I know what some of you are thinking. That lady in the green shirt is saying, “of course Romanian and Norwegian are related, they’re both Indo-European languages.” And the guy straightening his tie is saying, in Norwegian, “Yes, I know that, Romanian belongs to the Western branch of Indo-European languages. It is more closely related to Norwegian and the other germanic languages, and of course the romance languages, than it is to Russian. That is why it is called Romanian, because they thought they had found some long lost tribe of Romans.”
But then there is that Irish lad in the back, and the Welsh lady from Pontypridd, who object saying, “Welsh and Irish are closer to Romanian than Norwegian is. Celtic is closer to the Romance languages than the Romance languages are to the Germanic languages.”
The Basques, Hungarians, Estonians and Finns in the audience are yawning. “Yes, we understand, most of Europe is Indo-European. Well, we also have language isolates and Finno-Ugrics, don’t forget about us. We’ve been here for a long time, some of us as long as history can remember, maybe even longer than you have.”
“Okay, enough with the genealogy already!” shouts the Norwegian troll (trollet nors). These family trees were built after the fact. Let’s look at the languages, the similarities.
Noun genders
Most Latin languages have two genders. Germanic languages have three genders, he, she, and it, but English has forgotten them outside of pronouns. (And Dutch has forgotten the male and female articles and merged them into “de”). Finno-Ugric languages don’t have to worry about it.
Romanian, like Latin languages and most Germanic languages, including Norwegian, gives a gender to every single thing under the sun (le soleil in French, soare). Not every language gives everything the same gender. Sun in German is feminine. But in Romanian and in Norwegian, sun is masculine. (depending on which part of Norway…)
In French, museum is feminine. In Norwegian and Romanian, Muzeu, or museum, is neutre.
Definite articles.
How many languages do you know with definite articles attached to the end of the noun? I can easily name two, Norwegian and Romanian. Now, Norwegian is relately simple. There is a definite article for masculine, another for feminine, and another for neutral. And, generally, these are the indefinite article added to the end of the word. (En, ei, et). And then there are the plurals of the three. And the definite plurals.
No true Norwegian dictionary is complete without a noun table… just like in Romanian! Of course, in Romanian, neutrals act funny. Rather than having their own articles, they borrow from masculine in the singular, and feminine in the plural. Kind of like philosophers in a museum. When each is on “his” own, these philosophers seem like men, appreciating the beauty in quiet solitude. You’d think you’re looking at Batman or John Wayne, a Dacian warrior, a țăran românesc, or the last viking, standing there in deep, manly contemplation. But bring them in a group, and they’ll start gossiping and judging others like a bunch of old ladies (or, if one of them remains masculine, the other will start monologuing like a super villain.)
English
A sun, The Sun, suns, the suns
A moon, the moon, moons, the moons…
a star…
a bed…
a museum…
ad nauseum.
(if you want variation, start your noun with a vowel, or end the singular with an s, z, or x. Or, find a weird barn animal, or an octopus, or weird some scientific term that tries to act like Latin that no native English speaker knows how to pronounce anyway. Or, use man or woman. Ask Fatca Pop for irregular plurals in English, that should be fun.)
French
un soleil, le soleil, soleils, les soleils
une lune, la lune, lunes, les lunes
une étoile, l’étoile, étoiles, les étoiles
un lit, le lit, les lits, les lits.
un musée, le musée, musées, les musées
Like in English, vowels do some funky yet predictable stuff, but we add gender to spice things up a bit. And like English, plurals are generally easy.
Romanian
un soare, soarele, sori, sorii
| singular | plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| nehotărât | hotărât form | nehotărât | hotărât |
| un soare | sori | soarele | sorii |
| o lună | luna | luni | lunile |
| o steă | steaua | stele | stelele |
| un pat | patul | paturi | paturile |
| un muzeu | muzeul | muzee | muzeele |
(sorry that we picked sun, star and museum, they are theoretically regular but not the simplest declensions. There are twenty four classes of words in the way they become plurals and definites in Romanian, six masculine, twelve feminine, and six neutrals, making twenty four not including the exceptions and minor variations.)
Norwegian
| entall | flertall | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| ubestemt form | bestemt form | ubestemt form | bestemt form |
| en sol | solen | soler | solene |
| en måne | månen | måner | månene |
| ei stjerne | stjerna * | stjerner | stjernene |
| ei seng | senga * | senger | sengene |
| et museum | museet | museer | museene |
Compare this to Hungarian, which only has the definite article that it borrowed from German grammar. (A and az look indefinite to those who learned English first, but whatever, there is no indefinite article in Hungarian.) Or most finno-ugric languages, which get along fine without articles at all. (how do you articulate? Stay sober.) They like to create a bunch of suffixes for noun cases, but articles? Articles belong at the front of the word, or not at all.
Do other latin languages tag the article to the end of the word? Portuguese, French and Spanish don’t. Do other Germanic languages? English and Dutch don’t. Maybe Danish does. Danish is a difficult language, less than one twetieth of one percent of the world can speak it.
Months of the year
Okay, so there are the traditional Romanian months, which sound nothing like English or Norwegian. Then there are the first few months in Norwegian that sound like a Finno Ugric language. But Mai, juli and juni (or mai, iulie and iulie) sound almost the same in Romanian and Norwegian.
A lot of other things sound similar.
Norwegian films and plays in Cluj
If you want to test our theory for yourself, there is Norwegian films showing this month. Award nominee “Sentimental Value” (Affeksjonsverdi) will be showing at both Cinema Arta (8th of February 2026 at 15:30, that is, 3:30 pm) and Cinema Victoria (8 february at 7:30 pm and 12 february 8 pm).
As a side note, Cinema Arta’s online program is now easier to skim through. Films that are suitable for family viewing have the tag “young arta family” and films that are either in english or with English subtitles are tagged “English.” No, Affeksjonsverdi does not have the English tag so it probably doesn’t have English subtitles.
And the Romanian state theatre in Cluj will be showing an adaptation of the Norwegian writer Ingvar Ambjørnsen’s famous triology in “Elling,” on 26th of February at 7pm. If you look at the poster, you might recognise the actor. He’s in a lot of things that get in the TIFF film festival.
Yes, the Hungarian theatre also did an Ibsen play or two relatively recently. They don’t seem to have anything Norwegian on at the moment, but they have a few Hungarian plays that are very popular and sell out quickly. (Too quickly for us to get a ticket, so sorry, no reviews yet.)