că

See also: Appendix:Variations of "ca"

Romanian

Alternative forms

• кэ (că) — post-1930s Cyrillic spelling

Etymology

Inherited from Latin quod, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kʷod. Compare Aromanian cã, che.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kə/
• Rhymes: -ə

Conjunction

că

1. that

   Sperăm că îți place casa nouă.

   We hope that you like the new house.

   A spus că va fi la spital.

   He said that he will be at the hospital.

2. (colloquial) for, because

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:deoarece

   Să dormim, că e târziu.

   Let’s sleep, because it's late.

3. (colloquial) or else
4. (informal) synonym of încât
5. Used as a mandatory structural marker following sentence adverbs to connect them to the rest of the clause (see usage notes)

   Bineînțeles că voiam să te ajut, dar tu n-ai vrut asta, ce să fac acum?

   Of course I wanted to help you, but you didn't want that. What should I do now?

Usage notes

• că, in the sense of acting as a structural marker, likely originated as a conjunction, just as in all the other senses, whose function has been grammaticalized into a mandatory complementizer or particle, but which is not a particle in its strictest sense. The most probable etymology is that these sentence adverbs (also known as discourse markers) were historically preceded by a copula (e.g. Este bineînțeles că...), where că did serve as a conjunction, but the copula was later dropped and the conjunction remained, as it previously was mandatory. It's easily translatable in English by adding that after the adverb, but unlike in English where it is dropped in all but very formal contexts, in Romanian the particle-like conjunction is mandatory in all contexts, and its omission may be a sign of English influence (also known as romgleză).

Derived terms

• nu că

Related terms

• care

References

• “că”, in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language) (in Romanian), 2004–2026