The best AI apps to practice speaking Romanian

What you need to practice speaking Romanian

Good news first. In our ranking of 67 languages, Romanian is the 59th hardest for English speakers, at 3,182 effort points. That’s right between Italian (3,244) and European Portuguese (3,139), and not far from Spanish (2,941).

It’s a Romance language, so if you know a bit of Spanish, French or Italian, lots of words look familiar: noapte, night, a cânta, to sing. But Romanian grew up on its own, next to Slavic languages, Hungarian and Greek, and it does a few things the others don’t.

• “The” goes on the endRomanian doesn’t put “the” in front of a word. It sticks it on the end. Lup is a wolf, lupul is the wolf. Casă is a house, casa is the house. And the ending changes with the job in the sentence: coada lupului, the wolf’s tail. Names change too: cartea Larisei, Larisa’s book. Men’s names take lui in front instead: cartea lui Andrei. Knowing the rules is one thing. Getting the ending right while you talk takes practice.
• Three gendersMasculine, feminine, and a neuter that switches sides: masculine in the singular, feminine in the plural. Un scaun nou, a new chair, but două scaune noi, two new chairs, with the feminine două. So every noun you learn comes with a little decision attached.
• Să instead of “to”Where English says “I want to go”, Romanian says vreau să merg, literally “I want that I go”. And after să, the verb often changes for he, she and they: ea merge, she goes, but vrea să meargă, she wants to go. You need it in almost every sentence about plans, wishes and must-dos.
• Ă, î and âĂ is the a at the end of “sofa”, and it matters: casă is a house, casa is the house. Î and â are one sound, written two ways, and English doesn’t have it: say “ee”, then pull your tongue back without rounding your lips, as in România and a hotărî, to decide. You learn it by hearing it, over and over.
• Lots of Romanian you understandSpeaking activates the words you have. New words come from input: Romanian videos, podcasts and texts where you already understand most of it.
• Lots of speaking timeEven an easier language takes hours of talking. A few minutes a day won’t get you there.

A complete fluency system, not just a speaking app

Our speaking practice is the heart of Teacher AI. But speaking alone won’t make you fluent, and neither will input alone. You need both, and you need to see it working.

So Teacher AI is a complete fluency system. Input grows your Romanian. Speaking activates it. And we track every word along the way, to get you to real fluency as fast as we can.

1. Step 1Input grows your vocabularyWatch Romanian YouTube videos and podcasts, and read stories written at your level. You always see how much you already understand, and every word you tap becomes a flashcard. How Watch and Read work.
2. Step 2Speaking activates itKnowing a word isn’t the same as using it, with “the” on the right end and the right form after să. Talking with your teacher, for as long as you like, is how words move from “I know that one” to “I just said it”. Every mistake gets fixed, with a Why?.
3. Step 3We track every wordYour passive words are the ones you understand when you read or hear them. Your active words are the ones you’ve used yourself. You see both grow, how your time splits between input and output, and how many words to your next level.

Brand new to Romanian? Start somewhere else first. Teacher AI works best from about A2, once you can handle simple everyday sentences. Before that, you just don’t have enough words yet for open conversation. So learn the basics with a course like Duolingo (free) or Pimsleur, and come back when you want to talk.

What it looks like in Romanian

Here’s what a moment of practice looks like. You answer, your teacher replies, and if you made a mistake, your sentence gets fixed right there.

A card for every word you tap

Tap any word, in a conversation, a video or a story, and you get its card: what it means, what kind of word it is, and an example with a translation. Its family and its forms are one tap away. Tap play to hear it.

An illustration of three word cards, rebuilt for this page. On the real card, the wording depends on the word. Below: real screenshots of the web app.

Meet your Romanian teachers

Three teachers, all from Romania: Andrei from Bucharest, the capital, and two from Transylvania, Larisa from Cluj-Napoca and Olivia from Sighișoara. Each has their own voice. Pick the one you like.

• 
  Andrei Popescu

  Bucharest · Romanian
• 
  Larisa Dumitrescu

  Cluj-Napoca · Romanian
• 
  Olivia Drambarean

  Sighișoara · Romanian

Input: Romanian to watch and read, at your level

Here’s the input side up close. New words come from lots of Romanian you hear and read, where you already understand most of it.

Watch and Read are on the web app for now. Words you read along with, without tapping, count toward your passive words. Every word you tap lands in your flashcards. And when you’re done, you talk about it with your teacher.

• Any YouTube videoPaste a link to a Romanian YouTube video, or an Apple Podcasts episode. We turn it into a page you read along with, new words in yellow. No subtitles? On a paid plan we transcribe it for you, within a monthly allowance.
• Stories written for youRead writes Romanian texts at your level, from A1 to Native, about anything you like, and suggests ideas from what you talk about with your teacher.
• How much you know, before you startTeacher AI keeps a list of every Romanian word you’ve met: the ones you use when you talk, the ones you read or hear, the ones you tap. It checks every word of a video or text against that list and shows you the share you already know.
• The 80% rulePick videos and texts where you know 80% or more of the words. Then your brain fills in the rest from context. Under 70% is too much for now. 90% and up is easy and fun.
• Then talk about itOne tap on Talk about this starts a conversation about what you just watched or read. Retelling it is how new words become words you can say.

Teacher AI or Duolingo?

Lots of people start Romanian on Duolingo. Good! So here’s how the two compare for speaking, with every Duolingo fact from Duolingo’s own pages.

The apps side by side

The apps, one by one

Where another app might suit you better

Head-to-head comparisons

Teacher AI vs Langua · Teacher AI vs Talkpal · Teacher AI vs Duolingo. All comparisons.

Other languages

SpanishSpain and Latin AmericaFrenchFrance, Belgium and SwitzerlandMandarin ChineseSimplified or Traditional, with pinyinCantoneseHong Kong, with JyutpingThaiWith spaces between words, and Paiboon+ or IPAJapaneseWith furigana or romaji, and a kanji countDutchThe Netherlands and Flanders, with Flemish voicesBrazilian PortugueseWith Brazilian teachers and well-known polyglotsItalianWith Italian teachers from Podcast Italiano and Vaporetto ItalianoGermanWith German and Austrian teachers, from Lingster Academy to Herr AntrimEuropean PortugueseWith teachers from Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Faro, and Portuguese With LeoEnglishWith American and British teachers, from Espresso English to English Like A NativeKoreanWith teachers from Seoul and Busan, and every dropped 요 fixedRussianWith the stress marked above every wordTurkishWith Can from Turkishle, and every ending fixed as you talkArabicWith teachers from Cairo, Amman and Jeddah, and a straight answer on MSA or dialectPolishWith teachers from Warsaw, and every case ending fixedSwedishPitch accent, en or ett, and nobody switching to EnglishIndonesianWith teachers from Bali and Bandung, for the Indonesian people actually speakHindiWith teachers from Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai, and every missing ने fixedCatalanFor when Barcelona keeps answering you in SpanishVietnameseWith teachers from Hanoi and Sapa, and every tone, classifier and pronoun fixedUkrainianWith two teachers from Lviv, and every case fixed as you talkGreekWith teachers from Crete and Thessaloniki, and every gender and ending explainedHebrewFor Hebrew without the vowels, with two teachers from Tel AvivCzechWith Klara and Lukáš from Brno, and a Why? on every case ending