The imperative mood is used to give orders, give instructions, ask a favor and ask for advice. You’ve probably seen it in Spanish textbooks in phrases like “lee” (read), “escribe” (write), “repite” (repeat) or “escucha” (listen). Or maybe on the street in typical expressions such as “¡Mira!” (Look!) or “Oye” (Listen).

Remember, we have other (more polite) ways of asking or telling someone something.

As you already know, Spanish has a formal and informal way of addressing someone: “tú” and “usted”.  So it should be no surprise then that the imperative mood also has a formal and informal way of giving commands. The good news is that most imperative forms are taken from other Spanish verb conjugations so you don’t have to memorize new conjugations, just remember to use existing ones depending on the type of command.

In this post, we’ll look at two types of commands: informal “tú” commands and formal “usted” commands.  For each type, we’ll also see how to make an affirmative (positive) and negative command.

Commands using “tú” (informal form of address)

We use this form of address to tell friends, classmates, family members, and young people to do something.

Regular verbs

We use the third person singular form (the ending) of the present tense to form the affirmative command for “tú” (you).  See the examples below.

Other verbs and examples:

Irregular verbs

Almost all of the verbs with an irregular form in the present tense maintain that irregularity in the affirmative informal commands.

The following verbs are even more irregular and take completely different forms. The good thing is they’re very common and we use them all the time, so you’ll certainly learn them fast.

Negative Informal Imperative Forms

We use a negative command to tell someone (friends, classmates, family members, young people, etc.) not to do something. We put “no” in front of the verb to make it a negative informal command.

Nevertheless, we don’t just add “no”, but we also form the negative informal imperative differently than the affirmative one. It’s very similar to the negative formal imperative (which we talk about below). In the above table, in the top right corner, there’s a button where you can switch between the formal and informal negative command to see the difference. To form the negative informal command, we use the present subjunctive of the verb for the third person plus an ”s” at the end of the verb:

If a verb is irregular in the present subjunctive, its negative informal command form maintains the same irregularity.

Commands using “usted” (formal form of address)

We use these commands when we address a person we don’t know (well), an older person or someone to whom we want to show respect (co-worker, boss, teacher, secretary in an office, etc.).

Regular verbs

We use the third person singular form (the ending) of the present tense subjunctive of the verb to form the affirmative command for the formal “usted” (you).

Other verbs and examples:

Irregular verbs

Irregular verbs which are irregular in the present tense subjunctive for the first person stay the same when we use them for commands.

Other verbs and examples:

Negative Formal Imperative Forms

We use a negative command to tell someone (a person we don’t know well, an older person or someone to whom we want to show respect) we address formally (“usted”) not to do something. Remember to put “no” in front of the verb in order to make it a negative formal command.

Now that you’ve seen both informal “tú” commands and formal “usted” commands, take these dynamic quizzes below to test your knowledge on the imperative mood and its conjugations.

In this lesson, you’ve learned how to employ the imperative mood for both formal “usted” commands and informal “tú” commands.  It’s important to remember that informal commands use the third person of the present indicative to form the command (“habla”), while negative “tú” commands, as well as formal commands, use conjugations borrowed from the subjunctive mood. For formal commands, use the present tense subjunctive form for “usted” (“hable” / “no hable”), and for negative “tú” commands, use this same conjugation, but add an -s (“no hables”). So as you can see, it’s not too difficult to learn commands in Spanish because you are just repeating conjugations from other tenses.