View source for Romanian alphabet

{{Short description|Variant of the Latin alphabet}}
{{More citations needed|date=January 2009}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2020}}
{{For|historical Cyrillic alphabet used for the Romanian language|Romanian Cyrillic alphabet}}
{{Infobox writing system
|name      = Romanian alphabet
|type      = [[Alphabet]]
|languages = [[Romanian Language|Romanian]]
|time      = 1860s – present
|fam1      = [[Egyptian hieroglyphs]]
|fam2      = [[Proto-Sinaitic]]
|fam3      = [[Phoenician alphabet]]
|fam4      = [[Greek alphabet]]
|fam5      = [[Latin script|Latin alphabet]]
|fam6      = [[Italian alphabet]]
|children  = 
|unicode   = subset of [[Unicode Latin|Latin (U+0000...U+024F)]]
|iso15924  = 
|sample    = Romanian alphabet.svg
|imagesize = 300px
}}

The '''Romanian alphabet''' is a variant of the [[Latin alphabet]] used for writing the [[Romanian language]]. It consists of 31 letters,<ref>{{in lang|ro}} ''Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române'', 1998, [http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=z Z is the thirty first letter of the Romanian alphabet], dexonline.ro</ref><ref>Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti", ''Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române'', Editura Univers Enciclopedic, București, 2005, pp. XXVII–XXVIII {{in lang|ro}}</ref> five of which (Ă, Â, Î, Ș, and Ț) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language.

{| class="wikitable" style="display: inline-table"
! Letter !! Name
|-
| [[A|Aa]] || a
|-
| [[Ă|Ăă]] || ă
|-
| [[Â|Ââ]] || î din a
|-
| [[B|Bb]] || be / bî
|-
| [[C|Cc]] || ce / cî
|-
| [[D|Dd]] || de / dî
|-
| [[E|Ee]] || e
|-
| [[F|Ff]] || ef / fe / fî
|-
| [[G|Gg]] || ge / ghe / gî
|-
| [[H|Hh]] || haș / ha / hî
|-
| [[I|Ii]] || i
|-
| [[Î|Îî]] || î din i
|-
| [[J|Jj]] || je / jî
|-
| [[K|Kk]] || ca / capa
|-
| [[L|Ll]] || el / le / lî
|-
| [[M|Mm]] || em / me / mî
|-
| [[N|Nn]] || en / ne / nî
|-
| [[O|Oo]] || o
|-
| [[P|Pp]] || pe / pî
|-
| [[Q|Qq]] || chiu ({{IPA|/ky/}})
|-
| [[R|Rr]] || er / re / rî
|-
| [[S|Ss]] || es / se / sî
|-
| [[S-comma|Șș]] || șe / șî
|-
| [[T|Tt]] || te / tî
|-
| [[T-comma|Țț]] || țe / țî
|-
| [[U|Uu]] || u
|-
| [[V|Vv]] || ve / vî
|-
| [[W|Ww]] || dublu ve / dublu vî
|-
| [[X|Xx]] || iks
|-
| [[Y|Yy]] || i grec
|-
| [[Z|Zz]] || ze / zet / zed / zî
|}

The letters Q (''chiu''), W (''dublu ve''), and Y (''igrec'' or ''i grec,'' meaning "Greek i") were formally introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982, although they had been used earlier. They occur only in foreign words and their Romanian derivatives, such as ''[[quasar]]'', ''[[watt]]'', and ''[[yoga]]''. The letter ''K'', although relatively older, is also rarely used and appears only in proper names and international neologisms such as ''kilogram'', ''broker'', ''karate''.<ref>{{in lang|ro}} Academia Română, ''Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române'', [http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=k Entry for ''K''], Editura Univers Enciclopedic, 1998, dexonline.ro</ref> These four letters are still perceived as foreign, which explains their usage for stylistic purposes in words such as ''nomenklatură'' (normally ''nomenclatură'', meaning "nomenclature", but sometimes spelled with ''k'' instead of ''c'' if referring to members of the Communist leadership in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries, as ''[[nomenklatura]]'' is used in English).<ref>Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti", ''Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române'', 2nd Edition, Univers Enciclopedic Publishing House, Bucharest, 2005, {{ISBN|973-637-087-9}}, p. XXIX {{in lang|ro}}</ref>

Most of the <qu> and <y> in learned Latin words (or Greek words via Latin) are replaced by <cu/cv> and <nowiki><i></nowiki> respectively (e.g. ''ecuație'' "equation",  ''acvariu'' "aquarium", ''oxigen'' "oxygen"). However, the <y> is retained in ytriu ("yttrium") and yterbiu ("ytterbium"), probably because of the element symbols Y and Yb.

In cases where the word is a direct borrowing having diacritical marks not present in the above alphabet, official spelling tends to favor their use (''[[München]]'', ''[[Angoulême]]'' etc., as opposed to the use of ''[[Istanbul]]'' over ''İstanbul'').

==History==

Until the mid-19th century, Romanian was generally written with a [[Romanian Cyrillic alphabet|Romanian Cyrillic alphabet]] derived from [[Church Slavonic]], which was used in both Wallachia and Moldavia. During the 19th century a Latin-based transitional alphabet that mixed Cyrillic and Latin letters came into use, and in 1862 the authorities of the [[United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia]] decreed the full replacement of Cyrillic with the Latin alphabet for official Romanian-language publications.

In the 20th century several spelling reforms modified the inventory and distribution of letters. A 1904 reform reduced the earlier use of multiple circumflex letters to just ⟨Â⟩ and ⟨Î⟩, while later reforms in 1953, 1964 and 1993 changed when each of these two letters is used to write the phoneme {{IPA|/ɨ/}} (see [[#Î versus Â|Î versus Â]] below). The modern 31-letter inventory was fixed in 1982, when the letters Q, W and Y—previously used only in loanwords and proper names—were officially recognized as part of the Romanian alphabet.<ref name="DOOM1982">{{cite web
 |title=Semnele grafice – 1.1. Literele
 |url=https://doom.lingv.ro/studiu_introductiv/semne_grafice
 |website=Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române (DOOM)
 |publisher=Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”
 |language=ro
 |access-date=19 November 2025
}}</ref>

==Letters and their pronunciation ==
<ref>Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti", ''Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române'', 2nd Edition, Univers Enciclopedic Publishing House, Bucharest, 2005, {{ISBN|973-637-087-9}}, p. XXIX–XXXVI {{in lang|ro}}</ref>
{{See also|Romanian phonology}}
Romanian spelling is mostly phonemic without ''silent letters'' (but see ''i''). The table below gives the correspondence between letters and sounds. Some of the letters have several possible readings, even if [[allophone]]s are not taken into account. When vowels {{IPA|/i/}}, {{IPA|/u/}}, {{IPA|/e/}}, and {{IPA|/o/}} are changed into their corresponding [[semivowel]]s, this is not marked in writing. Letters K, Q, W, and Y appear only in foreign borrowings; the pronunciation of W and Y and of the combination QU depends on the origin of the word they appear in.

{| class="wikitable"
! Letter
! Phoneme<ref>{{cite web|author=Ovidiu Drăghici|title=Limba Română contemporană. Fonetică. Fonologie. Ortografie. Lexicologie|url=http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/idd/cursuri/an_1/limba_rom_cont/lrc_an1_draghici.pdf|access-date=19 April 2013}}{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>
! Approximate pronunciation
|-
| A a
| {{IPAslink|ä|a}}
| ''a'' in "father"
|-
| [[Ă]] [[ă]] (a with [[breve]])
| {{IPAslink|ə}}
| ''a'' in "above"
|-
| [[Â]] [[â]] (a with [[circumflex]])
| {{IPAslink|ɨ}}
| the [[close central unrounded vowel]] as heard, for example, in the last syllable of the word ''roses'' for some English speakers
|-
| B b
| {{IPAslink|b}}
| ''b'' in "ball"
|-
| rowspan="2" | C c
| {{IPAslink|k}}
| ''c'' in "scan"
|-
| {{IPAslink|tʃ}}
| ''ch'' in "chimpanzee" — if ''c'' appears before letters ''e'' or ''i'' (but not ''î''); in this case, ''e'' and ''i'' are usually not pronounced in the combinations: ''cea'' (''cia'' in some loanwords), ''cio'', ''ciu'' and in word-final ''ci'' if not accented
|-
| D d
| {{IPAslink|d̪|d}}
| ''d'' in "dancing"
|-
| rowspan="3" | E e
| {{IPAslink|e̞|e}}
| ''e'' in "merry"
|-
| {{IPA|/e̯/}}, {{IPA|/ɛ̯/}}
| before ''a'' or ''o'' — semivocalic {{IPA|/e/}}; if not preceded by a consonant becomes {{IPA|/j/}} {{dubious|date=June 2022}}
|-
| {{IPA|/je/}}, {{IPA|/jɛ/}}
| ''ye'' in "yes" — in a few old words with initial ''e'': ''este'', ''el'' etc.<ref>{{in lang|ro}} Several Romanian dictionaries specify the pronunciation [je] for word-initial letter ''e'' in some personal pronouns: [http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=el ''el'', ''ei'', etc.] and in some forms of the verb ''a fi'' (''to be''): [http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=fi ''este'', ''eram'', etc.]</ref>
|-
| F f
| {{IPAslink|f}}
| ''f'' in "flag"
|-
| rowspan="2" | G g
| {{IPAslink|ɡ}}
| ''g'' in "goat"
|-
| {{IPAslink|d͡ʒ}}
| ''g'' in "general" — if ''g'' appears before letters ''e'' or ''i'' (but not ''î''); in this case, ''e'' and ''i'' are usually not pronounced in the combinations: ''gea'' (''gia'' in some loanwords), ''gio'' (''geo'' in some loanwords), ''giu'' and in word-final ''gi'' if not accented
|-
| rowspan="2" | H h
| {{IPAslink|h}} ({{IPAblink|h}}, {{IPAblink|ç}}, {{IPAblink|x}})
| ''ch'' in Scottish "loch" or ''h'' in English "ha!" or more usually a subtle mix of the two (that is, not so guttural as the Scottish ''loch.'')
|-
| {{IPA|(mute)}}
| no pronunciation if ''h'' appears between letters ''c'' or ''g'' and ''e'' or ''i'' (''che, chi, ghe, ghi''); ''c'' and ''g'' are palatalized
|-
| rowspan="3" | I i
| {{IPAslink|i}}
| ''i'' in "machine"
|-
| {{IPAslink|j}}
| ''y'' in "yes"
|-
| {{IPA|/ʲ/}}
| Indicates [[Palatalization (phonetics)|palatalization]] of the preceding consonant (when word-final and unstressed, in some compounds like ''oricum'', and in the combinations ''chia, chio, chiu, ghia, ghio, ghiu'')
|-
| [[Î]] [[î]] (i with [[circumflex]])
| {{IPAslink|ɨ}}
| Identical to Â, see above, used at the beginning and at the end of the word for etymological reasons, ex. "to learn" = "a învăța"; "to kill" = "a omorî"
|-
| J j
| {{IPAslink|ʒ}}
| ''s'' in "treasure"
|-
| K k
| {{IPAslink|k}}
| ''c'' in "scan" (palatalized before ''e'' and ''i'')
|-
| L l
| {{IPAslink|l}}
| ''l'' in "limp"
|-
| M m
| {{IPAslink|m}}
| ''m'' in "mouth"
|-
| N n
| {{IPAslink|n̪|n}}
| ''n'' in "north"
|-
| rowspan="2" | O o
| {{IPAslink|o̞|o}}
| ''o'' in "floor"
|-
| {{IPA|/o̯/}}, {{IPA|/ɔ̯/}}
| before ''a'' — semivocalic {{IPA|/o/}}; if not preceded by a consonant becomes {{IPA|/w/}}
|-
| P p
| {{IPAslink|p}}
| ''p'' in "spot"
|-
| Q q
| {{IPAslink|k}}
| ''c'' in "scan"  (''qu'' is pronounced {{IPA|/kw/}}, {{IPA|/kv/}}, or {{IPA|/kʲ/}})
|-
| R r
| {{IPAslink|r}}
| [[alveolar trill]] or [[Alveolar tap|tap]]
|-
| S s
| {{IPAslink|s̪|s}}
| ''s'' in "song"
|-
| [[S-comma|Ș ș]] (s with [[Comma (punctuation)|comma]]) <sup>*</sup>
| {{IPAslink|ʃ}}
| ''sh'' in "shopping"
|-
| T t
| {{IPAslink|t̪|t}}
| ''t'' in "stone"
|-
| [[T-comma|Ț ț]] (t with [[Comma (punctuation)|comma]]) <sup>*</sup>
| {{IPAslink|t̪͡s̪|t͡s}}
| ''ts'' in "cats"
|-
| rowspan="3" | U u
| {{IPAslink|u}}
| ''u'' in "group"
|-
| {{IPAslink|w}}
| ''w'' in "cow"
|-
| {{IPAslink|y}}
| French ''u'' or German ''ü'' ([[close front rounded vowel]]) — in some loanwords from French: ''ecru, tul''
|-
| V v
| {{IPAslink|v}}
| ''v'' in "vision"
|-
| rowspan="3" | W w
| {{IPAslink|v}}
| ''v'' in "vision"
|-
| {{IPAslink|w}}
| ''w'' in "west"
|-
| {{IPAslink|u}}
| ''oo'' in "spoon"
|-
| rowspan="2" | X x
| {{IPA|/ks/}}
| ''x'' in "six"
|-
| {{IPA|/ɡz/}}
| ''x'' in "example"
|-
| rowspan="2" | Y y
| {{IPAslink|i}}
| ''i'' in "machine"
|-
| {{IPAslink|j}}
| ''y'' in "yes"
|-
| Z z
| {{IPAslink|z̪|z}}
| ''z'' in "zipper"
|}

<sup>*</sup> See [[Romanian alphabet#Comma-below (ș and ț) versus cedilla (ş and ţ)|Comma-below (ș and ț) versus cedilla (ş and ţ)]].

==Special letters==

[[File:Two Romanian spellings 1.jpg|thumb|250px|Pre-(''top'') and post-1993 (''bottom'') street signs in [[Bucharest]], showing the two different spellings of the same name]]
Romanian [[orthography]] does not use accents or [[diacritic]]s &ndash; these are secondary symbols added to letters (i.e. basic [[glyph]]s) to alter their pronunciation or to distinguish between words. There are, however, five special letters in the Romanian alphabet (associated with four different sounds) which are formed by modifying other Latin letters; strictly speaking these letters function as basic glyphs in their own right rather than letters with diacritical marks, but they are often referred to as the latter.

* [[Ă|Ă ă]] &mdash; ''a'' with [[breve]] – for the sound {{IPA|/ə/}}
* [[Â|Â â]] &mdash; ''a'' with [[circumflex]] – for the sound {{IPA|/ɨ/}}
* [[Î|Î î]] &mdash; ''i'' with [[circumflex]] – for the sound {{IPA|/ɨ/}}
* [[S-comma|Ș ș]] &mdash; ''s'' with [[comma (punctuation)|comma]] – for the sound {{IPA|/ʃ/}}
* [[T-comma|Ț ț]] &mdash; ''t'' with [[comma (punctuation)|comma]] – for the sound {{IPA|/ts/}}

The letter ''â'' is used exclusively in the middle of words; its [[majuscule]] version appears only in all-capitals inscriptions.

Writing letters ș and ț with a cedilla instead of a comma is considered incorrect by the Romanian Academy. Romanian writings, including books created to teach children to write, treat the comma and cedilla as a variation in font. See [[#Unicode and HTML|Unicode and HTML]] below.

=== Î versus Â ===
The letters ''î'' and ''â'' are phonetically and [[phonology|functionally]] identical. The reason for using both of them is historical, denoting the language's [[Latin language|Latin]] origin.

For a few decades until a [[spelling reform]] in 1904, as many as four or five letters had been used for the same phoneme (''â'', ''ê'', ''î'', ''û'', and occasionally ''ô'', see [[#Obsolete letters| Removed Letters]]), according to an etymological rule.<ref>{{lang|ro|Alf Lombard, [http://dexonline.ro/articol/Alf_Lombard_-_Despre_folosirea_literelor_%C3%AE_%C5%9Fi_%C3%A2 "Despre folosirea literelor â și î"], ''Limba română''|italic=unset}}, 1992, №10, p. 531</ref>  All were used to represent the vowel {{IPA|/ɨ/}}, toward which the original Latin vowels written with circumflexes had converged. The 1904 reform saw only two letters remaining, ''â'' and ''î'', the choice of which followed rules that changed several times during the 20th century.

During the first half of the century the rule was to use ''î'' in word-initial and word-final positions, and ''â'' everywhere else. There were exceptions, imposing the use of ''î'' in internal positions when words were combined or derived with prefixes or suffixes. For example, the adjective {{lang|ro|urît}} "ugly" was written with ''î'' because it derives from the verb {{lang|ro|a urî}} "to hate".

In 1953, during the [[Communist Romania|Communist era]], the [[Romanian Academy]] eliminated the letter ''â'', replacing it with ''î'' everywhere, including the name of the country, which was to be spelled {{lang|ro|Romînia}}. The first stipulation coincided with the official designation of the country as a [[People's Republic]], which meant that its full title was {{lang|ro|Republica Populară Romînă}}. A minor spelling reform in 1964 brought back the letter ''â'', but only in the spelling of {{lang|ro|român}} "Romanian" and all its derivatives, including the name of the country. As such, the [[Communist state|Socialist Republic]] proclaimed in 1965 is associated with the spelling {{lang|ro|Republica Socialistă România}}.

Soon after the fall of the [[Nicolae Ceaușescu|Ceaușescu]] government, the [[Romanian Academy]] decided to reintroduce ''â'' from 1993 onward, by canceling the effects of the 1953 spelling reform and essentially reverting to the 1904 rules (with some differences). The move was publicly justified as the rectification either of a Communist assault on tradition, or of a Soviet influence on the Romanian culture, and as a return to a traditional spelling that bears the mark of the language's Latin origin.<ref>{{lang|ro|Dumitru Irimia, [http://www.romlit.ro/de_ce_scriu_i_susin_scrierea_cu__din_i "De ce scriu și susțin scrierea cu î din i?"]}} {{in lang|ro}} "In its rationale report for the 'new' orthography, presented in 1992, the Romanian Academy considered that it had the 'duty to cut out a bridgehead in the Romanian language,' placed there by the occupier and the Communist power. 'The 1953 orthography is Stalinist,' we were told repeatedly and we are told now again. Two things are true: (1) The 1953/1965 orthography was established during the Communist regime. (2) The orthographic system was preceded by a 'framework', a panegyrical Stalinist introduction. That is all."</ref><ref>{{lang|ro|Mioara Avram, "Patrioticul â", ''Expres Magazin''|italic=unset}}, №24 (150), 23–30 June 1993, p. 20 {{in lang|ro}} "In January 1993, the leadership of the Academy took the initiative in changing the orthography, presenting from the beginning this measure as an act of reparation brought to the Romanian language for the alleged totalitarian assault upon it by the Communist regime."</ref><ref>{{lang|ro|Alex. Ștefănescu, [http://www.romlit.ro/de_ce_scriu_cu__din_a "De ce scriu cu â din a"], ''România literară''|italic=unset}}, №38, 2002 {{in lang|ro}} "I write using â for yet another reason: because by doing so I want to contest, every day, a spelling norm that was established abusively during Stalinism. Established not on linguistic grounds, but on political grounds. By giving up the letter â, they were pulling out, as with tweezers, the Latin nerve from the Romanian language."</ref> The political context at the time, however, was that the Romanian Academy was largely regarded as a corrupt institution — [[Nicolae Ceaușescu]] and his wife [[Elena Ceaușescu|Elena]] had been its honored members, and membership had been controlled by the Communist Party.<ref>{{lang|ro|[http://www.evz.ro/detalii/stiri/victime-de-elita-705702.html "Victime de elită"], ''Evenimentul zilei''|italic=unset}}, 4 February 2006 {{in lang|ro}} "In 1974, [[Elena Ceaușescu]] became full member of the Academy of the Socialist Republic of Romania. It was the conclusion of a process that had begun a few years earlier, by which the Academy, an institution with a history of over 100 years at that point, was entirely subordinated to the Party. In 1985, her husband was to become himself a full member as well as the honorary president of the Academy."</ref> As such, the 1993 spelling reform was seen as an attempt of the Academy to break with its Communist past.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.observatorcultural.ro/articol/limba-romana-speculata-politic/ |title=Limba romana speculata politic |year=2001 |author= Ion Bogdan Lefter}}</ref><ref>{{lang|ro|George Pruteanu, "Â-ul fără noimă", ''Expres Magazin''|italic=unset}}, №10 (238), 14–21 March 1995, p. 14 {{in lang|ro}} "Through such a politicizing justification, the Academy was attempting to atone, in a seemingly spectacular gesture, its heavy sins of flattery and obedience toward the Communist Party, during the dictatorship years, the diluting of its membership with all sorts of worthless intruders who are otherwise still among the 'eternals'."</ref> The Academy invited the national community of linguists as well as foreign linguists specialized in Romanian to discuss the problem;<ref>{{cite book |title=100 de ani de grafie românească |isbn=978-606-94358-1-6 |year=2018 |publisher=Asachiana |editor-first=Constantin |editor-last=Acozmei }}</ref> when these overwhelmingly opposed the spelling reform in vehement terms, their position was explicitly dismissed as being too scientific.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://uzp.org.ro/3972/cum-a-fost-votata-in-cadrul-academiei-romine-revenirea-la-scrierea-cu-a-si-i/ |title=cum a fost votată, în cadrul academiei române, revenirea la scrierea cu â și î |author=Elis Râpeanu |year=2018}}</ref><ref>{{lang|ro|Ștefan Cazimir, [http://www.romlit.ro/drag_academie "Dragă Academie"], ''România literară''|italic=unset}}, №5, 2003 {{in lang|ro}}</ref>

According to the 1993 reform, the choice between ''î'' and ''â'' is thus again based on a rule that is neither strictly etymological nor phonological, but positional and morphological. The sound is always spelled as ''â'', except at the beginning and the end of words, where ''î'' is to be used instead. Exceptions include [[proper noun]]s where the usage of the letters is frozen, whichever it may be, and compound words, whose components are each separately subjected to the rule (e.g. {{lang|ro|ne-}} + {{lang|ro|'''î'''ndemânatic}} → {{lang|ro|ne'''î'''ndemânatic}} "clumsy", not *{{lang|ro|ne'''â'''ndemânatic}}). However, the exception no longer applies to words derived with suffixes, in contrast with the 1904 norm; for instance what was spelled {{lang|ro|urît}} after 1904 became {{lang|ro|urât}} after 1993.

Although the reform was promoted as a means to show the Latin origin of Romanian, statistically only few of the words written with ''â'' according to the 1993 reform actually derive from Latin words having an ''a'' in the corresponding position.<ref>A statistical study cited by George Pruteanu in {{lang|ro|[http://www.romlit.ro/de_ce_scriu_cu__din_i "De ce scriu cu ''î'' din ''i''"]|italic=unset}} ("Why I spell with ''î''") finds that proportion to be only about 15%.</ref> In fact, this includes a large number of words that contained an ''i'' in the original Latin and are similarly written with ''i'' in their Italian or Spanish counterparts. Examples include {{lang|ro|rîu}} "river", from the Latin {{lang|la|rivus}} (compare [[Spanish language|Spanish]] {{lang|es|río}}), now written {{lang|ro|râu}}; along with {{lang|ro|rîde}} < {{lang|la|ridere}}, {{lang|ro|sîn}} < {{lang|la|sinus}}, {{lang|ro|strînge}} < {{lang|la|stringere}}, {{lang|ro|lumînare}} < {{lang|la|luminaria}}, etc.

While the 1993 spelling norm is compulsory in [[Romanian educational system|Romanian education]] and official publications, and gradually most other publications came to use it, there are still individuals, publications and publishing houses preferring the previous spelling norm or a mixed hybrid system of their own; among them are the weekly cultural magazine {{lang|ro|[[Dilema Veche]]}} and the daily {{lang|ro|[[Gazeta Sporturilor]]}}. Some publications allow authors to choose either spelling norm; these include {{lang|ro|[[România literară]]}}, the magazine of the [[Writers' Union of Romania]], and publishing houses such as {{lang|ro|[[Polirom]]}}. Dictionaries, grammars and other linguistic works have also been published using the {{lang|ro|î}} and {{lang|ro|sînt}} long after the 1993 reform.<ref>For instance: {{lang|ro|Eugenia Dima}} ''et al.'', {{lang|ro|Dicționar explicativ ilustrat al limbii române}}, 2007; {{lang|ro|Ioan Oprea}} ''et al.'', {{lang|ro|Noul dicționar universal al limbii române}}, third edition, 2008; {{lang|ro|Dumitru Irimia, ''Gramatica limbii române''|italic=unset}}, third edition, 2008.</ref>

Ultimately, the conflict results from two different linguistically-based reasonings as to how to spell {{IPA|/ɨ/}}. The choice of ''â'' derives from ''a'' being the most average or central of the five vowels (the official [[Bulgarian romanization]] uses the same logic, choosing ''a'' for ъ, resulting in the country's name being spelled ''Balgariya''; and also the European Portuguese vowel {{IPA|/ɐ/}} for ''a'' mentioned above), whereas ''î'' is an attempt to choose the Latin letter that most intuitively writes the sound {{IPA|/ɨ/}} (similarly to how [[Polish language|Polish]] uses the letter ''y'').

=== Comma-below ([[ș]] and [[ț]]) versus cedilla ([[ş]] and [[ţ]]) ===

The Romanian Academy mandates the comma-below variants for the sounds {{IPA|/ʃ/}} and {{IPA|/ts/}}, however, due to an initial lack of glyph standardization, compounded by the lack of computer font support for the comma-below variants (see the [[#Unicode_and_HTML|Unicode]] section for details), the cedilla variants may still be seen in use.{{example needed|date=November 2025|reason=should provide evidence of a cedilla in a Romanian publication}}

The comma diacritics have been supported since Windows Vista, Linux after 2005, and macOS{{Specify|date=May 2025}}. As mandated by the European Union, Microsoft released a [https://web.archive.org/web/20100722003731/http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0EC6F335-C3DE-44C5-A13D-A1E7CEA5DDEA&displaylang=en font update] for Windows XP, 2000, and Server 2003 in early 2007, soon after Romania joined the European Union.

=== Obsolete letters ===
[[File:Manhole cover near the intersetion of Bulevardul Hristo Botev and Bulevardul Corneliu Coposu in Bucharest.jpg|thumb|250px|Old Bucharest [[manhole cover]] inscribed according to the etymologically prone spelling at the time, which reads ''BUCURESCI CANALISARE'' (meaning ''Bucharest, sewers''). Compare to today's ''BUCUREȘTI CANALIZARE''.]]

Before the spelling reform of 1904, there were several additional letters with diacritical marks.
* Vowels:
** [[ĭ]] &mdash; ''i'' with [[breve]] indicated [[semivowel]] ''i'' as part of Romanian [[diphthong]]s and [[triphthong]]s ''ia'', ''ei'', ''iei'' etc., or a final, "whispered" sound of the preceding [[Palatalization (phonetics)|palatalized]] consonant, in words such as ''[[wikt:București#Romanian|București]]'' ({{IPA|/bu.kuˈreʃtʲ/}}), ''lupi'' ({{IPA|/lupʲ/}} – "wolves"), and ''greci'' ({{IPA|/ɡret͡ʃʲ/}} – "Greeks") &mdash; ''Bucurescĭ'' (the proper spelling at the time used ''c'' instead of ''t'', ''see [[wikt:-ești|-ești]]''), ''lupĭ'', ''grecĭ'', like the Slavonic [[soft sign]]. The [[Moldovan Cyrillic]] alphabet kept the Cyrillic equivalents of this letter, namely й and ь, but it was abolished in the Romanian Latin alphabet for unknown reasons. By replacing this letter with a simple ''i'' without making any additional changes, the phonetic value of the letter ''i'' became ambiguous; even native speakers can sometimes mispronounce words such as the toponym ''[[Pecica]]'' (which has two syllables, but is often mistakenly pronounced with three) or the name ''[[Nicholas Mavrogenes|Mavrogheni]]'' (which has four syllables, not three).<ref>{{in lang|ro}} Mioara Avram, ''Ortografie pentru toți'', Editura Litera Internațional, București – Chișinău, 2002, p. 66</ref> Additionally, in a number of words such as ''subiect'' "subject"<ref>Most dictionaries give the syllabification ''su-biect'', implying that ''i'' is a semivowel, but ''Dicționar de neologisme'' syllabifies it as ''su-bi-ect'', with vocalic ''i'': [http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=subiect Dexonline.ro]</ref> and ''ziar'' "newspaper",<ref>Dictionaries generally recommend the pronunciation with vocalic ''i'', ''zi-ar'', but the pronunciation in one syllable is also recorded, among others, by Ioana Chițoran, in ''The Phonology of Romanian'', 2002, p. 14.</ref> the pronunciation of ''i'' as a vowel or as a semivowel is different among speakers.
** [[ŭ]] &mdash; ''u'' with [[breve]] was used only in the ending of a word. It was essentially a Latin equivalent of the Slavonic [[Ъ|back yer]] found in languages like Russian. Unpronounced in most cases, it served to indicate that the previous consonant was not palatalized, or that the preceding ''i'' was the vowel {{IPA|[i]}} and not a mere marker of palatalization. When ''ŭ'' was pronounced, it would follow a stressed vowel and stand in for semivowel ''u'', as in words ''eŭ'', ''aŭ'', and ''meŭ'', all spelled today without the breve. Once frequent, it survives today in author [[Mateiu Caragiale]]'s name – originally spelled ''Mateiŭ'' (it is not specified whether the pronunciation should adopt a version that he himself probably never used, while in many editions he is still credited as ''Matei''). In other names, only the breve was dropped, while preserving the pronunciation of a semivowel ''u'', as is the case of [[Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu|B.P. Hasdeŭ]].
** [[ĕ]] &mdash; ''e'' with [[breve]]. This letter is now replaced with ''ă''. The existence of two letters for one sound, the schwa, had an etymological purpose, showing from which vowel ("a" or "e") it originally derived. For example ''împĕrat'' – "emperor" (<[[Imperator]]), ''vĕd'' – "I see" (<vedo), ''umĕr'' – "shoulder" (<[[humerus]]), ''păsĕri'' – "birds" (<&thinsp;cf. [[passer]]).
** [[é|é / É]] &mdash; Latin small/capital letter ''[[e]]'' with [[acute accent]] indicated a sound that corresponds either to today's Romanian [[diphthong]] ''ea'', or in some words, to today's Romanian letter ''e''. It would originally indicate the sound of Romanian letter ''e'' when it was pronounced as diphthong ''ea'' in certain Romanian regions, e.g. ''acéste'' (today spelled ''aceste'') and ''céle'' (today spelled ''cele''). This letter would sometimes indicate a derived word from a Romanian root word containing Latin letter ''e'', as is the case of ''mirésă'' (today spelled ''mireasă'') derived from ''mire''. For other words it would underlie a relationship between a Romanian word and a Latin word containing letter ''e'', where the Romanian word would use ''é'', such as ''gréle'' (today spelled ''grele'') derived from Latin word [[wikt:grevis#Latin|grevis]]. Lastly, this letter was used to accommodate the sound that corresponds to today's Romanian diphthong ''ia'', as in the word ''ér'' (''iar'' today).{{Citation needed|date=January 2009}}
** [[ó|ó / Ó]] &mdash; Latin small/capital letter ''[[o]]'' with [[acute accent]] indicated a sound that corresponds to today's Romanian diphthong ''oa''. This letter would sometimes indicate a derived word from a Romanian root word containing Latin letter ''o'', as is the case of ''popóre'' (today spelled ''popoare'') derived from ''popor''. For other words it would underlie a relationship between a Romanian word and a Latin word containing letter ''o'', where the Romanian word would use ''ó'', such as ''fórte'' (today spelled ''foarte'') derived from Latin word [[wikt:forte#Latin|forte]], as well as in ''fóme'' (''foame'' today).
** [[ê]], [[û]] and [[Circumflex|ô]] — see [[#Î versus Â|Î vs Â]]
* Consonants
** [[D-comma|d̦ / D̦]] &mdash; Latin small/capital letter ''d'' with comma below was used to indicate the sound that corresponds today to Romanian letter ''[[z]]''. It would denote that the word it belonged to derived from Latin and that its corresponding Latin letter was ''[[d]]''. Examples of words containing this letter are: ''d̦ece'' ("ten"), ''d̦i'' ("day") – reflecting its derivation<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=zi|title=zi - definiție și paradigmă &#124; dexonline}}</ref> from the Latin word [[wikt:dies#Latin|dies]], ''Dumned̦eu'' ("God") – reflecting<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://dexonline.ro/definitie/dumnezeu|title=dexonline|website=dexonline.ro}}</ref> the Latin phrase [[Dominus (title)|Domine]] [[Deus]], ''d̦ână'' ("fairy")<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://dexonline.ro/definitie/Z%C3%82N%C4%82|title=dexonline|website=dexonline.ro}}</ref> – to be derived from the Latin word [[Diana (mythology)|Diana]]. In today's Romanian language this letter is no longer present and Latin letter ''[[z]]'' is used in its stead. 

In addition, the acute accent ([[á]], [[í]]) was used in verb infinitives and 3rd-person imperfect forms stressed on the last syllable: ''lăudá'' ("to praise"), ''aud̦í'' ("to hear"), 3rd-person imperfect ''lăudá'', ''aud̦iá''. The grave accent ([[à]], [[ì]], [[ù]]) was used in 3rd-person perfect forms stressed on the last syllable: ''lăudà'', ''aud̦ì''.<ref>[https://documente.bcucluj.ro/web/bibdigit/fg/BCUCLUJ_FG_248655_1904.pdf Nic. Densușianu. Sistema ortografica a limbei române. Bucuresci, 1904.]</ref>

Use of these letters was not fully adopted even before 1904, as some publications (e.g. ''[[Timpul]]'' and ''[[Universul]]'') chose to use a simplified approach that resembled today's Romanian language writing.{{Citation needed|date=January 2009}}

=== Other diacritics ===

As with other languages, the [[acute accent]] is sometimes used in Romanian texts to indicate the [[Stress (linguistics)|stressed vowel]] in some words. This use is regular in dictionary headwords, but also occasionally found in carefully edited texts to disambiguate between [[homograph]]s that are not also [[homophone]]s, such as to differentiate between ''cópii'' ("copies") and ''copíi'' ("children"), ''éra'' ("the era") and ''erá'' ("was"), ''ácele'' ("the needles") and ''acéle'' ("those"), etc. The accent also distinguishes between homographic verb forms, such as ''încúie'' and ''încuié'' ("he locks" and "he has locked").<ref>''Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române'', 2005, p. LI {{in lang|ro}}</ref>

Diacritics in some borrowings are kept: ''bourrée'', ''pietà''. Foreign names are also usually spelled with their original diacritics: ''Bâle'', ''Molière'', even when an acute accent might be wrongly interpreted as a stress, as in ''István'' or ''Gérard''. However, frequently used foreign names, such as names of cities or countries, are often spelled without diacritics: ''Bogota'', ''Panama'', ''Peru''.<ref>''Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române'', 2005, p. LII {{in lang|ro}}</ref>

== Digital typography ==

=== ISO 8859 ===
[[File:Widespread wrong usage of Romanian diacritics.svg|thumb|right|400px|Widespread incorrect usage of Romanian diacritics with examples]]
The character encoding standard [[ISO 8859]] initially defined a single code page for the entire Central and Eastern Europe — [[ISO 8859-2]]. This code page includes only "s" and "t" with cedillas. The South-Eastern European [[ISO 8859-16]] includes "s" and "t" with comma below on the same places "s" and "t" with cedilla were in ISO 8859-2. The ISO 8859-16 code page became a standard after Unicode became widespread, however, so it was largely ignored by software vendors.

=== Unicode and HTML ===

The circumflex and breve accented Romanian letters were part of the [[Unicode]] standard since its inception, as well as the cedilla variants of s and t. Ș and ț (comma-below variants) were added to Unicode version 3.0.<ref>Unicode 3.0 standard, p.162</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/DerivedAge.txt|title=Unicode.org}}</ref> From Unicode version 3.0 to version 5.1, the cedilla-using characters were specified by the Unicode Standard to be "used in both Turkish and Romanian data" and that "a glyph variant with comma below is preferred for Romanian"; On the newly encoded comma-using characters, it said that they should be used "when distinct comma below form is required".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://unicode.org/Public/3.0-Update/NamesList-3.0.0.txt|title=Unicode.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://unicode.org/Public/5.1.0/ucd/NamesList.txt|title=Unicode.org}}</ref> Unicode 5.2 explicitly states that "the form with the cedilla is preferred in Turkish, and the form with the comma below is preferred in Romanian", while mentioning (possibly for historical reasons) that "in Turkish and Romanian, a cedilla and a comma below sometimes replace one another".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0/ch07.pdf|title=Unicode 5.2 Chapter 7, European Alphabetic Scripts}}</ref>

Widespread adoption was hampered for some years by the lack of fonts providing the new glyphs. In May 2007, four months after Romania (and Bulgaria) joined the [[European Union|EU]], Microsoft released updated fonts that include all official glyphs of the Romanian (and [[Bulgarian language#Alphabet|Bulgarian]]) alphabet.<ref name="update" >[http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0ec6f335-c3de-44c5-a13d-a1e7cea5ddea&displaylang=en European Union Expansion Font Update], microsoft.com</ref> This font update targeted Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003. The subset of Unicode most widely supported on Microsoft Windows systems, [[Windows Glyph List 4]], still does not include the comma-below variants of S and T.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|-
! rowspan="2" | Phoneme
! colspan="3" | With comma (official)
! colspan="3" | With cedilla
|-
! Character
! Unicode<br>position<br> (hex)
! HTML entity
! Character
! Unicode<br>position<br>(hex)
! HTML entity
|-
| rowspan="2" | {{IPA|/ʃ/}}
| Ș
| 0218
| &amp;#x218; or &amp;#536;
| Ş
| 015E
| &amp;Scedil; or &amp;#x15E; or &amp;#350;
|-
| ș
| 0219
| &amp;#x219; or &amp;#537;
| ş
| 015F
| &amp;scedil; or &amp;#x15F; or &amp;#351;
|-
| rowspan="2" | {{IPA|/t͡s/}}
| Ț
| 021A
| &amp;#x21A; or &amp;#538;
| Ţ
| 0162
| &amp;Tcedil; or &amp;#x162; or &amp;#354;
|-
| ț
| 021B
| &amp;#x21B; or &amp;#539;
| ţ
| 0163
| &amp;tcedil; or &amp;#x163; or &amp;#355;
|}
Vowels with diacritics are coded as follows:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|-
! | Phoneme
! Character
! Unicode<br>position<br>(hex)
! HTML entity
|-
| rowspan="2" | {{IPA|/ə/}}
| Ă
| 0102
| &amp;Abreve; or &amp;#x102; or &amp;#258;
|-
| ă
| 0103
| &amp;abreve; or &amp;#x103; or &amp;#259;
|-
| rowspan="4" | {{IPA|/ɨ/}}
| Â
| 00C2
| &amp;Acirc; or &amp;#xC2; or &amp;#194;
|-
| â
| 00E2
| &amp;acirc; or &amp;#xE2; or &amp;#226;
|-
| Î
| 00CE
| &amp;Icirc; or &amp;#xCE; or &amp;#206;
|-
| î
| 00EE
| &amp;icirc; or &amp;#xEE; or &amp;#238;
|}

==== Adobe/Linotype de facto standard ====

[[File:The şuţ șuț font demo in Adobe Caslon Pro Regular via Fontmatrix.png|thumb|200px|Inconsistent cedilla glyphs in Adobe Caslon (left). The correct Romanian rendering (right) can be obtained by activating the [[OpenType]] <code>GSUB/latn/ROM/locl</code> feature, which remaps the s with cedilla glyph to comma-below. The rendering on the right is visually indistinguishable from the rendering produced by comma-below code points for this font.]]

[[Adobe Systems]] decided<ref>[http://www.typophile.com/node/2764#comment-22015 comments of Canadian type designer John Hudson] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080704153258/http://www.typophile.com/node/2764#comment-22015 |date=4 July 2008 }}, typophile.com</ref> that the Unicode glyphs "t with cedilla" U+0162/3 are not used in any language. (It is in fact used, but in very few languages. T with Cedilla exists as part of the [[General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages]], in some Gagauz orthographies, in the [[Kabyle dialect]] of the [[Berber language]], and possibly elsewhere.) Adobe has therefore substituted the glyphs with "t with comma below" (U+021A/B) in all the fonts they ship. The unfortunate consequence of this decision is that Romanian documents using the (unofficial) Unicode points U+015E/F and U+0162/3 (for ş and ţ) are rendered in Adobe fonts in a visually inconsistent way using "s with cedilla", but "t with comma" (see figure). [[Mergenthaler Linotype Company|Linotype]] fonts that support Romanian glyphs mostly follow this convention.<ref>Linotype's font finder allows users to test font rendering with their own sample texts. Tested with the sample text "Țâșnit în şanţ".[http://www.linotype.com/featuresearch?cf=adobece&cf=euro&cf=latinext Linotype.com]{{Dead link|date=August 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

The fonts used by Microsoft before Windows Vista also implement this de facto Adobe standard. Few Microsoft fonts provide a consistent look when cedilla variants are used; notable ones are [[Tahoma (typeface)|Tahoma]], [[Verdana]], [[Trebuchet MS]], [[Microsoft Sans Serif]] and [[Segoe UI]].

The free [[DejaVu fonts|DejaVu]] and [[Linux Libertine]] fonts provide proper and consistent glyphs in both variants. [[Red Hat]]'s [[Liberation fonts]] only support the comma below variants starting with version 1.04, scheduled for inclusion in [[Fedora (operating system)|Fedora]] 10.

==== OpenType <code>ROM/locl</code> feature ====

Some [[OpenType]] fonts from Adobe and all C-series [[:Category:Windows Vista typefaces|Vista fonts]] implement the optional OpenType feature <code>GSUB/latn/ROM/locl</code>.<ref>[http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/features_ko.htm#locl <code>locl</code> glyph localization feature tag explained.], microsoft.com</ref> This feature forces "s with cedilla" to be rendered using the same glyph as "s with comma below". When this second (but optional) remapping takes place, Romanian Unicode text is rendered with comma-below glyphs regardless of code point variants.

Unfortunately, most Microsoft pre-Vista OpenType fonts ([[Arial]] etc.) do not implement the <code>ROM/locl</code> feature, even after the European Union Expansion Font Update,<ref name=update/> so old documents will look inconsistent as in the left side of the above figure. Select few fonts, e.g. [[Verdana]] and [[Trebuchet MS]], not only have a consistent look for cedilla variants (after the EU update), but also do a simultaneous remapping of cedilla s and t to comma-below variants when <code>ROM/locl</code> is activated. The free DejaVu and Linux Libertine fonts do not yet offer this feature in their current releases, but development versions do.

[[Pango]] [[Pango#Support for OpenType features|supports the <code>locl</code> tag]] since version 1.17. [[XeTeX]] supports <code>locl</code> since version 0.995. As of July 2008, very few Windows applications support the <code>locl</code> feature tag. From the Adobe [[Adobe CS3|CS3]] suite, only [[Adobe InDesign|InDesign]] has support for it.<ref>[http://store.adobe.com/type/browser/pdfs/OTGuide.pdf p. 15], store.adobe.com</ref>

The status of Romanian support in the free fonts that ship with [[Fedora (operating system)|Fedora]] is maintained at [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Tasks/Ro_fonts#Font_status_matrix Fedoraproject.org].

==== Combining characters ====

Unicode also allows diacritical marks to be represented as separate [[Unicode#Combining characters|combining diacritical marks]]. The relevant combining accents are U+0326 COMBINING COMMA BELOW and U+0327 COMBINING CEDILLA. Support for applying a combining Comma Below to letters S and T may have been poorly supported in commercial fonts in the past, but nearly all modern fonts can successfully handle both the Cedilla and Comma Below marks for S and T. As with all fonts, typographical quality can vary, and so it is preferable to use the single code points instead. Whenever a combining diacritical mark is used in a document, the font in use should be tested to confirm that it is rendered acceptably.

===(La)TeX===

[[LaTeX]] allows typesetting in Romanian using the cedilla Ş and Ţ using the [[Cork encoding]]. The comma-below variants are not completely supported in the standard 8-bit TeX font encodings. The lack of a standard [[LATEX Internal Character Representation|LICR]] (LaTeX Internal Character Representations) for comma-below Ș and Ț is part of the problem. The <code>latin10</code> input method attempts to remedy the problem by defining the \textcommabelow LICR accent. This is unfortunately not supported by the <code>utf8</code> input method.

The problem may partially worked around in a LaTeX document using these settings, which would allow use of ș, ț or their cedilla variants directly in the LaTeX source:

<pre>
\usepackage[latin10,utf8]{inputenc}

% transliterates  utf8 chars with çedila at their comma-below representation
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{015F}{\textcommabelow s} % ş
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{015E}{\textcommabelow S} % Ş
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{0163}{\textcommabelow t} % ţ
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{0162}{\textcommabelow T} % Ţ

% transliterates utf8 comma-below characters to the comma-below representation
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{0219}{\textcommabelow s} % ș
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{0218}{\textcommabelow S} % Ș
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{021B}{\textcommabelow t} % ț
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{021A}{\textcommabelow T} % Ț
</pre>

The <code>latin10</code> package composes the comma-below glyphs by superimposing a comma and the letters S and T. This method is suitable only for printing. In [[PDF]] documents produced this way searching or copying text does not work properly. The Polish QX encoding has some support for comma-below glyphs, which are improperly mapped to cedilla LICRs, but also lacks A breve (Ă), which must always be composite, thus unsearchable.

In the [[Latin Modern]] [[PostScript fonts|Type 1 fonts]] the T with comma below is found under the AGL name /Tcommaaccent. This is in contradiction with Adobe's decision discussed above, which puts a T with comma-below at /Tcedilla. In consequence, no fixed mapping can work across all Type 1 fonts; each font must come with its own mapping. Unfortunately, TeX output drivers, like [[dvips]], [[dvipdfm]] or [[pdfTeX]]'s internal PDF driver, access the glyphs by [[Adobe Glyph List|AGL]] name. Since all of the output drivers mentioned are unaware of this peculiarity, the problem is essentially intractable across all fonts. In consequence, one needs to use fonts that include a mapping which is not bypassed by TeX. This is the case with newer TeX engine [[XeTeX]], which can use Unicode OpenType fonts, and does not bypass the font's Unicode map.

===Keyboard layout===
Modern computer operating systems can be configured to implement a standard Romanian keyboard layout, to permit typing on any keyboard as if it were a Romanian keyboard.

{{Main|Romanian keyboard layout}}

In systems such as Linux which employ the XCompose system, Romanian letters may be typed from a non-Romanian keyboard layout using a [[compose key|compose-key]].
The system's keyboard layout must be set up to use a compose-key. (Exactly how this is accomplished depends on the distribution.)  For instance, the 'left Alt' key is often used as a compose-key.

To type a letter with a diacritical mark, the compose-key is held down while another key is typed indicate the mark to be applied, then the base letter is typed.  For instance, when using an English (US) keyboard layout, to produce ț, hold the compose-key down while typing semicolon ';', then release the compose-key and type 't'.  Other marks may be similarly applied as follows:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! letter !! mark key !! base letter !! note
|-
| ț       || ;        || t          ||
|-
| ă       || U        || a          || shift-u for U
|-
| î       || ^        || i          || shift-6 for ^
|}

==Spelling alphabet==
There is a Romanian equivalent to the English-language [[spelling alphabet]]s. Most of the code words are people's first names, with the exception of K, J, Q, W and Y. Letters with diacritics (Ă, Â, Î, Ș, Ț) are generally transmitted without diacritics (A, A, I, S, T).

{| class="wikitable" style="display: inline-table"
! &nbsp;
! style="width:6em" | Word
! style="width:9em" | [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] (unofficial)
|-
| align="center" | A || Ana || {{IPA|/ˈa.na/}}
|-
| align="center" | B || Barbu || {{IPA|/ˈbar.bu/}}
|-
| align="center" | C || Constantin || {{IPA|/kon.stanˈtin/}}
|-
| align="center" | D || Dumitru || {{IPA|/duˈmi.tru/}}
|-
| align="center" | E || Elena || {{IPA|/eˈle.na/}}
|-
| align="center" | F || Florea || {{IPA|/ˈflo.re̯a/}}
|-
| align="center" | G || Gheorghe || {{IPA|/ˈɡe̯or.ɡe/}}
|-
| align="center" | H || Haralambie || {{IPA|/ha.raˈlam.bi.e/}}
|-
| align="center" | I || Ion || {{IPA|/iˈon/}}
|-
| align="center" | J || Jiu || {{IPA|/ʒiw/}}
|-
| align="center" | K || kilogram || {{IPA|/ki.loˈɡram/}}
|-
| align="center" | L || Lazăr || {{IPA|/ˈla.zər/}}
|-
| align="center" | M || Maria || {{IPA|/maˈri.a/}}
|}

{| class="wikitable" style="display: inline-table"
! &nbsp;
! style="width:6em" | Word
! style="width:9em" | [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] (unofficial)
|-
| align="center" | N || Nicolae || {{IPA|/ni.koˈla.e/}}
|-
| align="center" | O || Olga || {{IPA|/ˈol.ɡa/}}
|-
| align="center" | P || Petre || {{IPA|/ˈpe.tre/}}
|-
| align="center" | Q || Q || {{IPA|/ˈkju/}}
|-
| align="center" | R || Radu || {{IPA|/ˈra.du/}}
|-
| align="center" | S || Sandu || {{IPA|/ˈsan.du/}}
|-
| align="center" | T || Tudor || {{IPA|/ˈtu.dor/}}
|-
| align="center" | U || Udrea || {{IPA|/ˈu.dre̯a/}}
|-
| align="center" | V || Vasile || {{IPA|/vaˈsi.le/}}
|-
| align="center" | W || dublu V || {{IPA|/du.bluˈve/}}
|-
| align="center" | X || Xenia || {{IPA|/ˈkse.ni.a/}}
|-
| align="center" | Y || I grec || {{IPA|/ˈi.ɡrek/}}
|-
| align="center" | Z || Zamfir || {{IPA|/zamˈfir/}}
|}

==See also==
* [[Aromanian alphabet]]
* [[Istro-Romanian alphabet]]
* [[Megleno-Romanian alphabet]]
* [[Romanian transitional alphabet]]
* [[Romanian Cyrillic alphabet]]
* [[Romanian Braille]]

==References==

===Notes===

{{reflist}}

===Bibliography===

* {{in lang|ro}} Mioara Avram, ''Ortografie pentru toți'', Editura Litera Internațional, 2002
* {{cite book | last = The Unicode Consortium | title = The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0 | publisher = Addison-Wesley | location = Boston | year = 2000 | isbn = 0-201-61633-5 }}

==External links==
<!--* [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/romanian.htm Romanian language, alphabet and pronunciation] Omniglot page on Romanian contains way too many mistakes. Please leave out.-->
* [https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0180.pdf Unicode Latin Extended-B characters], unicode.org
* [http://www.etc.tuiasi.ro/sibm/romanian_spoken_language/index.htm Sounds of the Romanian Language], etc.tuiasi.ro

{{Romanian language}}
{{Language orthographies}}
{{Latin alphabet}}
{{List of writing systems}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Romanian Alphabet}}
[[Category:Latin alphabets]]
[[Category:Romanian language|Alphabet]]
[[Category:Writing systems introduced in the 1860s]]