The imperative in French is a conjugation mood that is used to express a command, an instruction or an advice. In today’s lesson, we are briefly going to check how to form the imperative mood and how to use it.
The imperative in French – Écouter
Some examples of sentences in the imperative mood :
- Mange tes légumes. (Eat your vegetables)
- Allons à l’école. (Let’s go to school)
- Regardez-moi. (Look at me)
Construction of the imperative in French:
Unlike the indicative, subjunctive or conditional mood in French, the imperative mood is constructed without any pronoun.Infinitive | Present (indicative) | Imperative (present) |
Manger | Tu manges Nous mangeons Vous mangez | Mange Mangeons Mangez |
Faire | Tu fais Nous faisons Vous faites | Fais Faisons |
Écouter | Tu écoutes Nous écoutons Vous écoutez | Écoute Écoutons Écoutez |
To construct the imperative in French, you will need to take the forms TU, NOUS and VOUS, and remove the pronoun before.
Take note : The second person plural (tu) for -ER verbs will remove the final “-s” (see table above).
Also, if the verb is followed by the pronouns “y” or “en”, you will keep the final “-s”.
Examples:
- Parles-en. (Talk about it)
- Vas-y. (Go / go there)
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Irregular verbs
Infinitive | Imperative (present) |
Être | Sois Soyons Soyez |
Avoir | Aie Ayons Ayez |
Savoir | Sache Sachons Sachez |
Vouloir | Veuille Veuillons / voulons * Veuillez |
*Voulons and Veuillons are both used.
Imperative mood and reflexive verbs
If the verb is reflexive or a pronominal verb (includes a pronoun before the verb, such as “se réveiller”), or, if the sentence requires a complement pronoun, you will link the pronoun to the verb with a hyphen.
Examples:
- Regardez-moi. (Look at me)
- Donne-moi ton numéro. (Give me your number)
- Lève-toi. (Get up)
Pronouns : moi, toi, le, la, nous, vous, les.
Negation
Ne (N’) + VERB + pas
For example :
Ne mange pas. (Do not eat)
Ne parle pas. (Do not speak)
In the case of pronominal verbs :
Ne (N’) + PRONOUN + VERB + pas
Some advice on how to use this mood
Using the imperative in French can somehow sound a little rude or impolite, just like in English.
If you are having a formal conversation or if you would like to give an instruction in a more polite way, you can simply turn that into a question with “est-ce que” or inversion (click here to fin out how to ask questions in French).
For example, instead of saying:
Donnez-moi votre adresse mail.
You can say:
Est-ce que vous pouvez me donner votre adresse mail (s’il vous plaît) ?
