Imperative Overview

The imperative mood (modo imperativo) is how Portuguese gives commands, instructions, and urgings. "Come here!", "Don't tell anyone!", "Let's go!" -- all of these live in the imperative. It is the grammar of street signs, recipes, parents to children, teachers to students, and every conversation where someone is telling someone else what to do.

Unlike English, which has essentially one command form ("eat!"), European Portuguese has a separate form for each person, and -- in the tu slot -- a different form for affirmative and negative commands. Even more importantly, most of the imperative system is borrowed directly from the present subjunctive. Once you see the logic, the whole system falls into place.

Who can you command?

Because European Portuguese uses distinct pronouns for each person, it also has distinct command forms. The main ones you will meet are:

• tu -- informal singular ("you"), the default between friends, family, and peers
• você -- a more formal singular ("you"), or an anonymous/professional address
• nós -- first-person plural ("let's...")
• vocês -- plural "you" (used everywhere in Portugal as the plural, both informal and formal)

The second-person plural vós exists in the grammar books and survives in some northern dialects and religious language, but it is dead in standard modern speech. Ignore it until you encounter it in a prayer or a nineteenth-century novel.

Where the forms come from

This is the single most important thing to understand about the Portuguese imperative:

• Affirmative tu has its own form, taken from the 3rd-person singular of the present indicative minus the final -s. That is the only slot with a distinctive shape.
• Everything else -- affirmative você, affirmative nós, affirmative vocês, and all negative imperatives including negative tu -- is simply the present subjunctive.

That means the imperative is not really a separate paradigm you have to memorize in full. If you know the present subjunctive, you already know five of the six slots in the imperative system. The only fresh learning is the affirmative tu form and its irregulars.

The complete paradigm -- regular verbs

Here are the command forms for regular verbs in all three conjugation classes. Learn these patterns and you know the imperative for the vast majority of Portuguese verbs.

-ar verbs: falar (to speak)

-er verbs: comer (to eat)

-ir verbs: partir (to leave, depart)

Notice that você, nós, and vocês use the same form for affirmative and negative. Only tu has two different shapes -- and the negative tu always follows the subjunctive.

The one rule for affirmative tu

Take the 3rd-person singular present indicative, remove the final -s.

• falar → (ele) falas? no: fala → Fala mais alto! ("Speak up!")
• comer → (ele) comes? no: come → Come tudo. ("Eat everything.")
• partir → (ele) partes? no: parte → Parte já. ("Leave now.")

Careful -- you take the 2nd-person singular tu form and strip the final -s. Equivalently, you can say "use the 3rd-person singular present indicative," because those two forms differ only by that -s. Either rule gives the same result for regular verbs.

A handful of very common verbs have irregular affirmative tu forms that must simply be memorized. See the tu affirmative page for the full list.

The você pattern: swap the theme vowel

For affirmative você commands, take the present subjunctive form. The shortcut: replace the final vowel of the infinitive as follows:

• -ar verbs → ending in -e: fale, trabalhe, espere
• -er verbs → ending in -a: coma, beba, atenda
• -ir verbs → ending in -a: parta, decida, abra

For a deeper treatment, see você affirmative commands.

Nós commands -- "let's..."

The nós imperative translates English "let's..." It uses the present subjunctive nós form:

• falar → falemos! ("Let's speak!")
• comer → comamos! ("Let's eat!")
• partir → partamos! ("Let's leave!")

That said, in everyday EP the synthetic nós imperative feels slightly formal or literary. Much more common is the analytic vamos + infinitive construction:

Reserve falemos, comamos, partamos for formal writing, speeches, or when you want to sound slightly elevated. See nós commands for the full picture, including a lovely phonological rule that drops the -s before a reflexive pronoun (levantemo-nos!).

Vocês commands

The plural "you" form is straightforward -- it is the present subjunctive vocês form, identical for affirmative and negative:

This is the normal way to give a command to two or more people in Portugal, whether or not you would address them individually with tu or você. Vocês has no formality asymmetry the way Spanish vosotros/ustedes does.

Register: tu vs você

Choosing between tu and você is a social calculation, not a grammatical one.

• tu -- between friends, family, colleagues of similar rank, peers, children. The default among anyone who knows each other. A bare tu command can feel direct and even brusque without softeners, but in a warm context it is completely normal.
• você -- more formal, more distant. Used in customer service, professional contexts, or when you genuinely do not know someone. In Portugal, você can sometimes sound too distant, almost chilly; many Portuguese speakers avoid it and prefer either tu (if they are on familiar terms) or no pronoun at all, letting the verb form carry the meaning.

A very Portuguese solution is to use o senhor / a senhora instead of você when extra deference is needed -- at a restaurant, a bank, or with elderly strangers.

Softening commands

Bare commands can feel blunt. Portuguese has many ways to soften a request:

Podes / pode + infinitive ("can you...")

Querias / queria ("I'd like...")

Adding por favor or se faz favor

These softeners matter socially in Portugal. Asking someone to do something with a bare imperative can come across as brusque among strangers; the softened forms are what real-life Portuguese uses constantly. Se faz favor is the very Portuguese version of por favor -- both are fine, but se faz favor is the one you will hear on every street corner in Lisbon.

Clitic placement with imperatives

Object pronouns and reflexive pronouns attach differently depending on whether the command is affirmative or negative.

• Affirmative commands → the pronoun attaches to the end of the verb with a hyphen (enclisis): dá-me!, levanta-te!, dê-mo!.
• Negative commands → the pronoun goes before the verb, as a separate word (proclisis): não me dês!, não te levantes!, não mo dês!.

See clitic placement with imperatives for the full treatment, including combined pronouns like dá-mo (dá + mo = give it to me).

At-a-glance summary

The pattern is now visible: learn the affirmative tu form, then use the present subjunctive for everything else.

Comparison with English

English has exactly one command form: the bare infinitive. Speak!, Don't speak!, Let's speak!. Portuguese makes distinctions English does not encode:

• Portuguese differentiates the addressee (tu, você, vocês, nós); English does not.
• Portuguese uses a different form for don't commands in tu; English uses the same speak! in both directions.
• Portuguese attaches pronouns to the verb with hyphens in affirmative commands (dá-me!); English keeps them separate (give me!).

These differences mean that translating an English imperative into Portuguese requires three decisions every time: Who am I talking to? Affirmative or negative? Where does the pronoun go?

Common Mistakes

The affirmative tu form (fala) is reserved for affirmative commands only. The negative version uses the subjunctive (fales). Forgetting this is the number-one error among English-speaking learners.

European Portuguese attaches pronouns to the end of affirmative imperatives with a hyphen. Brazilian Portuguese has moved to putting pronouns before the verb in casual speech, but this is not acceptable in EP.

Negative commands take the pronoun before the verb. Não attracts clitics forward -- this is the core logic of proclisis in EP.

The synthetic nós imperative is fine in writing and formal speech, but vamos + infinitive is what real conversation uses almost exclusively.

With people you know well in Portugal, use tu. Você between friends is odd and may even feel passive-aggressive.

Key takeaways

• The imperative has four command slots in modern EP: tu, você, nós, vocês.
• Only affirmative tu has a dedicated form (3sg present indicative minus -s). Everything else is subjunctive.
• Negative commands are always subjunctive, even negative tu.
• Affirmative commands take enclisis (pronoun attached with hyphen); negative commands take proclisis (pronoun before the verb).
• In Portugal, tu is the default for familiar address. Você is more formal and can feel distant.
• Softening matters: podes...?, queria..., por favor, se faz favor.

For each form in depth, see Tu Affirmative, Você Affirmative, Nós Commands, and Negative Commands.