Word of the Day 3

Today's word is brought to you by the letter S.

Smântână (sounds like smuhn-TUHN-uh) = sour cream

This is a hard word for Americans to say because it includes both of the extra A's that the Romanian alphabet has. I like to call them the 'smiley' and the 'hat.' My Romanian roommate likes to laugh at me when I do so. But it makes sense to me, so that's all that matters. But honestly the hat vowels are way hard for Americans to say because we don't have sounds like them. But I do like this word, so I try my darndest to say it. The best way I can explain the hat 'a' sound is to smile and then make an "ih" sound in your throat. Kind of. The smiley 'a' is more like 'uh.' And the regular 'a' is like 'ah.' 

This is an extremely common word and food, given that it is eaten with two of the staple Romanian foods- sarmale and mamaliga. So again, I get to use it quite frequently. I am working on learning new words and phrases and verbs (yay verbs!), so stay tuned for more fun Romanian language tidbits.