Most English speakers make the same handful of slips when they start Romanian. The encouraging part is that the errors are predictable, which means you can fix them deliberately instead of stumbling into them for months. None of these are hard to correct once you know what to listen for. Here are seven, each with a quick fix and a real word to practice on.
1. Reading c as "k" before e and i
Romanian softens c to "ch" before e and i, the same way Italian does. So this word is "cheench," not "kink":
2. Stretching the vowels
English loves to turn vowels into gliding diphthongs. Romanian keeps them short and pure. Keep the o clean and quick here:
3. Skipping the comma on ț
That ț is "ts," not a plain t. The single most common word in the language, "thank you," depends on it, and reading it as a plain t makes the word sound off to anyone listening:
4. Turning ă into a full "ah"
The ă is a soft, neutral "uh," not a strong "ah." It should be the quietest sound in the word, not a loud one:
5. Forcing â and î into an English vowel
There's no English match for this closed central vowel, so don't reach for "ee" or "uh." Pull the tongue back and keep the lips relaxed:
6. Putting the stress in the wrong place
Romanian stress doesn't always land where English instinct expects. Listen for the strong syllable and match it. In this greeting, the weight is on the second part:
7. Reading the letters instead of hearing the word
The biggest fix isn't about one sound. It's about method. Beginners try to build a word letter by letter, which produces a stiff, wrong version. Instead, hear the whole word from a native speaker, then copy the shape of it.
Your eyes will mislead you on a few letters. Your ear won't. Lead with listening.
Work through these out loud, slowly, then at normal speed. Catching even three or four of these mistakes early will make you noticeably easier to understand.
How to drill the fixes
Knowing about a mistake isn't the same as fixing it. The habit beats the rule, so you need repetition with a model to copy. Pick one phrase, play a native version, and say it back until the two sound close. Then move to the next. Don't try to fix all seven at once. Take one or two per session, give them real attention, and let the rest wait. Recording yourself helps more than you'd expect, because the gap between your version and the native one is much easier to hear on playback than in the moment. After a couple of weeks of this, the corrections stop being something you think about and become how you simply say the words.
The Learn Romanian app gives you a native recording for every phrase, so you can hear the correct version and match it line by line. It works offline and is free for the first 30 days.