Imperativo: guía completa

This is the page to bookmark. Everything the peninsular Spanish imperative does — every person, every irregularity, every clitic-attachment rule, every accent — lives here in one place. The dedicated pages drill into each cell; this one shows you the whole grid at a glance, so you can see how the pieces fit and find the exact form you need without hunting.

The master architecture

There are six "persons" of the imperative that a Spaniard uses in daily life: tú, vosotros, usted, ustedes, and nosotros. Each has an affirmative and a negative form, giving ten cells. Of those ten, only two are "real" imperatives in the strict morphological sense — affirmative tú and affirmative vosotros. The other eight are simply the present subjunctive of the matching person, used as a command.

The full paradigm for hablar, comer, vivir

Every regular verb in Spanish slots into this grid by changing the stem.

Formation rules, one person at a time

Affirmative tú

Take the 3rd-person singular of the present indicative. Hablar → habla, comer → come, vivir → vive. There are exactly eight irregular short forms: di (decir), haz (hacer), ve (ir), pon (poner), sal (salir), sé (ser), ten (tener), ven (venir). All eight derivatives keep the short stem: propón, contén, mantén, deshaz, etc.

Negative tú

No + 2nd-person singular present subjunctive: no hables, no comas, no vivas. The affirmative form (habla) is never used in the negative.

Affirmative vosotros

Take the infinitive and replace the final -r with -d: hablar → hablad, comer → comed, vivir → vivid. There are no irregularities in this slot. Even the eight irregular tú verbs behave regularly here: decid, haced, id, poned, salid, sed, tened, venid.

Negative vosotros

No + 2nd-person plural present subjunctive: no habléis, no comáis, no viváis. Note the obligatory accent on the é, á, á (the stressed vowel of the subjunctive ending).

Affirmative usted, ustedes, nosotros

Use the present subjunctive of the matching person. Hable (usted), hablen (ustedes), hablemos (nosotros). There is one shortcut for nosotros affirmative of ir: vamos is preferred over vayamos (¡Vamos! = Let's go!).

Negative usted, ustedes, nosotros

No + the same subjunctive form: no hable, no hablen, no hablemos.

Twenty model verbs

These twenty cover the patterns you will meet 95% of the time. Read across each row to see the whole paradigm.

Notice that ve is the tú imperative of both ir and ver — only context tells you which. ¡Ve a casa! means Go home!, ¡Ve esto! means Look at this!

Pronoun attachment: where do clitics go?

This is where the imperative most often trips learners up, because the rule changes between affirmative and negative.

• Affirmative imperative: clitics attach to the end of the verb, written as one word. Dime (tell me), cómelo (eat it), levantaos (get yourselves up), démelo (give it to me).
• Negative imperative: clitics go before the verb, written as separate words. No me digas, no lo comas, no os levantéis, no me lo des.

The order of multiple clitics, when attached, is always indirect object + direct object + reflexive — but reflexive and indirect rarely both appear with the same verb, so in practice you remember indirect + direct: dámelo (give-to-me-it), díselo (tell-to-him-it).

Accent rules when clitics attach

When you attach a clitic to an affirmative imperative, the spoken stress does not move — but Spanish spelling demands you mark the now-irregular stress with a written accent if the resulting word has its stress on a syllable that the normal stress rules would not predict.

The practical rule: whenever attaching a clitic produces a word stressed on the third-to-last syllable or earlier (an esdrújula or sobreesdrújula), add a written accent on the originally stressed vowel.

• Da → dame (no accent: paroxytone is the default).
• Da → dámelo (accent needed: dá-me-lo, antepenultimate stress).
• Come → cómelo (accent: có-me-lo).
• Mira → míralo (accent: mí-ra-lo, antepenultimate stress); mirad → miradlo (no accent: mi-rad-lo is paroxytone, which the default rule already predicts).
• Devuelve → devuélvemelo (sobreesdrújula: de-vuél-ve-me-lo).

The reflexive collapse: -d + os → -os

Affirmative vosotros + a reflexive pronoun loses the -d: levantar + os → levantaos, sentar + os → sentaos, vestir + os → vestíos. There is one historical exception: irse → idos (keeps the -d). Modern colloquial Spanish overwhelmingly says iros instead, and since 2017 the RAE has accepted it.

Nosotros affirmative + reflexive: -mos + nos → -monos

The same swallowing happens with the nosotros form: levantémonos (let's get up), sentémonos (let's sit down), vámonos (let's go). The final -s of -mos is dropped before the nos clitic. Without the dropped -s the word would be levantemos-nos, which Spanish refuses to tolerate.

Usted vs ustedes: a regional note

In Spain, ustedes is reserved for formal plural (a group of strangers, customers, an audience). For groups of friends, family or peers, Spaniards use vosotros. Across Latin America the situation is different: ustedes covers all plurals, formal and familiar alike, and vosotros sounds biblical or archaic.

So when a Spaniard writes vengan ustedes a la mesa they are formally inviting a group of guests. The familiar peninsular version is venid a la mesa (vosotros understood).

When no + the indicative would also work

Spanish sometimes uses no + present indicative as a softer or more declarative prohibition: Aquí no se fuma (one doesn't smoke here) instead of the imperative No fume aquí. This is not a true imperative, but it functions as one — see the dedicated alternatives page.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• Eight of the ten imperative cells are simply the present subjunctive. Only affirmative tú and affirmative vosotros are morphologically distinct.
• Affirmative imperative + clitic = one written word; negative imperative + clitic = clitic before the verb.
• Add a written accent whenever clitic attachment pushes the stress to the third-to-last syllable or earlier.
• Reflexive vosotros drops the -d (sentaos); reflexive nosotros drops the -s (sentémonos).
• The peninsular vosotros row is Spain's signature feature — non-existent in living Latin American speech.