Prepositions are the tiny words that connect different parts of a sentence together.

In Romanian, these short words are essential for expressing location, time, direction, and relationships.

Learning how to use Romanian prepositions correctly will immediately make your sentences sound more natural.

You’ll notice that Romanian prepositions demand specific grammatical cases.

I’ll break down exactly how these prepositions work so you can easily use them with confidence.

What are Romanian prepositions?

A preposition is a word placed before a noun or pronoun to show its relationship to another word.

Words like “in”, “on”, “at”, and “with” are all prepositions in English.

Romanian has direct equivalents for most of these exact words.

However, Romanian relies heavily on a grammatical case system.

This means that the preposition you choose will dictate the grammatical form of the noun that follows it.

The vast majority of Romanian prepositions use the accusative case.

A smaller handful require the genitive or dative cases.

The accusative case prepositions

Most prepositions you encounter in everyday spoken Romanian take the accusative case.

The accusative case in Romanian is very straightforward because nouns usually don’t change their form.

Here are the most common Romanian prepositions that use the accusative case.

Let’s look at a few examples in action.

The genitive case prepositions

The genitive case expresses possession, similar to saying “of the” in English.

Certain prepositions in Romanian require the noun that follows them to be in the genitive case.

When using these prepositions, the noun will change its ending to reflect the genitive form.

Here are examples showing the genitive prepositions in use.

The dative case prepositions

The dative case in Romanian typically marks the indirect object.

It answers the question “to whom?” or “for whom?”.

There are only three primary prepositions in Romanian that require the dative case.

These are usually related to giving thanks or attributing a cause to something.

Notice how they all share a very similar positive meaning.

Here’s how you use them in a complete sentence.

Prepositions of place and direction

Location prepositions are the ones you’ll use most often as a beginner.

They tell you where an object is or where a person is going.

The preposition în means “in” and changes to înspre when you mean “towards”.

The preposition din means “from” or “out of” a closed space.

The preposition de la means “from” a person or an open location.

Here’s a quick dialogue showing direction and location to help you practice.