Lesson 19: The imperative — commands, instructions, advice

Part 1: English already does most of this

English imperative drops the subject pronoun: Speak! (not You speak!). Sit down! (not You sit down!). The pronoun is implied and unspoken.

French does exactly the same thing — except it has three different commands depending on who you're talking to.

The nous form is a free bonus — French has a built-in "let's" baked into the verb. English needs two words (let us); French uses one.

The core rule. Take the present-tense form (tu parles, nous parlons, vous parlez), delete the pronoun. That's it. The verb stays.

Part 2: How to build the imperative

Take the present-tense conjugation, drop the subject pronoun.

Notice the punctuation: French puts a space before ! — Parle !, not Parle!. That's just typography; you won't hear it.

Part 3: The big trap — -ER verbs drop the final -s in the tu form

Here's the one place where imperative spelling differs from present tense. For -ER verbs (and aller, plus ouvrir / offrir which conjugate like -ER), the tu imperative drops the final -s.

But -IR and -RE verbs keep the -s:

| tu finis → Finis ! | tu prends → Prends ! | tu fais → Fais ! | tu attends → Attends ! |

Why does -s drop? Pure aesthetics — French didn't want parles-en with two s sounds running together. Useful side-effect: the missing -s tells you instantly that this is a command, not a statement.

But -s comes back before y and en. When the next word is the pronoun y or en, the -s reappears for liaison: Vas-y ! ("vah-zee" — Go on!), Manges-en ! ("manzh-zahn" — Have some!). Without the -s, you'd get an awkward vowel-vowel collision.

Part 4: Four irregular imperatives

Four verbs have their own imperative forms that don't come from the present tense. Memorize them as a block.

Examples:

• Sois sage ! — Be good! (to a child)
• Soyez prudent ! — Be careful! (formal)
• Aie confiance ! — Have faith! / Trust me!
• Ayez de la patience ! — Be patient! / Have patience!
• Sache que c'est important. — Know that it's important.
• Sachez que nous arrivons demain. — Be aware (that) we arrive tomorrow.
• Veuillez patienter. — Please wait. (very formal — phone holds, official notices)

About veuillez. It only really lives in fixed polite formulas — veuillez patienter, veuillez agréer mes salutations (formal letter sign-off), veuillez vous asseoir. Think of it as French's super-polite "please kindly". You'll hear it; you'll rarely need to invent it.

Part 5: Pronouns in the affirmative imperative

This is the part that trips English speakers up. In a normal French sentence, object pronouns go before the verb (Je te vois). In the affirmative imperative, they flip: they go after the verb, attached with a hyphen.

Trap #1: me → moi, te → toi. The unstressed forms me and te can't sit at the end of a word — they swap to the stressed forms moi and toi. So: Donne-moi le livre ! — Give me the book! (NOT Donne-me) Assieds-toi ! — Sit down! (NOT Assieds-te) Same logic English already uses — we say give it to me, not give it to I. Stressed position needs the stressed pronoun.

Trap #2: the hyphen is mandatory. Parle-moi, not parle moi. It's a single phonetic unit.

Trap #3: -s reappears before y / en. Va + y = Vas-y !; Mange + en = Manges-en ! Liaison reason: "vah-zee", "manzh-zahn".

Part 6: Pronouns in the negative imperative

Negation makes everything revert to normal. The pronoun goes back in front of the verb, just like in any non-imperative sentence:

• Pronoun before the verb
• me and te go back to their normal unstressed forms
• ne … pas wraps the whole thing

Always learn them as a pair. Drill the affirmative and negative together; the brain glues them as one unit: Dis-le-moi ! ↔ Ne me le dis pas ! (Tell it to me! / Don't tell it to me!) Donne-lui-en ! ↔ Ne lui en donne pas ! (Give him some! / Don't give him any!)

Part 7: Order when you have two pronouns

Affirmative (after the verb)

Order: verb — direct object — indirect object — y/en, all connected with hyphens.

Negative (in front, like a normal sentence)

Use the standard order from Lesson 18: me/te/se/nous/vous → le/la/les → lui/leur → y → en, all before the verb.

• Ne me le donne pas ! — Don't give it to me!
• Ne lui en parle pas ! — Don't talk to him about it!
• Ne les y mets pas ! — Don't put them there!

The negative imperative is just a refresher of Lesson 18 — same pronoun order, same logic. The only thing that changes vs Lesson 18 is that there's no subject pronoun.