Question 1

Why is the pronoun at the end as -toi instead of before the verb?

Accepted Answer

Because this is an affirmative command (telling someone to do something). With affirmative commands, the reflexive pronoun moves after the verb and attaches with a hyphen. Also, the pronoun te changes to its stressed form, toi. If it were a negative command (like 'don't get up'), it would stay in front: ne te lève pas.

Question 2

The 'tu' form of 'se lever' is 'tu te lèves'. Why is the 's' missing in 'lève-toi'?

Accepted Answer

For regular -er verbs like se lever, you must drop the final -s in the tu form when giving a command (the imperative). So tu te lèves becomes just lève. Note that you only drop the -s for -er verbs and the verb aller.

Question 3

Why do we use 'dans' for 'in one hour'? Could we use 'en' instead?

Accepted Answer

Here, dans is required. When talking about a future event, dans tells us how long from now the event will start. The word en is used differently: it describes the amount of time it takes to actually complete an action (for example, 'I ran the race in one hour' would use en une heure).

Question 4

Since 'massage' ends in an 'e', shouldn't it be feminine and use 'ta' instead of 'ton'?

Accepted Answer

Not always! While many words ending in -e are feminine, words ending in the suffix -age are almost always masculine in French (with a few rare exceptions like une image). Because it is masculine, we use the masculine possessive adjective ton.

Ton massage est dans une heure, lève-toi.

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