Tú: Regular Affirmative

The affirmative tú command is the form you use to tell a friend, a child, a sibling, or anyone you call tú, to do something. "Speak!" "Eat!" "Run!" For regular verbs, this is the easiest command form in Spanish — you already know it from the present tense.

This is one of the very first things you learn in Spanish, and it pays off immediately: it lets you give simple instructions, ask favors, encourage someone, and join in on the everyday give-and-take of conversation.

The rule

For regular verbs, the affirmative tú command is identical to the third-person singular of the present indicative — the same form you use with él or ella.

That's it. If you can conjugate él habla, you can order habla. The one thing to remember: the command does not carry an accent on its own — habla, not hablá. (The form hablá belongs to the vos imperative, which you'll meet later.)

Stem-changing verbs keep their stem change

Verbs that change their stem in the present indicative keep that change in the affirmative tú command too, because the command is literally the same form. There's nothing extra to memorize beyond what you already know from the present tense.

Examples in context

Softening a command

A bare command can sound abrupt in any language, and Spanish is no exception. Latin Americans soften tú commands with a sprinkle of polite words and tags: por favor, si puedes, un momentito, or even just a friendly tone of voice.

The diminutive -ito/-ita on a noun also helps: "Espera un momentito" sounds friendlier than "Espera un momento".

Attaching pronouns to the command

Object pronouns and reflexive pronouns travel right onto the end of an affirmative command. The verb and the pronoun fuse into a single word.

When you attach object or reflexive pronouns to an affirmative command, they go on the end of the verb, fused into one word. You'll almost always need a written accent to keep the stress on the original syllable.

With reflexive verbs like levantarse, the pronoun te attaches directly: levanta + te → levántate. With double pronouns the same rule holds: escribe + me + lo → escríbemelo.

Spelling traps with -car, -gar, -zar verbs

Verbs ending in -car, -gar, and -zar are perfectly regular in the affirmative tú command — they sound and spell exactly like the él/ella form: él busca → busca tú, él paga → paga tú, ella empieza → empieza tú. The spelling changes (busque, pague, empiece) only show up in the negative command and the present subjunctive, not here. So the affirmative imperative remains as friendly as ever.

What this form is not

This easy rule has two important limits:

1. It only covers regular verbs (plus stem-changers, which follow the same shape). There are eight irregulars you need to learn separately — ven, di, sal, haz, ten, ve, pon, sé. See Tú: Irregular Affirmative.
2. It only covers the affirmative direction. As soon as you add no, you switch to a completely different form based on the present subjunctive — see Tú: Negative Commands.

A note on vos

Most of Latin America uses tú, but a wide swath — Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica, parts of Central America, and pockets of Colombia and Venezuela — uses vos instead. The vos affirmative command is different: you drop the -r of the infinitive and add an accent on the final vowel: hablar → hablá, comer → comé, vivir → viví. So in Buenos Aires you will hear "Hablá más despacio", not "Habla más despacio". For everything you need with tú, see the imperative overview.