When you want to rally a group — "let's go", "let's eat", "let's get started" — English has one tidy word: let's. Romanian has no such verb form. Instead it does two things at once. It uses the first-person plural of the conjunctiv (the să-form) to carry the meaning — Să mergem! literally "that we go", used as "Let's go!" — and in real conversation it almost always launches that with the little word hai: Hai să mergem!. On its own, bare Hai! (and its fuller relatives Haide! / Haideți!) is an all-purpose "come on! / let's go!" that you will hear constantly. This page is your practical guide to sounding like a Romanian friend pulling everyone out the door, not like a textbook stage direction.
The base form: să + 1st-plural conjunctiv
The grammatical core of "let's" is să plus the verb in the first-person plural. For most verbs that 1pl form looks exactly like the present indicative noi-form, so you already know it.
| Verb | "Let's …" | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| a merge | Să mergem! | Let's go! |
| a mânca | Să mâncăm! | Let's eat! |
| a pleca | Să plecăm! | Let's leave / get going! |
| a începe | Să începem! | Let's begin! |
| a vedea | Să vedem! | Let's see! |
Să mergem, ne așteaptă toți afară.
Let's go, everyone's waiting for us outside.
E gata masa — să mâncăm cât e cald.
The food's ready — let's eat while it's hot.
The everyday launcher: hai să …
In real life Romanians rarely start a "let's" with the bare Să …. They open with hai — a fossilized particle (originally from Turkish hayde) that has become one of the most frequent words in spoken Romanian. Hai is not a verb you conjugate; it is a fixed nudge meaning roughly "come on / let's". The everyday pattern is:
Hai + să + 1pl conjunctiv = the natural, warm "let's …".
Hai să mâncăm, mor de foame.
Let's eat, I'm starving.
Hai să mergem la o cafea.
Let's go (out) for a coffee.
Hai să nu ne certăm acum, te rog.
Let's not argue right now, please.
Hai să vedem ce zice și el.
Let's see what he has to say too.
Notice that hai simply sits in front of the same să-clause; it doesn't change anything grammatically. It adds tone — friendliness, encouragement, a gentle push — not new content. To negate, nu goes in its usual spot inside the să-clause: Hai să nu … ("let's not …").
Bare Hai! / Haide! / Haideți! — "come on!"
Used alone, with no să-clause, the word is a stand-alone interjection meaning "come on! / let's go! / hurry up!". It comes in three shapes, and the choice mirrors the tu / voi distinction you use everywhere else.
| Form | Addressed to | Sense | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hai! | anyone (all-purpose) | come on! / let's go! | Hai, că întârziem! |
| Haide! | one person | come on! (a bit fuller) | Haide, nu fi supărat. |
| Haideți! | several people / polite | come on, everyone! | Haideți, vă așteptăm! |
Hai, că pierdem trenul!
Come on, we'll miss the train!
Haide, încă puțin, aproape am ajuns.
Come on, a little more, we're almost there.
Haideți la masă, mâncarea se răcește!
Come on everyone, to the table — the food's getting cold!
Regional and idiomatic hai
Hai has spread into a few set expressions worth recognizing:
- Hai noroc! — a cheery toast or casual goodbye, "cheers!" / "all the best!" (informal)
- Hai sictir! — a rude brush-off, "get lost!" (vulgar; recognize it, don't reach for it)
- Mai hai și tu pe la noi! — "Do come round to ours sometime!", where hai edges toward "come" (informal, warm)
- Hai că … — opens a skeptical or teasing remark, "oh come on, …": Hai că nu se poate! "Oh come on, that's impossible!" (informal)
Hai că glumești! N-ai făcut tu asta.
Oh come on, you're joking! You didn't do that.
Ia să … — the playful "let me / let's just"
A close cousin worth knowing is ia să …, built on the imperative ia ("take!") used as a discourse nudge. Ia să vedem! means "Let's just see!" / "Let me have a look!" — a self-directed or group nudge, slightly playful and very colloquial. It is the kind of thing you say to yourself while reaching for something.
Ia să vedem dacă merge acum.
Let's just see if it works now.
Ia stai puțin — unde ai pus cheile?
Hold on a sec — where did you put the keys?
How this differs from English
English packs all of this into one verb, let: let's go, let me see, let him wait. Romanian splits the job. The "let's" meaning lives in the 1pl conjunctiv (să mergem), and everyday speech wraps it in hai (să), which has no single English equivalent — it is part "let's", part "come on", part an arm round your shoulder steering you out the door. The two classic learner errors flow straight from English: trying to conjugate hai as if it were a verb (*haiem, *hai-uri), and calquing "let us" with a literal lasă-ne construction. Neither is Romanian. Hai never inflects beyond hai / haide / haideți, and "let's go" is Să mergem! or Hai să mergem!, never *Lasă-ne să mergem (which would actually mean "leave us alone to go").
The wider system — how the conjunctiv also fills "let him/her/them" (Să vină!) and the full grammar of standalone să — is covered on the hortative conjunctiv page and the să in questions and commands page.
Common Mistakes
❌ Mergem! (intended as 'let's go!')
Incorrect — the bare indicative just states 'we go / we're going', not a hortative; use 'să' or 'hai să'.
✅ Hai să mergem!
Let's go!
❌ Hai mâncăm.
Incorrect — when hai introduces a clause it needs 'să': hai SĂ mâncăm.
✅ Hai să mâncăm.
Let's eat.
❌ Haide! (to a group)
Incorrect for several people — use the plural 'haideți'.
✅ Haideți!
Come on, everyone!
❌ Lasă-ne să mergem la film. (intended 'let's go to the movies')
Incorrect calque of English 'let us' — this means 'leave us alone so we can go'; use the conjunctiv.
✅ Hai să mergem la film.
Let's go to the movies.
❌ Haiem la plajă. (treating hai as a verb)
Incorrect — 'hai' never conjugates; only the fixed shapes hai / haide / haideți exist.
✅ Hai la plajă!
Let's go to the beach!
Key Takeaways
- "Let's" = the 1st-plural conjunctiv (Să mergem! Să mâncăm!), usually launched by hai: Hai să mergem!.
- Bare Hai! / Haide! / Haideți! is an all-purpose "come on! / let's go!" interjection — haide to one person, haideți to a group or politely.
- Hai never conjugates; it only takes the three fixed shapes.
- Negate inside the să-clause: Hai să nu … ("let's not …").
- Don't calque English "let us" with lasă-ne, and don't treat hai as a verb to inflect — both are classic transfer errors.
Now practice Romanian
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Romanian→Related Topics
- Let's and Third-Person Commands (Hortative)B1 — How Romanian fills the missing imperative slots with the conjunctiv (să mergem, să vină) and the everyday particle hai.
- Conjunctiv in Questions and Deliberation (Să plec?)B1 — The standalone să-conjunctiv used as a question — Să plec? (Should I leave?), Ce să fac?, Să comand eu? — to deliberate, ask for instructions, or offer, where English must add 'should' or 'shall'.
- The Imperative: OverviewA2 — An introduction to the Romanian imperative — its two genuine forms (2sg familiar and 2pl/polite), and why everything else falls to the conjunctiv.
- Softening Commands and Polite RequestsB1 — How Romanians soften bare imperatives with vă rog, the conditional, and question intonation — and why politeness lives outside the imperative paradigm.
- Affirmative Imperative: tu (2sg)A2 — How to form the familiar singular command — the transitive/intransitive split (cântă! vs fugi!) and the high-frequency irregulars (vino, fii, du-te, fă) you simply must memorize.