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maică-tă
your mother /ˈmajkə.tə/
noun#4196 most common
Also: your mom, your ma
Example sentences
Cum o cheamă pe maică-tă?
What's your mother's name?
Maică-tă te așteaptă acasă.
Your mother is waiting for you at home.
Du-te și întreab-o pe maică-tă dacă vrea să vină cu noi.
Go ask your mother if she wants to come with us.
Nu-i spune lui maică-tă ce am pățit, că mă omoară.
Don't tell your mother what happened to me, she'll kill me.
Ce tot bați câmpii acolo, du-te la maică-tă!
What nonsense are you talking, go back to your mother!
În gura satului, toți știu ce-a pățit maică-tă anul trecut.
In the village gossip mill, everyone knows what happened to your mother last year.
Declension
| Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | maică-ta / maică-tă | not applicable (unique referent) |
| Genitive | maică-tii | not applicable (unique referent) |
| Accusative | pe maică-ta / pe maică-tă | not applicable (unique referent) |
| Vocative | maică-ta! | not applicable (unique referent) |
Word family
mamămother (standard, neutral term)maicămother (regional/affectionate term, also 'nun' in religious use)
mă-tayour mother (further-contracted colloquial variant)
tată-tăuyour father (parallel construction)
măicuțălittle mother / term for a nun (diminutive of maică)
Etymology
Maică is an old Slavic borrowing into Romanian, close to Bulgarian and Serbian words for mother. It survives as a regional and affectionate alternative to the more common mamă. The ending -tă is a worn-down, postposed form of the possessive ta, meaning your for a feminine noun, a pattern Romanian applies to several kinship terms. Speakers fuse the noun and the possessive into one word, and in Moldovan-influenced speech the final a often reduces to ă. The whole word is a single spoken unit meaning your mother.
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