Mandatos informales, modo imperativo (Informal Commands, Imperative Mood)

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What about when we want to give instructions, directions, or requests to people we know well, such as friends, classmates, children, or even a close relative? We will use informal commands for them! Informal commands have two kinds of conjugations (affirmative and negative), unlike what you have learned with all other commands. Let's explore how each one is formed.

Affirmative informal commands (tú) are usually formed using the third person singular (ella/él/elle) form of the present tense of the indicative.  For example:

• Habla con tus profesores y pregunta si te pueden dar una carta de recomendación. 🗣️🥺

• Talk to your professors and ask if they can give you a letter of recommendation.

• ¡Lee el contrato antes de firmar! 🧐

• Read the contract before signing!

• Envía tu solicitud a la escuela graduada antes de la fecha límite. 📩⏳

• Send your application to graduate school before the deadline.

Now, you may have noticed with the formal and ustedes commands that in order to make a negative command, you simply place a no in front of said command… However, as we mentioned above, there are affirmative informal commands and negative informal commands and they are not formed in the same way. Forming negative informal commands requires more than just adding no before the verb. But don't worry! You already know how to form them in a way, let's continue!

Negative informal commands are formed by using the formal command and adding an -s at the end, along with the no in front of the command. For example:

• No vivas solo en un lugar caro. Ahorra dinero y busca un compañero de cuarto.

• Don't live alone in an expensive place. Save your money and find a roommate.

• ¡No empieces el proyecto sin leer las directrices!

• Don't start the proyect until you read the guidelines!

You may have noticed in the previous example that the verb empezar, which ends in -zar, follows the same spelling changes here as it does in the formal commands. The same goes for verbs ending in -car (-ques) and -gar (-gues).

Additionally, informal commands also have irregular verbs that do not follow the rules and must, therefore, be memorized. Notice the affirmative and negative forms of each command for some of the most common irregular verbs:

Here are some examples in context:

• (afirmativo) Di la verdad. 😇

• Tell the truth.

• (negativo) No digas mentiras. 🙅🏻‍♀️🤥

• Don't tell lies.

• (afirmativo) Haz la tarea. 🧑‍💻

• Do the homework.

• (negativo) No hagas el trabajo sin mí. 😦

• Don't do the work without me.

• (afirmativo) Sé más responsable. 😠

• Be more responsible.

• (negativo) No seas tan irresponsable. 🙄

• Don't be so irresponsible.

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Mandatos de nosotros (Let's Commands)

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"Let's learn something!" Oh, that's a command… that includes you and others doing something together. In Spanish, we use nosotros commands as the equivalent of "Let's + verb" in English. Forming these commands is fairly easy as long as you remember your formal commands. We are going to follow the rule of opposite endings, -ar verbs end in -e, -er and -ir verbs in -a, except that here, since it's all of us we will use -emos for -ar verbs and -amos for -er and -ir verbs. For example:

Of course, we will always have some irregularities in Spanish, won't we? Luckily, in this case the irregulars are very similar to the formal commands:

What about the verb ir? Interestingly, the verb  ir has two different possible commands. We can either use the regular present tense nosotros conjugation vamos, which is more commonly used in the affirmative commands, or we can use vayamos (more common with negative commands).

• ¡Vamos a viajar por el mundo! 👩🏽‍🤝‍👩🏿🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏼🌎

• Let's go travel the world!

• No vayamos en taxi, mejor caminemos por la ciudad. 🚫🚕

• Let's not go in a taxi, let's walk around the city, it's better.

Another thing to keep in mind when forming nosotros commands is that verbs in -ar and -er that are stem-changing in the present, do not have a stem-change in nosotros; if you recall, those are called "boot verbs".

However, -ir verbs do have a stem-change in this case, they go from o → u and e → i. For example:

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