Affirmative Imperative with Tu (Regional)

There are two ways to give an affirmative command in Brazilian Portuguese, and they look completely different from each other. One is built on você (the subjunctive form: fale, coma, venha), and the other is built on tu (today's topic: fala, come, vem). The catch is that the tu-form has spread far beyond the regions where people actually use tu as a subject pronoun — it has become the default "friendly command" across much of Brazil, even in the mouths of speakers who would never say tu otherwise. Understanding this is the key to sounding natural rather than stiff.

The form: present indicative minus -s

The tu imperative is mechanically simple. Take the second-person singular present indicative (the tu form) and drop the final -s. That's it.

Notice that this form is identical to the third-person singular present indicative (ele fala, ele come, ele parte). That coincidence is not an accident of spelling — it is exactly why the form feels so easy and ends up everywhere. When a Carioca says fala comigo, the shape fala is the same one they already use for ele fala.

Where the "true" tu imperative lives

Genuine tu — used as a subject with matching second-person verb endings — is alive in several regions: the Northeast (Nordeste), Rio Grande do Sul, parts of Santa Catarina, Rio de Janeiro, and pockets of Pará/Amazônia. In these areas you hear the tu imperative as part of a complete tu system.

The big insight: the command travels without the pronoun

Here is the point that confuses learners most. In Rio de Janeiro and much of the urban Southeast, people overwhelmingly say você as a subject — yet for commands they still reach for fala, vem, olha, espera, deixa rather than the você-subjunctive forms fale, venha, olhe, espere, deixe. The reason is register: the tu-imperative sounds friendlier and less bossy than the subjunctive form, which carries a whiff of formality, distance, or even irritation.

So a Carioca who says você quer um café? will, two seconds later, say vem cá and senta aí — mixing a você subject with tu-form commands without blinking. To a native ear there is no contradiction at all; the imperative simply belongs to the warm, casual register.

The "mixed tu" of urban speech

Many Brazilians combine tu as a subject with third-person (você-style) verb endings. This is the famous "tu misturado." It shows up both in statements and, by extension, in commands:

Notice tu vai and tu fala — strictly, "correct" tu agreement would be tu vais and tu falas. But in the spoken language of Rio, parts of the North, and increasingly elsewhere, the tu + 3sg pattern is completely normal. Prescriptive grammar frowns on it; native speakers use it constantly. We flag the mismatch so you recognize it, not so you avoid hearing it.

A few forms that trip learners up

A handful of monosyllabic and irregular verbs need care:

Note that ser and estar do not have a regularly-used tu-imperative in Brazil — for "be patient" you say seja paciente (the você/subjunctive form). Those highly irregular verbs are covered on their own page.

English-speaker perspective

English has a single, flat imperative: speak, eat, come, go — the bare verb stem, no person marking, no second form. That makes the Portuguese situation genuinely strange to English speakers in two ways:

1. There are two competing forms (fala vs fale) for the same idea, and choosing wrongly shifts your register from "friendly" to "formal/curt."
2. The form you'd "expect" to be the default — the one that matches você, the pronoun you learned first — is actually the more formal-sounding one in casual speech.

English speakers also tend to over-rely on the subjunctive form because textbooks present você first and pair it with fale. The result is technically correct but can sound oddly stiff among friends, like saying "Do come in" instead of "Come on in."

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• The tu imperative = 2nd-person present indicative minus -s, which happens to match the ele/ela form: fala, come, parte, vem, vai.
• It dominates friendly, casual commands across Brazil, even where você is the subject pronoun, because it sounds warmer than the subjunctive fale/venha.
• Spoken Brazilian freely mixes tu with third-person verbs (tu vai, tu fala) — recognize it as a real register, not an error.
• For negative commands the rules flip entirely to the subjunctive (não fala becomes standard não fale) — see the negative imperative page.