Many language learners wonder how Romanian and Spanish compare to each other.

They’re both Romance languages with deep Latin roots.

However, they evolved in entirely different parts of Europe.

This geographical separation created distinct grammar rules and vocabulary sets.

Understanding these differences is highly beneficial if you already speak Spanish and want to learn Romanian.

If you’re ready to start studying, you can create a free account on Talk In Romanian today to begin your journey.

Here are the main differences between Romanian and Spanish.

Language family and branches

Spanish and Romanian both belong to the Indo-European language family.

Specifically, they’re both Romance languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin.

The Roman Empire spread Latin to the Iberian Peninsula and to Dacia.

Spanish falls under the Western Romance branch.

Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance branch.

Because Romania was isolated from the rest of the Latin-speaking world, the language developed unique features.

Definite articles

This is one of the most noticeable differences for beginners.

In Spanish, definite articles meaning “the” are placed before the noun.

You use el, la, los, or las as separate independent words.

In Romanian, definite articles are attached directly to the end of the noun.

We call these enclitic articles.

Instead of placing a separate word before the noun, you simply modify the word’s ending.

The noun case system

Grammar is where Romanian and Spanish take completely different paths.

Spanish lost the Latin noun case system as it evolved.

It relies entirely on prepositions to show relationships between words.

Romanian is the only modern Romance language that kept the Latin cases.

Nouns change their endings depending on their grammatical role in a sentence.

Romanian uses five cases: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, and Vocative.

Expressing possession in Spanish requires the preposition de.

In Romanian, the noun itself changes to indicate the Genitive case.

Vocabulary and influences

Because they share Latin roots, Spanish and Romanian share a lot of core vocabulary.

Words for numbers, family members, and basic verbs look very similar.

However, their historical neighbors heavily influenced their modern dictionaries.

Spanish absorbed thousands of Arabic words during the Moorish rule of the Iberian Peninsula.

Romanian absorbed words from neighboring Slavic languages, Turkish, and Hungarian.

Roughly 10% to 15% of modern Romanian vocabulary has Slavic origins.

This gives Romanian a distinctly Eastern European flavor compared to Spanish.

Pronunciation and alphabet

Both languages are highly phonetic.

This means you generally pronounce words exactly as they’re written.

Spanish has specific sounds like the rolling rr and the letter ñ.

Romanian uses a phonetic alphabet with five special letters containing diacritics.

These letters are ă, â, î, ș, and ț.

The letters â and î produce a deep vowel sound that doesn’t exist in Spanish.

The letter ș sounds exactly like the English “sh”.

The letter ț sounds like the “ts” in the English word “cats”.

A Spanish speaker will find Romanian vowels quite familiar, but the consonant clusters require practice.

Romanian and Spanish share a beautiful Latin heritage.

Their geographical isolation simply led them down different linguistic paths.

If you already speak Spanish, your knowledge of Romance verb conjugations will give you a massive head start in Romanian.