Vorbi: Learn Romanian

Twelve dialogues where you say half the lines — tiles, keyboard or your own voice. Plus eight new lessons, and a drill for hearing casă from casa

Vorbi is the Romanian grammar app I wish existed when I moved to Romania. No fluff, no gamified tricks — just clear lessons, exercises, and the phrases you actually need.

12 DIALOGUES — AND YOU SAY HALF THE LINES Read a real conversation, check you followed it, then play it: the other person speaks, your turn arrives as its meaning in your own language, and the Romanian has to come from you. Tiles, keyboard or your own voice — you choose. Nothing in it is scored, because a first attempt at speaking should never make a result worse.

A cafe, a new neighbour, a taxi, the shop, the doctor and then the pharmacy, asking the way, renting a flat and ringing the landlord about it, the bank, the residence permit, a job interview. Tap any word in any line to see what it means.

26 LESSONS COVERING REAL ROMANIAN GRAMMAR From the alphabet, noun gender and the tricky neuter, through articles, plurals, adjective agreement, prepositions and word order, to the parts nobody explains properly: perfect compus and the imperfect, the future, the subjunctive (vreau să, trebuie să), reflexive verbs, the genitive-dative with al / a / ai / ale, "pe" before a person with its doubled pronoun, and the order the short pronouns come in.

20 EXERCISES PER LESSON — 520 IN ALL Multiple choice, sentence building from word tiles, fill-in-the-blank, matching pairs. Your place is saved, so you can stop mid-lesson and come back.

SENTENCE-BUILDING PRACTICE — 25 SETS, 1000 EXERCISES One set per lesson, to the end of the course: conjugations, gender, negation, question words — the stuff that makes you think, not just recognise. Anything you get wrong is kept aside to drill separately.

TRAIN YOUR EAR The skill that fails first in the country. A word is played and you pick which of two spellings it was: casă or casa, nas or naș, fată or față, ban or bani — the endings where Romanian keeps its article, its gender and its plural. Then dictation: hear a line, write it down, with missing diacritics forgiven, because that is a keyboard problem and not a Romanian one.

543-WORD ROMANIAN DICTIONARY Ordered by how useful each word actually is, not alphabetically. 100 are free, many with a spoken example sentence. "Learn Dictionary" uses spaced repetition and has you build the word from its letters inside a real sentence — producing it, not just recognising it.

VERB CONJUGATOR — 81 VERBS Full tables — present, past, future, subjunctive — with audio for every form and a trainer to drill them. Stem changes are marked, because those you cannot guess from the infinitive. Six core verbs are free.

271 PRACTICAL PHRASES IN 11 CATEGORIES Meeting people, cafe, shops, the doctor, family, work, travel, and a category of Bible vocabulary. Audio on every phrase — hold for slow playback.

ALSO • Spaced repetition for phrases and dictionary words • Mistake review — practise exactly what you got wrong • Romanian words straight from iPhone search • Activity calendar, dark mode, two widgets • English, Russian and Ukrainian interface • Offline — no account, no ads, no tracking

WHO IT'S FOR Expats in Romania; Russian- and Ukrainian-speakers in Moldova learning the state language; travellers staying a while; mixed families. Romanian is also Moldova's official language, so Vorbi works the same in Bucharest or Chișinău.

WHAT'S NOT HERE No mascots, no XP grinding, no AI tutor pretending to know your language, and no subscription. Buy once, own forever. Built by one indie developer, not a venture-funded edtech.

The free trial includes lessons 1–5, 3 dialogues with their roleplay, 4 practice sets, a listening set, 3 phrase categories, 100 dictionary words and six fully conjugated verbs. Vorbi Pro opens lessons 6–26, the other 9 dialogues, all 543 words and 8 more phrase categories — one payment, forever.

Made for everyone who needs Romanian for real life, not for an exam.