Whatever sounds best is fine, generally speaking.

This ending derives from LATIN -alis,"means of, like, having the nature of" e.g basically only works with words of Latin derivation

The key issue in your example is that SYSTEM, the main word, has two attributes ROMANIA, and EDUCATION..

> "The Romanian educational system", Romanian and educational are very obviously marked as adjectives to the main word SYSTEM
> "The Romanian education system", only ROMANIAN is an obvious adjective, and there is ambiguity as to the main word: EDUCATION or SYSTEM

As Michael rightly points out an English noun can often be used as an adjective (attribute) just by putting it next to another;
but when you two or more adjectives/attributes you *should* make it very clear that they are used in that way and mark them appropriately..

You can often use other means of combining multiple attributes, in your caseyou may also consider:
The educational system of Romania (of Romania = Romanian)
The Romanian system of education (of education = educational)

Yes, I basically agree with Michael's excellent explanation, but just wanted to add my 5 eggs too!

First of all, the adjectival -al form MAY be optional when used attributively, but will usually be OBLIGATORY when used predicatively; in other words, we may say "the education(al) system", but we MUST say "this game is educational".

Also, it is important to beware of words where the noun and adjective form in -al may have special, distinct meanings. And this may be very context-sensitive --- for example:

"Burning his finger was an educational experience for him"

--- doesn't mean he went through the school system!



--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 13 hrs 58 mins (2003-11-10 09:26:55 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

In response to Mario\'s interesting comments:

I have a slightly different \'take\' on it from Mario. I don\'t feel at all uncomfortable with having 2 or more adjectival terms preceding a given noun, and I think the way we handle that word order (or circumvent it) CAN sometimes have subtle effects on the meaning.

In particular, I don\'t have a problem with \"Romanian education system\" --- there is no need at all to add the -al just to make it obvious that \'education\' is being used adjectivally; here, it couldn\'t be otherwise. On the contrary, I would avoid adding it for the sake of it, in order to leave room for the additional use of adjectives that MUST have the -al. For example:
The Romanian national education system

And I would certainly avoid using \'the education system of Romania\' --- a construction I hate in English (maybe I\'ve been reading too much French lately!) In my view, a better way to express that would be \"the education system IN Romania\"

Likewise, I\'m not too sure about \"the Romanian system of education\" --- to me, that almost sounds as if we are getting away from the original meaning.
As I see it, \"t.R.e.s.\" means \"the infrastructure (etc.) of education in Romania\", whereas \"t.R.s.o.e.\" almost seems to be referring to the way education is carried on specifically in Romania.
For example:
\"the Romanian system of education produces students with good literary skills\"

For every context, and every word order, there may be nuances of meaning or emphasis, so we need to be wary of playing around with the word order merely for style\'s sake.

Here endeth this morning\'s soapbox!