Do you speak Romanian? They do. Expats in Romania balance survival skill and cultural immersion

Foreign language centers in Romanian started to add more Romanian language courses to their offer during the last few years, as a result of the growing number of expats who live in Romania and want to speak the local language. For most expats, learning the language is a survival skill in a foreign land. Others just fell in love with the country, its people and wanted to understand them better. Romania-Insider.com has learned some Romanian language learning stories. By Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com Romania has proved to be the land where most locals understand foreigners, which made it easy for many to live in the country for years in a row without properly learning the language. Romanians are skilled in several languages, the most widespread being English, French, German, Spanish. This is what made the country a good call center outsourcing place, for example. Even so, and despite the fact that some expats have fled the country once the crisis has kicked in, “the number of foreigners who learn Romanian has clearly increased. For many, learning the Romanian language is a necessity; for some, Romanian is a passion, as they want to be able to make comparisons between several languages”, said Dan Pologea, marketing director at Rolang School. There are now more foreigners living in Romania who were not simply sent her on a three-year contract, and therefore many of them are more motivated to learn Romanian, says Delia Burham, country manager with CVO Recruitment. “I have met plenty of foreigners who have Romanian partners, and many of them, who respect their partner and want to understand their culture and nature better, learn Romanian, also to be able to speak to some relatives who do not know foreign languages,” she says. Delia speaks fluently Romanian. Foreign language centers have picked up the trend. “In the Center for Foreign Languages ​​A_Best, the number of foreigners studying the Romanian language has grown significantly in the last semester”, said Aura Ipate, general manager of the A_Best language center. On the other hand, Fides has seen a constant flow of people interested to learn Romanian in the last two years. Either by taking classes or just paying close attention to their Romanian friends' vocabulary, the foreigners below have managed to master the Romanian language. Martin Harris, the UK Ambassador to Romania, had to learn the Romanian language, given his position, and turned this into a cultural immersion experience. “I had three months of intensive training, with four hours lessons a day. I spent the last month living with a family in Iasi and studying at a school there. I had five teachers, and a charming host family - probably the best quality language training I have had in my career”, Martin Harris told Romania-Insider.com.