The du-Imperative: Strong Verbs and Irregularities

For most verbs the du-imperative is just the bare stem: machen → Mach!, holen → Hol! But German's strong verbs — the ones that change their stem vowel in the present tense — split into two camps in the imperative, and they behave oppositely. Verbs that change e → i / ie keep that change in the command; verbs that change a → ä throw the umlaut away. Getting this split right is what separates a learner's German from a native speaker's.

The two strong-verb patterns in the present tense

First, a quick reminder of what these verbs do in the ordinary du present tense. Some strong verbs raise e to i or ie; others umlaut a to ä.

The full treatment of these lives on the present-tense pages for e → i / ie verbs and a → ä verbs. What matters here is what happens when you turn them into commands.

e → i / ie verbs KEEP the change

When a verb changes its e to i or ie in the du form, the du-imperative inherits that changed vowel — and it never takes the optional -e ending. So you build it from the du form, drop -st, and you are left with the irregular stem.

Note that nehmen doubles the consonant (Nimm!) and essen / vergessen keep their double-s (Iss!, Vergiss!) — these spellings come straight from the du present form, so if you know du nimmst and du isst, you already know how to spell the command.

A small note on sehen: the bare command is Sieh!, but in the very common phrase Sieh mal! (Look!) and especially before an, you will also hear Sieh dir das an! Older or fuller forms like Siehe survive in cross-references in writing (siehe Seite 12 = see page 12), but that is a frozen written formula, not the spoken command.

a → ä verbs DROP the umlaut

Now the surprise. You might expect fahren (du fährst) to give a command Fähr! by the same logic — but it does not. Verbs that umlaut a → ä (and likewise au → äu, o → ö) lose the umlaut in the imperative and revert to the plain vowel of the infinitive.

Why the two patterns split

There is a genuine historical reason, and it helps to know it rather than just memorising a contradiction. The e → i / ie raising and the a → ä umlaut have different origins. The e → i change is an old "vowel raising" that belonged to the second-person singular and the imperative singular together in Germanic — they were always a matched pair, so the imperative still carries it. The a → ä umlaut, by contrast, was triggered specifically by the -st / -t endings of the second and third person; remove that ending (as the imperative does) and the trigger disappears, so the vowel reverts. You do not need the history to use the forms, but it reframes the rule from "arbitrary exception" to "two changes with two different causes."

The optional -e: kept after -t / -d stems

For ordinary weak verbs the final -e is optional and usually dropped in speech (Mach!, Hol!, Frag!). But there is one group where the -e is effectively required, because the bare stem would be unpronounceable: verbs whose stem ends in -t or -d (and some ending in consonant + -n / -m). Here the -e stays.

This is the same reason these verbs add -e- before the -st and -t endings in the present tense (du arbeitest, ihr arbeitet): German inserts the vowel so the consonants stay sayable. The imperative just follows that pronunciation logic.

sein: the wholesale irregular

Finally, the verb sein ignores all of the above. Its du-imperative is Sei! — not derived from any present-tense form, simply learned by heart (the ihr-form is Seid!, polite Seien Sie!; full paradigm on the sein reference page).

Common Mistakes

The classic English-speaker errors are mirror images of each other: regularising the e→i verbs (Geb!, Esse!, Sprech! instead of Gib!, Iss!, Sprich!) because they feel like exceptions, and over-applying the present-tense umlaut to the a→ä verbs (Fähr!, Schläf! instead of Fahr!, Schlaf!) because the du form has the umlaut. The fix is the one-line rule: e→i/ie stays, a→ä goes.

Key Takeaways

• Strong e → i / ie verbs keep the vowel change in the du-command and take no -e: Gib! Nimm! Lies! Sieh! Iss! Sprich! Hilf! Vergiss!
• Strong a → ä (and au → äu, o → ö) verbs drop the umlaut: Fahr! Schlaf! Lauf! Trag! Halt!
• The two patterns behave oppositely because they have different historical triggers.
• Stems ending in -t / -d keep the -e: Arbeite! Warte! Öffne!
• sein is irregular: Sei!