When Mandarin Meets Romanian: Linguistic Interference Patterns in Chinese Learners’ Acquisition of Romanian as a Second Language

Abstract

This study investigates the linguistic interference of Chinese native speakers who learn Romanian as a Second Language, through a mixed-methods analysis, which triangulates the analysis of 9 learner journals and 32 questionnaires, starting from the firsthand observation that Chinese learners face systematic challenges at different linguistic compartments. Thus, morphologically, all participants struggled with Romanian’s three-gender system (absent in Mandarin); syntactically, topic-comment transfer produces OVS errors, with questionnaire data revealing persistent L1-mediated processing (M=4.00 “thinking in Chinese first”); lexical interference manifests through overgeneralised light verbs and inappropriate Mandarin obligatory classifier insertion; and pragmatically, Chinese indirect refusal strategies transfer inappropriately to Romanian’s explicit communicative norms. Consequently, a critical finding was generated: learners demonstrate metalinguistic awareness without production accuracy, suggesting that spontaneous language use falls behind explicit knowledge, which emphasises the need for precise contrastive language acquisition patterns for grammatical gender, structured morphosyntactic practice, and dedicated pragmatic training for Romanian pedagogy targeting Chinese-speaking learners.