# I gave Mark a pen/I gave Tanya a pen



## Samuroid

Is it acurate to say: Am dat pixul lui Mark; Am dat pixul lui Tania;
Could you explain it to me, please?


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## Trisia

Hi,

Out of curiosity: what prompted the question?

First of all, your sentences are perfectly intelligible. I would change two three things:

1. (*Added*) In your original, the pen is undefined, but in your translation it's defined. That's not not wrong per se, but if you want an exact rendering and not "the pen", then it's "un pix".

2. The structure of the dative in Romanian includes a "doubled" pronoun:

*I*-am dat un pix lui Mark.

3. The noun has a dative form:
Masculine: I-am dat un pix copil*ului*.
Feminine: I-am dat un pix mam*ei*.

In the case of proper nouns, we don't use a dative form for boy names (we add "lui" instead) but we do modify girls' names if they end in "-a".

I-am dat pix lui Mark.
I-am dat un pix Taniei.

However, if the girl name ends in something other than -a, or is a foreign name, we can safely revert to the pattern used for the masculine

I-am dat un pix lui Carmen.
I-am dat un pix lui Tanya/Tanyei (I'd use whichever).
I hope that makes some sense. :/

_Edited because I missed some info._


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## Samuroid

Trisia said:


> Out of curiosity: what prompted the question?


I couldn't understand how to tell something in the dative, I always added lui

And with the definite article:
I-am dat pixul lui Mark
I-am dat pixul Taniei

Is it correct?


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## Trisia

Samuroid said:


> I-am dat pixul lui Mark*.*
> I-am dat pixul Taniei*.*


Yes, it is. But is it Tania or Tanya?


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## Samuroid

Trisia said:


> Yes, it is. But is it Tania or Tanya?


I thought in Romanian it's Tania 😀
Thanks a lot


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## Trisia

It is, so I'm not correcting you, but if you're translating Tanya, then might as well make it Mark → Marcu. 

I'm kidding. We don't usually translate names so if this is for homework try to see what your teacher prefers.


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## danielstan

Samuroid said:


> I thought in Romanian it's Tania 😀
> Thanks a lot


In Romanian the feminine proper nouns (names of people, in our case) are ending most of the time in _*-a*_:
Maria, Ana, Felicia etc.
Their genitive-dative declension follows the declension of feminine common nouns, thus:
"_I-am dat Mari*ei*/An*ei*/Felici*ei*_"

The feminine proper nouns not ending in _*-a*_ do not follow this rule, instead they get the masculine nouns declension:
"_I-am dat *lui *Carmen_" (the possible form "_I-am dat Carmen*ei*_" sounds very strange)
The same rule applies for feminine proper nouns of foreign origin:
"_I-am dat *lui *Sarah/_*lui *_Tanya/*lui *Celine_ etc."


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