L'Impératif Affirmatif: Position des Pronoms

In the affirmative imperative — Donne-le!, Aide-moi!, Allons-y! — French does something it does almost nowhere else: object pronouns are placed after the verb, joined to it with a hyphen. This is one of just two contexts in modern French where the clitic pronouns are post-verbal (the other being a few constructions in highly literary or interrogative inversion). Everywhere else — declarative, negative, interrogative, infinitival — the clitics sit before the verb. The affirmative imperative is the exception, and a high-frequency one.

There is more than just position to learn. When me and te land at the end of the pronoun cluster after the verb, they shift to their tonic forms moi and toi. When me or te is followed by y or en in that same position, they revert to m' and t' with apostrophes. The order of multiple pronouns also changes from the standard pre-verbal order. Once you internalize these three pieces — the position, the moi/toi shift, and the V-DO-IO-y-en order — affirmative imperatives become reflexive.

The basic rule: pronouns after the verb, joined with a hyphen

In an affirmative imperative, every object pronoun (me, te, se, nous, vous, le, la, les, lui, leur, y, en) attaches to the verb with a hyphen, and there is no longer a slot before the verb where the pronoun could go.

The hyphen is mandatory and there is no space around it. This applies for every form of the imperative — tu, nous, and vous — and for every type of pronoun.

The me → moi and te → toi shift

When me or te appears in the post-verbal position of an affirmative imperative, it changes form. Specifically, the unstressed clitic me surfaces as moi, and te surfaces as toi. These tonic forms (also used as disjunctive pronouns elsewhere — moi, je crois que, avec toi) take over the post-verbal slot.

The reason is phonological and historical: the clitic forms me and te are weak — they cannot bear stress and exist only as proclitics attached to a following verb. When the syntax forces them to appear after the verb, they move into a stress-bearing position, and French grammaticalized the tonic forms (moi, toi) to fill that role. This is the same principle that gives you moi, je (for emphasis) and à toi (after a preposition) — the tonic forms surface wherever the pronoun must carry phonological weight.

The shift is automatic and obligatory — there is no register variation here. Donne-me! is simply ungrammatical in modern French; native speakers do not say it.

The moi / toi → m' / t' reversion before y and en

A wrinkle that catches every learner: when moi or toi would be followed by y or en in the same pronoun cluster, they revert to m' and t' with an apostrophe. The hyphen between the verb and the pronoun stays; the apostrophe replaces the second hyphen.

This rule exists for the same euphony reason that drives the -s restoration on vas-y: French dislikes vowel-on-vowel sequences (hiatus) and uses elision (the apostrophe form) to avoid them. Moi (ending in a vowel sound) followed by en (also vowel-initial) would create the hiatus moi-en /mwa-ɑ̃/, which the language smooths to m'en /mɑ̃/. Same logic for toi-en → t'en.

The reversion is ONLY before y and en. Before any other pronoun (-le, -la, -les, -lui, -leur), moi and toi are kept in full.

Multiple pronouns: the V-DO-IO-y-en order

When two or more pronouns appear together with an affirmative imperative, they attach to the verb in a fixed order:

Verb — Direct Object — Indirect Object — y — en

This order is different from the order of pre-verbal clitics in declarative sentences (where the rule is me/te/se/nous/vous + le/la/les + lui/leur + y + en). The post-verbal imperative ordering reasserts the canonical "verb-object-recipient" sequence found in many languages.

In practice, you almost never see all four positions filled at once. The most common combinations are V-DO-IO and V-IO-en.

Direct + Indirect: Donne-le-moi

Note the order: the direct-object pronoun (the thing being given/brought/told) comes first, then the indirect-object pronoun (the recipient). This is the reverse of what English speakers expect — give it to me maps to donne-le-moi with le (it) before moi (me).

Indirect + en: Donne-m'en

Direct + Indirect + en: rare but possible

The V-DO-IO-y-en mnemonic captures the sequence. Many learners memorize it as "Verb, then DO, then IO, then y then en."

Reflexive imperatives: te → toi, vous, nous

Pronominal verbs (the reflexive verbs that take se) have an imperative form that uses the corresponding tonic / matching pronoun after the verb. The tu form takes toi, the nous form takes nous, and the vous form takes vous.

The reflexive s'en aller (to go away / leave) is one of the most common imperative reflexives in spoken French. Note its irregular forms: va-t'en, allons-nous-en, allez-vous-en. The reflexive pronoun keeps its position but combines with the post-verbal en.

How this differs from English

English handles imperative pronouns by simply leaving them after the verb, in the same form they would take elsewhere: Give it to me, Help me, Sit down. There is no special form for the post-verbal slot.

French differs in three ways:

1. The hyphen. English just writes give it; French writes donne-le. The hyphen marks the cliticization of the pronoun onto the verb.
2. The form change. English keeps me as me in give it to me; French shifts me to moi in donne-le-moi. There is no English equivalent of this morphological change.
3. The fixed order. English allows both give it to me and give me it in many dialects. French allows only donne-le-moi — direct object first, then indirect.

For the se-reflexive verbs, English typically uses a separate reflexive pronoun (sit yourself down, help yourself) only in some constructions; many English imperatives that map to French reflexives have no reflexive in English (get up = lève-toi; be quiet = tais-toi; hurry up = dépêche-toi). The French reflexive structure is grammatically obligatory where English just uses the bare verb.

Frequent imperatives — drill set

The following affirmative imperatives are so common in everyday French that you should know them as fixed expressions, not as forms you compute on the fly.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Using me / te instead of moi / toi after the verb.

The single most common error English-speaking learners make is reaching for the clitic me / te in the post-verbal slot. The form must be tonic.

Mistake 2: Not reverting moi / toi to m' / t' before en / y.

The vowel-clash rule is non-optional: moi + en must contract.

Mistake 3: Wrong order — IO before DO.

In the affirmative imperative, the direct object must come before the indirect object. English speakers often default to give me it order, which transfers as donne-moi-le — incorrect.

Mistake 4: Forgetting the hyphen, or using a space instead.

The hyphen is a strict orthographic rule. Donne le (no hyphen) is donne + the article le — a different sentence ("give the [something]").

Mistake 5: Using post-verbal pronouns in the negative imperative.

This belongs on the Negative Imperative page, but flagging it here as the asymmetry: the post-verbal-with-hyphen rule applies only to affirmative imperatives.

Key takeaways

• In an affirmative imperative, every object pronoun appears after the verb, joined with a hyphen: Donne-le, Aide-moi, Allons-y.
• Me and te shift to moi and toi when they appear after the verb: Donne-moi, not Donne-me; Lève-toi, not Lève-te.
• Moi and toi revert to m' and t' (with apostrophe) before en or y: Donne-m'en, Va-t'en, Souviens-t'en.
• The order of multiple pronouns is V-DO-IO-y-en: Donne-le-moi, Apporte-le-lui, Donnez-lui-en.
• Reflexive verbs use the pronoun matching the subject after the verb: lève-toi, levons-nous, levez-vous.
• The whole system applies only to affirmative imperatives. Negative imperatives revert to standard pre-verbal pronouns — see the Negative Imperative page.