Lesson 29: Affirmative imperative. Commands and instructions

Part 1: Why the imperative needs five forms

English is the slacker here. "Eat!" works for one person, a crowd, your boss, your dog, anyone. Spanish makes you commit to a register before opening your mouth:

The core idea: choosing the form is choosing register + addressee. Mixing up tú and usted is like calling your professor "buddy" mid-lecture. The verb form alone signals the relationship.

Part 2: The tú form — the everyday workhorse

Dead-simple rule. Take the 3rd-person singular of the present indicative (the él/ella form). That is the tú command. No new ending to learn.

Stem changes from the present indicative carry over into the imperative. If it's vuelve in the present, it's ¡vuelve! as a command.

Part 3: Eight irregular tú commands — memorize them as icons

These are the highest-frequency verbs in the language. Their short command forms are practically separate little words. Learn them as a set, like a poem.

Mnemonic chant: Di, haz, ve, pon, sal, sé, ten, ven — say it out loud ten times like a tongue-twister. These eight short forms cover 80% of everyday commands.

In real speech:

Trap: ve is the command for two verbs: ir ("go") and ver ("look at", since the él form of ver is ve). Context disambiguates: Ve a casa = "Go home"; Ve la película = "Watch the movie".

Watch the tilde on sé. Without it, se is the pronoun ("himself / herself / one"). The tilde tells the reader "this is the verb ser, command form". Same for dé (command of dar) vs de (preposition "of").

Part 4: The vosotros form — drop the -r, slap on a -d

One rule, zero exceptions. Take the infinitive, remove final -r, add -d.

Notice: all 8 irregular tú forms become regular in vosotros. Haz for a friend → haced for friends. Same with ven → venid, di → decid. Your brain gets a break.

Where you'll use it: in Spain, daily. In Latin America, almost never — they use ustedes for any group, even close friends. Heading to Madrid? Drill vosotros. Heading to Mexico City? Recognize it (you'll meet it in books and TV from Spain) but say ustedes yourself.

Part 5: The usted and ustedes forms — borrowed from the subjunctive

Here the form is not from the present indicative — it's from the present subjunctive (which you'll meet properly in Lesson 31). For now, just lock in the mechanics: take the yo form of the present, drop -o, add the "opposite" ending.

• -ar verbs → ending -e (usted), -en (ustedes)
• -er / -ir verbs → ending -a (usted), -an (ustedes)

Fully irregular (yo form doesn't end in -o, so the trick doesn't help):

These are the forms you see on every public sign: No fume — "No smoking"; Empuje — "Push"; Tire — "Pull"; Pase — "Walk / Enter".

Part 6: The nosotros form — "let's…"

Same trick as usted: yo-form, drop -o, add:

• -ar verbs → -emos
• -er / -ir verbs → -amos

Special case ir: the affirmative "let's go" is ¡vamos!, NOT ¡vayamos!. It's the single most common command-phrase in the language: ¡Vamos! — "Let's go! / Come on!"

The colloquial shortcut: instead of comamos, real speakers often just say vamos a comer — literally "we're going to eat", used to mean "let's eat". It's the most common spoken way to say "let's [verb]". The textbook comamos form is also fine; vamos a + infinitivo is what you'll actually hear.

Part 7: Pronouns ATTACH to affirmative commands

This is the trickiest part for English speakers. In English, the object stays a separate word: "give it to me", "tell him", "wash yourself". In affirmative Spanish imperatives, the pronouns (direct object, indirect object, reflexive) glue onto the end of the verb to form one word.

The order is always verb + IO + DO (indirect before direct), all stuck together.

The written accent — the price of attachment

When you attach a pronoun, the stress stays on the same syllable of the original verb. But by adding extra syllables, the word usually becomes esdrújula (third-from-last) or even sobreesdrújula (fourth-from-last) — and those always require a tilde (recall Lesson 1).

Practical rule: if attaching a pronoun pushes the word to 3+ syllables, you almost always need a tilde where the stress already was. Short ones like ponlo, hazlo, dame, dile (2 syllables, llana ending in a vowel) don't need one.

Reflexive vosotros and nosotros: a drop happens

With reflexive verbs, the vosotros command loses its final -d:

With reflexive nosotros, the final -s drops:

¡Vámonos! — learn this as one fixed phrase. It's the single most colloquial "let's go!" in all of Spanish.