Giáo trình động từ tiếng Pháp - Part II Using Verbs Correctly with Questions, Commands, and

Chapter 8

Telling People What to Do: The Regular,

Irregular, and Pronominal Commands

In This Chapter

Forming the imperative with regular and irregular verbs

Making the imperative negative

Including pronominal verbs in a command

Putting pronouns in the mix to make commands

How do you tell people what to do, like bring you coffee, clean your house, go to the

market, or even leave? You can tell people to do all these things and more by using

the imperative mood, more commonly known as the command.

This chapter shows you how to transform regular, irregular, and pronominal verbs into com￾mands as well as how to create negative commands. Then I show you how to add pronouns

to your commands.

Forming Commands with Regular Verbs

The technical term for giving commands or orders is the imperative. In this chapter, I use

the terms interchangeably. You give orders in English as well as in French by using the

verb directly and eliminating the subject pronoun. For example, you may say Set the table,

Wash the dishes, and so on. In the following sections, I show you how to form commands

with regular verbs.

Making -er verbs into commands

The commands come from the tu, nous, and vous forms of the present tense. Note that the

subject pronouns are never used in the command, just their verb forms. In English, you

don’t command someone by saying You speak. Instead, you simply say Speak! It’s the same

in French.

For all -er verbs (as well as the irregular verb aller [to go]), you drop the s from the tu form

in the imperative.

This rule also applies to irregular -ir verbs, which are conjugated like regular -er verbs —

like ouvrir (to open), souffrir (to suffer), and offrir (to offer). The s reappears when the verb

is followed by the pronouns y or en for pronunciation reasons. Examples include Parles-en!

(Speak about it!), Vas-y! (Go there!), and Offres-en! (Offer some!). However, the s is dropped

in the imperative negative: N’en parle pas (Don’t speak about it!), N’y va pas! (Don’t go there!),

and N’en offre pas! (Don’t offer any!). The nous and vous forms don’t have any changes.

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