Romanian Sign Language is an independent language that has, just as any other language, its own structure, vocabulary, grammar rules and other specific components. Romanian Sign Language is the language used by the Romanian Deaf communities. For most Deaf Romanians, Romanian Sign Language is their mother tongue, and not Romanian, as one might think. The degree of understanding and the ability to use spoken Romanian differs a lot from one person to another. Some Deaf people have limited or reduced abilities of using Romanian (writing, reading, lip reading, speaking) but others possess advanced or very advanced knowledge and skills regarding the usage of the Romanian language.
This language consists of signs that designate concepts, and there is no perfect equivalence to the Romanian words. For example, a sign may have multiple meanings, while a Romanian word may have different translations into Romanian Sign Language. This also means that there are cases where a Romanian word does not have a direct equivalent in Romanian Sign Language as well as cases where certain signs are very difficult or even impossible to translate into Romanian. Apart from signs, Romanian Sign Language also uses finger spelling. As opposed to signs, finger spelling is the equivalent of the Romanian alphabet and is used to visually spell certain words and proper nouns. Finger spelling is not a way of communication, it only represents a visual coding of the letters of a certain alphabet.