Prietenul mereu la dietă, dar fără bani

What does “fac eu cinste” mean in Romanian?

Fac eu cinste is how Romanians say “it’s my treat” — I’ll pay. The surprise is the noun underneath: cinste means “honor.” So offering to cover someone’s meal is literally framed as doing them an honor, not just picking up the bill. Reach for it whenever you want to insist on paying: a coffee, a round of drinks, or, here, a shaorma for a friend.

The base expression is a face cinste (“to treat / to stand someone a meal”), and the pronoun does the work of saying who pays: fac eu cinste (“I’ll treat”), faci tu cinste? (“are you paying?”) — exactly the back-and-forth in this clip before they head off for shaorma. The word cinste comes from Old Church Slavonic čĭstĭ (“honor”), and still carries that meaning on its own (om de cinste, “an honorable person”). The treat sense grows straight out of it: paying for someone is a small gesture of respect.