bag has warm pretzels.

Mirosul este foarte bun.

The smell is very good.

Un covrig cade pe jos.

A pretzel falls on the floor.

Martin râde și ia covrigul.

Martin laughs and takes the pretzel.

Bărbații mănâncă covrigi calzi.

The men eat warm pretzels.

Mâncarea este gustoasă.

The food is tasty.

Mihai bea apă rece.

Mihai drinks cold water.

Martin ia piesele din lemn.

Martin takes the wooden parts.

Acum ei montează masa.

Now they assemble the table.

Masa este nouă și frumoasă.

The table is new and beautiful.

Ei pun masa în sufragerie.

They put the table in the living room.

Masa stă lângă canapea.

The table sits next to the sofa.

Camera arată bine.

The room looks good.

Martin este foarte bucuros.

Martin is very happy.

Noul apartament este gata.

The new apartment is ready.

Quick facts about Romanian

Speakers

About 22 million people speak Romanian as a first language (2020), chiefly in Romania and Moldova.¹

Did you know?

Romanian is a Romance language that attaches its definite article to the end of the noun (casă "house", casa "the house"), a feature it shares with neighbouring Balkan languages rather than with other Romance languages.¹

The main challenge

Noun endings that are unusual for a Romance language: a genitive-dative case, and a neuter gender whose nouns behave as masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural.¹

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language

About the Romanian language

Language family	Indo-European → Romance → Eastern Romance¹
Speakers	About 22 million native speakers (2020), chiefly in Romania and Moldova.¹
Primary script	Latin script: the 31-letter Romanian alphabet, with five modified letters (ă, â, î, ș, ț). The Romanian Academy requires the comma-below ș and ț, not the cedilla forms.²
Word order & typology	Usually subject–verb–object, with subject pronouns usually left out. Romanian keeps case forms (nominative–accusative, genitive–dative and a vocative) and a neuter gender, and, unlike the Western Romance languages, attaches the definite article to the end of the noun (pom → pomul).³
Official status	Official in Romania and Moldova and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union (since 2007); also official in Serbia’s province of Vojvodina.¹^,4

Romanian reading proficiency benchmarks (CEFR)

Stichos level	Approximate framework equivalent	Reader profile
A0	Pre-A1	Early Beginner
A1	CEFR A1	Beginner
A2	CEFR A2	Elementary
B1	CEFR B1	Intermediate
B2	CEFR B2	Upper Intermediate

The framework column uses CEFR levels only. Romanian proficiency exams, such as RoExam from Babeș-Bolyai University and the Romanian Cultural Institute, are set at the same levels, A1 to C2, but Stichos levels describe reading difficulty and are not exam preparation.

Reference corpora

Corpus work on contemporary Romanian centres on the Romanian Academy’s reference corpus.¹

CoRoLa: The Corpus computațional de referință pentru limba română contemporană (CoRoLa), begun in 2014 as a Romanian Academy priority programme by RACAI in Bucharest and the Institute for Theoretical Informatics in Iași, holds more than a billion words of Romanian written since 1989, plus about 300 hours of recorded speech, all lemmatized and morphologically annotated.¹
Everyday register: Stichos writes standard, modern Romanian with dictionary-standard (DEX) vocabulary and, at A0 and A1, keeps to everyday verbs: vreau rather than doresc, mă uit la rather than privesc, zice or spune rather than rostește.

https://corola.racai.ro/

Readability design principles

Readability tools for Romanian are still being built: in 2024 the LEMI authors reported that no existing platform integrated a research-based readability formula for the language.¹

LEMI: Chitez, Dascălu and colleagues (LREC-COLING 2024) derive and calibrate a Romanian readability formula from a corpus of school reading texts for pupils aged 7 to 11, using the ReaderBench text-analysis framework for its first validation steps.¹
Stichos: Stichos sets difficulty with level-by-level grammar rules and sentence-length limits. A0 sentences have at most five words and no conjunctions; connectives then open in a fixed order, from și at A1 to sau, dar and că at A2 and dacă, iar and deși at B1.

https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.1429/

Script & grammar scaffolding

Tenses: A0 uses only the present (prezent). A1 adds a near future with am să (am să fac). The compound past (perfect compus) and the future with o să or va arrive at A2, the imperfect at B1 and the pluperfect (mai-mult-ca-perfect) at B2; the literary simple past (perfect simplu) appears only from C1.
The subjunctive: Romanian often uses să with a subjunctive where other Romance languages use an infinitive (Vreau să scriu, “I want to write”). Apart from the future forms with am să (A1) and o să (A2), Stichos opens the present subjunctive at B1, together with the present conditional and dacă clauses.
Gerund and passive: The gerund (gerunziu) and the passive voice (diateza pasivă) are held back until B2.
Address and pronouns: Peers and friends use tu; strangers and formal settings get dumneavoastră. Unstressed object pronouns sit directly before a finite verb, as in o văd.

Related academic & framework resources

RoExam: Romanian proficiency exams from A1 to C2 by the Babeș-Bolyai University and Romanian Cultural Institute consortium, which represents Romanian in ALTE; includes sample exams.
Institutul Limbii Române: sample tests: Practice tests in Romanian for foreign citizens, from A1 to C2, with audio, from the Romanian Language Institute.
CoRoLa: The reference corpus of contemporary Romanian, with search interfaces for text and audio.
Towards Building the LEMI Readability Platform for Children’s Literature in the Romanian Language: The LREC-COLING 2024 paper by Mădălina Chitez, Mihai Dascălu and colleagues.

Frequently asked questions

What writing system does Romanian use?: Latin script: the 31-letter Romanian alphabet, with five modified letters (ă, â, î, ș, ț). The Romanian Academy requires the comma-below ș and ț, not the cedilla forms.
Is Stichos suitable for complete beginners with zero prior knowledge (A0)?: Yes. A0 is a primary focus, designed for readers with no prior knowledge. A1 then adds basic everyday vocabulary and simple connected clauses as your foundation grows.
Are Stichos levels the same as CEFR levels?: Not exactly. Stichos levels use the familiar CEFR names, from A0 to B2, and are modelled on the CEFR (the Common European Framework of Reference), so a Stichos B1 is meant to feel close to a B1 in your course book. They aren't an official CEFR rating, and different books and exams draw the lines in slightly different places. A0 is Stichos's own addition, just below the framework's first level.
Are the stories written by AI, and how accurate are they?: Yes. Stories are generated by AI and then checked by further automated steps against the grammar and vocabulary rules for your level. That catches most problems, but it isn't a human editor, so an occasional unnatural phrase or slip can get through. Treat Stichos as practice material, and check anything you're unsure of with a teacher or a reference.
Can I read stories with explanations in my native language?: Yes. Stichos allows you to pair any target language with any native support language. You can read a Croatian story with French glosses, or a German story with Spanish explanations.
How does word lookup work while reading?: Tap or click any word for its meaning in that sentence, explained in your own language. In the full version, you can save any word to your Vocab Bank for later review.
Is the preview free, and what happens to my email?: Yes. The preview is free and needs no account. If you join the Reading List, we use your email to send your 3 free sample stories (PDF, after you confirm your address) and to let you know when we fully open. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle it.
Do stories include audio or narration?: Story narration isn't part of the preview. At launch, the Premium Audio add-on reads every story aloud in a natural-sounding AI voice, in 39 of our 40 languages (Esperanto doesn't have audio support yet).

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