Dative and Accusative forms of the pronouns

Now, for those of you who learn Romanian through English, it may seem complicated the fact that one form in English has two different forms in Romanian. And I'm talking here about the Dative and Accusative forms of the pronouns.

In English we have only one form for both cases: me, you, him, her, us, you, them

Romanian has totally different forms for these two cases. Soso wrote them above.

In order for you not to mis-use them, keep in mind that the Dative case implies the question: TO WHOM?

Ex:
He told me- To whom he told? Me.
He told you- To whom he told? You
ETC.

Dative is a difficult case in Romanian because it actually splits in two forms and UNFORTUNATELY they don't exactly look the same.

Here are the forms and then I'll show you examples and explain when and how to use them:

Even worse, for some persons one of the forms modifies according to the verb tense! What I'll write now is the form for the present tense PLUS the form Soso wrote above(that form never changes)

me: îmi + mie

you: îți + ție

him: îi + lui

her: îi + ei

us: ne+ nouă

you: vă + vouă

them: le+ lor

The first form I wrote is the one always accompanying the verb and staying IN FRONT of it. The second is used AFTER the verb and its only meaning is to emphasise the person TO WHOM the action of the verb refers to. For a "dramatical" effect this form goes on the very first position BEFORE everything else.

Examples:

We'll take the sentence: He tells me.

El îmi spune.- this is the regular way of translating the sentence.

El îmi spune mie- I, the speaker, want make sure everybody understands that he tells ME and not to somebody else. The sentence alone transmits the message of "he tells me something". But if we use mie too, the speaker wants to make clear the fact that "he talks to ME"

Mie îmi spune- this is the "dramatical" use. The speakes leaves room for no doubts: "It's ME the one to whom he tells. ME and probably ME alone."

Time for a break, but I'll come back (later or tomorrow) with the rest of the explanation for the Dative and with the explanation for the Accusative.

I'm well aware that this seems complicated and indeed it is, but my advice is : do not try to memorize these forms as I wrote them. Use them in contexts, because it's easier to remember a form attached to an idea than to simply memorize a list of words. And again: songs will help you with this, because you'll make connections between what I wrote in here and certain lines in certain songs.