Affirmative Commands

When you tell someone to do something, you are "commanding" that person, and you are using the command form of the verb.

In English, it is simply the infinitive without the to: eat! study! work!.

In Spanish, the form depends on both who is being commanded as well as whether the infinitive verb ends in -ar, -er or -ir.


To form a tú command, simply drop the final -s from the present indicative conjugation:

• you eat -- comes  -->  come -- eat!

There are eight irregular tú commands:

• decir -- to say --  di; hacer -- to make or do -- haz; ir -- to go -- ve; poner -- to put -- pon; salir -- to leave -- sal; ser -- to be -- sé; tener -- to have --  ten; venir -- to come -- ven.

To form a vosotros command, simply drop the final -r from the infinitive verb form and add -d:

• you-all eat -- comer  -->  comed -- eat!

All verbs are regular in the plural affirmative familiar command form.


To form an Ud. command, take the first person singular (the yo form) present indicative conjugation, remove the -o ending and replace it with -e in the case of -ar verbs:

• hablo  -->  habl  -->  hable

and -a in the case of -er verbs:

• como  -->  com  -->  coma

or -ir verbs:

• sufro  -->  sufr  -->  sufra

The Uds. commands are formed by adding an -n to the Ud. form:

• coman, hablen, sufran

Both the Ud. and the Uds. commands are actually the verb in the present subjunctive.

The use of the subject pronoun is optional, but if used, the pronoun comes after the verb, unlike the indicative tense:

• you study --  tú estudias -->  estudia tú  -- study!
  
  you speak -- Ud. habla  -->  hable Ud. -- speak!
  
  you eat -- Uds. comen -->  coman Uds.  -- eat!