Vino jos și așteaptă-mă lângă scară.

Because vino is the informal singular imperative of a veni meaning to come. Romanian imperatives are not always predictable from the present tense, so even though the present form is tu vii, the command is vino!

A useful extra point: the negative singular command is nu veni!, not nu vino!

It is addressed to one person, and in an informal way.

If you were speaking to several people, or to one person politely/formally, you would normally use:

Veniți jos și așteptați-mă lângă scară.

Romanian uses the same form for plural and polite singular in many situations.

Romanian usually drops subject pronouns when they are not needed. The verb form already shows who the command is directed to.

So vino already means you come! and așteaptă already means you wait! in command form. Adding tu would usually sound emphatic or contrastive.

Jos means down or downstairs, depending on context. Romanian often uses a motion verb plus an adverb like this, so vino jos is a natural way to say come down or come downstairs.

It is not a preposition here; it is an adverb describing the direction.

Sometimes yes, but the nuance is a little different.

• vino jos emphasizes coming toward the speaker
• coboară means go/come down, descend

So if someone is upstairs and you want them to come to where you are, vino jos is especially natural.

That is normal. For many Romanian verbs, the informal singular affirmative imperative looks the same as the 3rd person singular present.

So:

• el/ea așteaptă = he/she waits
• așteaptă! = wait!

You have to tell from the context whether it is a statement or a command.

The -mă means me. So așteaptă-mă is wait for me.

In Romanian, short unstressed object pronouns often attach to an affirmative imperative, which is why the pronoun comes after the verb here.

Compare:

• Mă aștepți. = You are waiting for me.
• Așteaptă-mă! = Wait for me!

The hyphen is the normal spelling when a short object pronoun is attached to an affirmative imperative.

You will see the same pattern in forms like:

• sună-mă = call me
• ajută-l = help him
• spune-mi = tell me

So the hyphen is not optional here; it is standard Romanian spelling.

Lângă means near, next to, or by.

It is a preposition, so it introduces a place expression:

• lângă mine = next to me
• lângă casă = near the house
• lângă scară = by the stairs / staircase

Yes, and this is a common difference between English and Romanian.

Romanian often uses scară in the singular where English naturally says stairs or staircase. So even if the English meaning uses a plural word, Romanian may still prefer singular scară.

Also, scară can mean staircase, stairs, or ladder, depending on context.

Scară is the bare noun form, without the attached definite article. Romanian and English do not always match exactly in article use, especially in short location phrases.

In context, lângă scară can sound natural if the place is already obvious. If you want to make it more explicitly definite and specific, Romanian can do that too, for example:

lângă scara din față = by the front staircase
lângă scara blocului = by the building entrance/staircase

The main ones are:

• ș = sh as in ship
• ă = a weak uh sound, like the last vowel in sofa
• â = a central vowel that has no exact English equivalent; learners often approximate it with a very short uh/i-like sound

A rough learner-friendly pronunciation of the whole sentence is:

VEE-noh zhosh shee ush-TEAP-tuh-muh LUHN-guh SKAH-ruh

A few notes:

• j in jos sounds like the s in measure
• stress in așteaptă is on teap
• stress in lângă and scară is on the first syllable