Imperative with EN and Y: Restored -s, Fused Pronouns, and Word Order

The pronouns en and y are awkward enough on their own — they replace prepositional phrases (de + noun and à + noun respectively), they go in unusual places, and English has no clean equivalent for either. When you add them to imperative sentences, two charming complications appear: the -s that the tu form normally drops on -er verbs comes back for euphony, and the disjunctive pronouns moi and toi fuse with en into m'en and t'en. This is the page that drills the full system, with the rules and the examples needed to get it right.

The good news: once the patterns click, they are highly regular. Almost every irregularity exists for the same reason — French refuses to let two vowel sounds collide across a word boundary. Hold onto that single principle and the rest of the page is just its working-out.

Quick refresher: what en and y replace

Before adding them to imperatives, recall what they do.

en replaces a phrase introduced by de:

• du pain, des amis, de la patience → en (some, any of them)
• parler de quelque chose → en parler
• avoir besoin de quelque chose → en avoir besoin

y replaces à + noun or a location:

• à Paris, en Italie, au bureau → y (there)
• penser à quelque chose → y penser
• participer à quelque chose → y participer

In an imperative, the same replacements happen — but the pronoun moves to a position after the verb (in affirmative commands), and several morphological adjustments fall into place.

The restoration of the -s on -er verbs

In standard French, the tu form of an -er verb drops the -s in the imperative:

• Tu manges (you eat) → Mange ! (Eat!)
• Tu vas (you go) → Va ! (Go!) — aller behaves like an -er here
• Tu parles (you speak) → Parle ! (Speak!)

But when you tack en or y directly onto the imperative, the dropped -s comes back:

• Mange ! → Manges-en ! (Have some!)
• Va ! → Vas-y ! (Go on! / Go ahead!)
• Parle ! → Parles-en ! (Talk about it!)

The reason is purely euphonic: French dislikes the hiatus between a final vowel of the verb (mange, va) and the initial vowel of en /ɑ̃/ or y /i/. Reinstating the -s gives a liaison consonant /z/ — manges-en /mɑ̃ʒzɑ̃/, vas-y /vazi/ — and the collision is resolved. This -s is sometimes called the s euphonique.

The same for nous and vous

The nous and vous forms already end in -s or -z, so they liaise naturally with en and y without any restoration:

The pronunciations are allons-y /alɔ̃zi/, pensez-y /pɑ̃sezi/, mangeons-en /mɑ̃ʒɔ̃zɑ̃/. Liaison falls out automatically.

Verbs that already keep -s

Verbs from the second and third conjugations (finir, vendre, prendre, partir, sortir) already keep the -s in the tu imperative, so nothing changes when en or y follows:

The verbs aller (which behaves like an -er verb) and avoir / savoir / vouloir (which have special imperative stems) follow the same euphonic principle: any tu imperative form ending in a vowel takes a restored -s before en or y (va → vas-y, aie → aies-en), while forms that already end in -s need no adjustment.

The fusion of moi and toi with en

In the affirmative imperative, French uses the disjunctive forms moi and toi instead of the conjunctive me and te:

• Donne-moi le livre. (Give me the book.)
• Lève-toi. (Get up.)

But when en follows, moi and toi shrink back to m' and t', and they fuse to the next word with an apostrophe:

• Donne-moi du gâteau. → Donne-m'en ! (Give me some!)
• Va-toi en. → Va-t'en ! (Go away!)

Notice that donne-moi-en and va-toi-en are wrong; the apostrophe-fused forms m'en and t'en are obligatory. The reason is, again, the vowel-collision rule: moi-en /mwa.ɑ̃/ would have a hiatus that French refuses to tolerate.

S'en aller: the most idiomatic application

The most frequent place you encounter this is the pronominal verb s'en aller (to go away, to leave):

• Je m'en vais. (I'm leaving.)
• Va-t'en ! (Go away!)
• Allons-nous-en ! (Let's get out of here!)
• Allez-vous-en ! (Go away! — to vous.)

The nous and vous forms keep their pronouns and just stack en on the end, separated by hyphens.

Word order with multiple pronouns

In the affirmative imperative, the order of pronouns after the verb is fixed:

verb – direct object pronoun – indirect object pronoun – y – en

Combinations:

A few notes on these forms:

• Donne-le-moi — the direct object le comes before the indirect moi (the reverse of the indicative order me le).
• Donne-m'en — once en enters the picture, moi shrinks to m'. The slot 3 pronoun cedes to the apostrophe form.
• Mets-l'y — le before y would normally be le-y, but the vowel collision forces elision: l'y. This is rare in spoken French; speakers prefer to recast (mets-le là).

The l'y construction is grammatical but stylistically marked. In conversation, French speakers often avoid it by pointing somewhere else linguistically: mets-le ici, mets-le là-bas.

Beware of moi-en sequences

The combination of indirect me/moi and en always shows up as m'en, never moi-en. The same goes for te/toi and en → t'en. The reason is, predictably, vowel hiatus.

Negative imperatives: pre-verbal, regular order

In negative commands, all pronouns return to their pre-verbal position and use their conjunctive forms (me, te — never moi, toi). The order is the standard pre-verbal order: subject – ne – pronouns – verb – pas.

ne + me / te / nous / vous + le / la / les + lui / leur + y + en + verb + pas

Compared to the affirmative, the negative is much simpler — it's basically the indicative pronoun order with ne … pas wrapped around. Several students are surprised to find that the imperative's elaborate post-verbal pronoun system collapses entirely as soon as ne enters.

Affirmative vs. negative side-by-side

Common idioms with these forms

A handful of imperative + en / y combinations have become high-frequency fixed expressions worth memorizing as units:

• Vas-y ! — Go on! / Go ahead!
• Allons-y ! — Let's go!
• Allez-y ! — Go ahead! (vous form, also used to signal "the floor is yours")
• Va-t'en ! — Go away! Get out!
• Allons-nous-en ! — Let's get out of here!
• N'y pense plus. — Don't think about it anymore.
• N'en parlons plus. — Let's not talk about it anymore.
• Tu m'en veux ? — Are you mad at me? (literally "do you want some of it from me?")
• Ne m'en veux pas. — Don't be mad at me.

These are worth memorizing as single chunks; their internal structure is regular but the meanings are idiomatic.

Comparison with English

English imperatives are simpler in two respects: no pronoun fusion, and no morphological switch like the -s restoration. The closest English analog is the addition of some or any to a command:

• Have some! → Manges-en !
• Get some! → Prends-en !
• Don't have any. → N'en mange pas.

The English some/any is doing roughly the work of en — replacing an unspecified portion. But English never has to wrestle with the morphological consequences French does; some and any don't reshape the verb form or the surrounding pronouns.

The pronoun fusion (m'en, t'en) is also pure French. English has nothing equivalent. The closest English contractions (don't, can't) operate on auxiliaries, not on the kind of object-pronoun cluster French is fusing.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Forgetting to restore the -s on the tu form before en / y.

Mistake 2: Keeping moi before en.

Mistake 3: Using post-verbal pronoun order in a negative imperative.

Mistake 4: Hyphenating t'en or m'en incorrectly.

Mistake 5: Putting y after en.

Key takeaways

The imperative + en / y combination is a small but rich corner of French grammar. Three rules cover almost everything:

1. Restore the -s on -er imperatives in the tu form when en or y follows. Va ! → Vas-y !; Mange ! → Manges-en !. The -s serves as a liaison consonant /z/.
2. Fuse moi and toi into m' and t' before en. Donne-moi du pain → Donne-m'en; Va-toi en → Va-t'en. The vowel collision rule is the reason in every case.
3. In negative imperatives, all pronouns move pre-verbal and use the conjunctive forms (me, te). The elaborate post-verbal cluster of the affirmative collapses into the standard indicative order with ne … pas wrapped around.

Memorize a handful of fixed expressions (Vas-y !, Va-t'en !, Allons-nous-en !, N'y pense plus.) as units; the rest will fall into place once the patterns are familiar. The whole apparatus exists for one reason — French refuses to let two vowel sounds touch — and once you internalize that, every irregularity on the page makes sense.