Getting a Romanian <-> English dictionary is surprisingly difficult. At present there is only one available new, Dictionary English-Romanian Romanian-English by Mircea Manolache, from here on in I am going to call it the Manolache dictionary. Some months ago I bought the Manolache dictionary from Amazon but I’ve found that for me the dictionary has problems.
Bantaş dictionary on left, Manolache dictionary on right.
When I look up words in the Manolache dictionary the accents are different from those of my Teach Yourself Romanian book. All Romanian I see in print agrees with my Teach Yourself Romanian book and my Romanian Grammar book, but not the Manolache dictionary. Maybe there is a different system for accents historically and this was changed at some stage. Anyway the Manolache dictionary seems to put accute accents over ‘e’ and ‘i’ frequently. The one over the ‘i’ is particularly confusing because the Romanian I am learning does put an accent over the i, the circumflex but not at the same times as the accute accent in the Manolache dictionary.
Manolache dictionary
For me this disparity meant that I wanted to get another dictionary, but it really seems that the Manolache is the only Romanian <-> English dictionary currently available new.
At Amazon I noticed N.T.C.’s Romanian and English Dictionary by Andrei Bantaş. This is available only second-hand, and so must no longer be in print. From Amazon, of course, I could not tell if the accents were going to be as I wanted them, so it was a gamble. Things were not made easier by the review by Morven Fyfe-Stoica who wrote:
I feel sorry for those who have bought this dictionary, because they will always be at a loss. A dictionary has a certain purpose, and this one does not fulfil that purpose. It does not give the gender of nouns, and many words are translated inaccurately either way….
The dictionary was actually coming from a shop in the USA, so it took a week or so to get to me. When I opened it I was delighted to see the accents as I wanted them, no acutes over the ‘e’s or ‘i’s.
Bantaş dictionary
The next question in my mind concerned that of Morven Fyfe-Stoica’s review, that the Bantaş dictionary does not give the genders for the nouns. However I could see that the genders for the nouns are included, beside peşte for fish, is sm., abbreviation for substantive masculine, beside peşteră for cave is sf., abbreviation for substantive feminine and beside petic for patch is sn., abbreviation for substantive neuter.
Bantaş dictionary
I think that if you are looking for a Romanian <-> English dictionary the one to get is N.T.C.’s Romanian and English Dictionary by Andrei Bantaş. You can’t get it new but it is worth picking up second-hand.
