Commands (the Imperative)

You will find many books which give you extensive instructions on how to form the 'tú' affirmative command, the 'usted' negative command, the 'ustedes' affirmative command, etc. as if they were all separate and individual entities. This is a very complicated way of presenting the imperative.

The complete rules of the imperative boil down to the following: tú affirmative and vosotros affirmative commands have their own special formations. All other commands use the subjunctive endings. It's that 'simple'.

Tú Affirmative Commands

Regular verbs simply do the following: they drop the final 's' from the present tense 'tú' form. Therefore, comes becomes ¡come!, hablas becomes ¡habla!,duermes becomes ¡duerme!, etc. (Note: the exclamation marks are included in this section simply to distinguish the command form from the present form. Even though grammatically they are called commands, they are not military orders; we use commands in gentle ways in everyday life. 'Hey, John, look at that' (Oye Juan, mira eso) is a command, grammatically speaking.

As always, there are irregulars, and you'll find that they are the same verbs as always. Here's the list:

salir       sal
tener       ten
poner       pon
venir       ven
hacer       haz
decir       di
ir          ve

Vosotros Affirmative Commands

Oh happy day! No irregulars! The 'vosotros' affirmative command simply changes the final 'r' of the infinitive for a 'd'. So to form the 'vosotros' affirmative command for the verbs comer, hablar, venir, decir, and ir, just change the 'r' to come up with ¡comed!, ¡hablad!, ¡venid!, ¡decid! and ¡id!.

All Other Command Forms

'Tú' negative, 'vosotros' negative, 'usted' and 'ustedes' affirmative and negative, and the less used 'nosotros' affirmative and negative all use the present subjunctive!. Therefore, we'll have a little lesson on how the subjunctive endings are formed.

The Present Subjunctive

Subjunctive endings are really opposite endings. What do we mean by that? Well, you struggle for months to learn that -AR verbs use the endings with an 'a': -o, as, -a, -amos, áis, -an. And then that the -ER and -IR verbs do just the opposite: they all have an 'e' or an 'i' in the endings. Hold onto your hats now, and look at the subjunctive endings for -ar, and -er and -ir verbs:

Subjunctive Endings for -AR Verbs, with example

-e       -emos
-es      -íes
-e       -en

hablar
hable       hablemos
hables      habléis
hable       hablen

Subjunctive Endings for -ER and -IR Verbs, with examples

-a       -amos
-as      -ais
-a       -an

comer
coma       comamos
comas      comáis
coma       coman

vivir
viva       vivamos
vivas      viváis
viva       vivan

Formation of the Present Subjunctive

You learned that in order to form the Present Tense of the verbs that you had to take off the -AR, -ER, or -IR and put on the endings, right?

Well, with the subjunctive what we have to do is start from the first person singular present and then take off the '-o' and finally add the subjunctive endings. The reason for this is that the verbs with irregular first persons (like hago, digo, conduzco, etc. keep the 'g' or 'zc' in the subjunctive. If that were not so, you could simply substitute that subjunctive endings for the regular endings.

So, above you already have examples of verbs which follow the regular pattern. Let's look at one verb which has a 'g' in the first person present, and another which has 'zc':

decir First person singular: digo

diga       digamos
digas      digáis
diga       digan

conocer First person singular: conozco

conozca    conozcamos
conozcas   conozcáis
conozca    conozcan

Let's see some examples using 'comer' and 'decir':

tú affirmative:

¡Come las manzanas!
¡Di la verdad!

tú negative:

¡No comas tanto!
¡No digas eso!

vosotros affirmative:

¡Comed las manzanas!
¡Decid la verdad!

vosotros negative:

¡No comáis tanto!
¡No digáis eso!

usted affirmative:

¡Coma las manzanas!
¡Diga la verdad!

usted negative:
¡No coma las manzanas!
¡No diga eso!

ustedes affirmative:
¡Coman las manzanas!
¡Digan la verdad!

ustedes negative:
¡No coman tanto!
¡No digan eso!

Summarizing: The golden rule of the Spanish imperative is: 'tú' and 'vosotros' affirmative have their own system; all other command forms use the subjunctive.

Related topics:

General Considerations about Verbs
Contents
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