L'Impératif: Formation

The French imperative is one of the most efficient grammar topics in the language: three forms per verb, no separate paradigms to memorize for most verbs, and only four genuine irregulars across the entire language. Almost every imperative form is just a present-indicative form with no changes — the rare exceptions are the -s drop on the tu form of -er verbs and the four irregulars être, avoir, savoir, vouloir. By the end of this page, you should be able to produce the imperative of any French verb you can already conjugate in the present indicative.

The plan: walk through the regular formation rule, lay out paradigms for each verb class, then handle the -s drop (and the -s restoration before y / en), the four irregulars, and the pronoun-position rule that turns a clean morphology into a slightly trickier syntactic dance.

The headline rule

The imperative is built from the present indicative by taking three persons (tu, nous, vous) and applying one adjustment:

That is the entire rule. The nous and vous forms of the imperative are identical to the nous and vous forms of the present indicative — same spelling, same pronunciation. Only the tu form changes, and only for -er verbs.

Regular -er verbs (parler, manger, donner, regarder, écouter, etc.)

The largest verb class in French. The imperative drops the -s on the tu form.

Notice that the spelling-change verbs (manger, commencer, acheter, appeler, employer) keep their indicative spellings: mangeons (with the inserted -e- before -ons), commençons (with the cedilla), achète (with the grave accent on the 2sg form). The imperative inherits the spelling logic of the indicative.

Regular -ir verbs with -iss- (finir, choisir, réfléchir, obéir, applaudir)

The "type 2" -ir verbs — those that take -iss- in the nous / vous / ils forms of the present indicative. The imperative tu form keeps the final -s (this is the default for non--er verbs).

Regular -re verbs (vendre, attendre, entendre, descendre, perdre)

The "type 3" -re verbs follow exactly the same pattern: tu form keeps its -s, nous and vous are identical to the indicative.

Common irregular verbs that follow the regular imperative pattern

Many verbs that are irregular in the present indicative still follow the regular imperative-formation rule (take tu / nous / vous of the present, keep the -s if non--er). This includes most of the everyday irregulars.

The interesting cases:

• Aller behaves like an -er verb for the imperative -s drop: tu vas → va (no -s). It is the only aller form that drops the -s.
• Ouvrir and family (offrir, souffrir, couvrir, cueillir) conjugate their present indicative like -er verbs (tu ouvres, not tu ouvris) and therefore drop the -s in the imperative: ouvre, offre, cueille.
• Faire has the irregular vous form faites (not faisez) — same as in the indicative.
• Dire has the irregular vous form dites (not disez) — same as in the indicative.

The four irregular imperatives: être, avoir, savoir, vouloir

The four exceptions. These verbs do not build their imperative from the present indicative; they use the subjunctive present stems instead.

The reason is partly historical (these verbs always had irregular imperatives in older French) and partly functional: the present indicative forms of être and avoir would produce odd-sounding imperatives (sois is much more usable than the hypothetical es!), and vouloir / savoir almost never appear as imperatives in everyday speech, so the language has preserved their "polite" subjunctive-style forms.

Être: the imperative of "to be"

Used for telling someone to be a certain way — patient, careful, brave, quiet.

Avoir: telling someone to "have" a feeling or quality

Mostly used in fixed expressions — aie peur (be afraid — usually negated: n'aie pas peur), aie pitié (have mercy), ayez l'amabilité de (be so kind as to).

Savoir: a literary imperative

Rare in everyday speech, but appears in fixed expressions: sachez que (know that), sache que (know that). Used to introduce a piece of information you want the addressee to retain.

Vouloir: the formal-politeness verb

The vouloir imperative is highly frequent in formal French — in customer-service contexts, business correspondence, signs, and announcements. Veuillez + infinitive is the formal "please."

The tu and nous forms of vouloir (veuille, veuillons) are essentially never heard. Veuillez is the only one in active circulation.

The -s drop and the -s restoration before y / en

Two related rules govern the tu form of -er verbs (and aller, ouvrir-family).

Rule 1: -er verbs drop the -s in the tu imperative

The 2sg present tu parles loses its -s in the imperative: Parle!

This drop is silent — the -s of the tu form was already silent, so the spoken language is unchanged. The drop is purely orthographic.

Rule 2: the -s is restored before y and en

When the next word in the sentence begins with y or en (the pronouns or the adverb y), the -s comes back. This is to avoid the awkward hiatus between two vowels in succession.

The hyphen is between the verb and the pronoun: Vas-y!, Manges-en!. The -s + y / en combination produces the liaison sound /z/ — the exact reason the -s was put back.

A finer point: the -s is only restored when y / en are object pronouns of the imperative verb itself. If y or en belong to a following clause and are not direct objects of the imperative, the -s drop holds. This rarely matters in practice because the pronoun cliticizes onto the verb almost always.

Pronoun position with the imperative

The imperative interacts with object pronouns through one of the most distinctive rules in French. The full details live on dedicated subpages, but here is the headline:

Affirmative imperative: pronouns after the verb, joined with hyphens

The clitic pronouns me and te become moi and toi when they appear after the verb in an affirmative imperative. So Donne-moi, not Donne-me. Lève-toi, not Lève-te.

Negative imperative: pronouns return to pre-verbal position

In the negative imperative, the pronouns return to their normal pre-verbal slot, the hyphen disappears, and moi / toi revert to me / te.

This single asymmetry — Donne-le-moi! affirmative vs. Ne me le donne pas! negative — is one of the most reliable tells of fluency. Drilling it pays off out of proportion to its difficulty.

Quick-reference paradigms for the most common verbs

Here is a single combined table for the verbs you will use most often. Pin it on your wall.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Keeping the final -s on the tu imperative of an -er verb.

Mistake 2: Forgetting to restore the -s before y / en.

Mistake 3: Building the imperative of être / avoir from the indicative.

Mistake 4: Writing faisez or disez instead of faites / dites.

Mistake 5: Using me / te in an affirmative imperative.

Drilling exercises

To lock in the formation rules, drill these conversions until they come automatically. Take any verb you know and produce all three imperative forms, then negate each.

Now add a single object pronoun (-le, -la, -les, -moi, -toi, -lui) to each affirmative form, and then negate it (sending the pronoun back to pre-verbal position):

Key takeaways

• The imperative has three forms: tu, nous, vous. There is no other person form in French.
• Forms come from the present indicative directly, with one tweak: drop the final -s on the tu form of -er verbs (parle, va, ouvre).
• The dropped -s is restored before y / en for euphony: vas-y, manges-en, penses-y.
• Four irregular imperatives use subjunctive-style stems: être (sois, soyons, soyez), avoir (aie, ayons, ayez), savoir (sache, sachons, sachez), vouloir (veuille, veuillons, veuillez).
• Vouloir is special: only its vous form veuillez is in active use, as the formal "please."
• Faire and dire have irregular vous forms (faites, dites) — same as in the indicative.
• Pronoun position: after the verb (with hyphens) in affirmative imperatives, before the verb (no hyphens) in negative imperatives. Me / te become moi / toi in the affirmative.