08/31/2026
🇷🇴 Celebrating Romanian Language Day 2026 — one word at a time
✨ A language is more than a way of communicating. It is a way of imagining, understanding and expressing the world — a space where memory, creativity and identity take shape.
📚 Through Romanian, generations have imagined, created and shared their worlds. Writers and poets have turned words into literature; playwrights and actors into theatre; screenwriters and filmmakers into cinema; composers and performers into songs. Romanian also lives through journalism, essays and criticism, scholarship and translation, storytelling and oral traditions, radio and television, and today’s ever-evolving forms of digital expression. From the written page and the stage to the screen, the song and everyday conversation, language is at the heart of how a culture creates, remembers and continually reinvents itself.
🎥 This year, for Romanian Language Day, we wanted to celebrate this extraordinary creative force through the voices of those who are discovering Romanian far from its place of origin: the students of the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York.
👩🏫 Together with our Romanian language instructor, Julieta Paulesc, we invited some of our American students to choose one Romanian word that has become special to them and tell us why.
💬 Their choices form a small collective portrait of Romanian, seen through the eyes — and heard through the voices — of those who have chosen to learn it.
❤️ There is "dor," that famously elusive Romanian word of longing and yearning; "familie," whose meaning reaches beyond translation; the irresistible "hai!," calling us to action; and wonderfully evocative words such as "mămăligă" and "înghețată," reminding us that language can also carry tastes, memories, encounters and moments shared with others.
🌎 Each word tells a story. Each reveals a connection — to a person, a place, a feeling, a sound, a memory, or simply the pleasure of discovering another way of seeing the world.
💻 Our Romanian language courses bring together students from across North America. We may meet online, but the community that has grown around the Romanian language is anything but distant — curious, engaged and increasingly connected to the culture that this language has created and continues to create.
🎭 Today, we celebrate Romanian not only as the language of a remarkable cultural heritage, but as a living language: spoken, written, sung, performed, translated, studied and reinvented — and discovered anew by every person who chooses to learn it.
🙏 Our warmest thanks to our students who lent their voices to this project and to their wonderful instructor, Julieta Paulesc, for guiding them on their journey into the Romanian language and culture.
🌍 And our heartfelt gratitude goes to everyone who teaches, speaks, writes, translates, studies, researches, creates in and promotes the Romanian language around the world — educators, writers, artists, translators, scholars, cultural organizations, Romanian communities abroad and all those who help Romanian words and culture cross borders and reach new generations.
🥂 La mulți ani limbii române! 🇷🇴 And may there always be another Romanian word waiting to be discovered.
