The Imperative in BR Portuguese

The imperative is the mood of commands, requests, suggestions, and instructions — "speak up," "come here," "don't worry," "stir for two minutes." Brazilian Portuguese builds it in a way that surprises English speakers in two ways. First, the everyday command form is borrowed straight from the present subjunctive, not from a dedicated command form. Second, BR has a notorious split between the formal-grammar imperative and what people actually say — a mismatch you need to understand so you neither over-correct nor get confused when speech doesn't match the textbook. This page is the map; the sub-pages drill each piece.

Two dimensions: affirmative/negative and tu/você

The BR imperative is organized along two axes:

1. Affirmative vs negative — "do it" vs "don't do it." These use different forms.
2. Você-form vs tu-form — você is the default address across most of Brazil; tu is regional (parts of the South, the North, and the Northeast).

That gives a small grid. The good news: the você-form and the negative both come from the subjunctive, so most of the system reduces to "use the subjunctive form." The tu-form is the only piece that doesn't, and even there, real speech blurs the line.

The você-form: borrowed from the subjunctive

The affirmative command you say to a você is the present subjunctive 3rd-person singular. Fale! ("speak!") is literally the same form as the fale in que ele fale ("that he speak"). Why? Historically, a command to a "polite you" is a softened, almost wishful form — "may you speak" — and the subjunctive is the mood of wishes. The form fossilized into the standard command.

So the recipe is: conjugate the present subjunctive ele/ela form, and that's your você command. Falar → fale, comer → coma, partir → parta, fazer → faça, vir → venha, ir → vá. The dedicated page on the você-form drills the full set and the irregulars.

The negative: always the subjunctive form

The negative imperative always uses the subjunctive form, for both você and tu. There is no exception. "Don't speak" is não fale — never não fala.

This is one of the cleanest rules in the whole system: negate a command, reach for the subjunctive. Even speakers who use tu + fala in the affirmative (see below) usually switch to the subjunctive não fale when they negate — though the casual não fala is also heard. Either way the standard, always-correct form is the subjunctive, which is exactly why the next section matters.

The tu-form and the famous mismatch

The "textbook" tu affirmative imperative is the present indicative minus its final -s: tu falas → fala!, tu comes → come!, tu partes → parte! So fala! is the grammatically correct command to a tu.

Here is the mismatch that trips up everyone. In large parts of Brazil, speakers use tu as the subject pronoun but pair it with the você-form (3rd-person) verb — and in the imperative they likewise mix forms freely. You'll hear tu fala (subject tu, indicative-style command), and you'll hear você, vem cá! (subject você, but the tu-style command vem instead of the "correct" venha). In casual speech, the short forms vem, vai, fala, traz, põe are extremely common as commands regardless of which subject pronoun the speaker uses.

So the reality on the ground:

How this differs from English

English has essentially one imperative form — the bare verb — for everyone: "speak," "come," "don't speak." No person, no politeness marking, no separate negative form (just add "don't"). Portuguese, by contrast, marks the imperative for who you're addressing (você vs tu) and uses a borrowed subjunctive form, and it has a genuinely different verb form for the negative. For an English speaker the two hardest adjustments are (1) remembering the affirmative você command is a subjunctive form (fale, not fala) and (2) remembering the negative is also subjunctive (não fale, not não fala).

What to actually produce

For safety and universality, default to the você-form (subjunctive) for affirmative commands and the subjunctive for negatives. This is correct everywhere, sounds polite-neutral, and matches all written instructions. Once you're comfortable, you can adopt the casual short commands (vem, fala, vai) to sound more natural in informal speech — but you'll never be wrong with venha, fale, vá.

Common Mistakes

The negative imperative is the rule with no exceptions: use the subjunctive form. Não fala exists colloquially with tu, but não fale is universally correct.

The standard você-command drops the subject and uses the subjunctive form fale. Keeping você fala sounds like a declarative sentence.

English has no infinitive-command, but learners sometimes reach for the dictionary form. Portuguese needs a real imperative.

Key Takeaways

• The affirmative você-command is the present subjunctive 3sg: fale, coma, venha, vá, faça. This is your universal default.
• The negative imperative is always the subjunctive form for both você and tu: não fale, não coma, não se preocupe.
• The tu-form affirmative is the indicative minus -s (fala, come, parte), regional and colloquial.
• Real speech is a mismatch zone: subject tu with você-forms, subject você with short tu-forms, and ubiquitous short commands (vem, vai, fala).
• Default to fale / não fale; you will never be wrong, and it matches every sign, label, and instruction in Brazil.