We went over the imperative mood last week. Easy, right? Well, if you’ve studied French for any length of time, you know that there are many exceptions to main grammatical rules. And the imperative mood is no exception (like my calembour?)

There are four common verbs that are irregular in the imperative mood. You should just memorize these. They are:

avoir, être, savoir, vouloir

**Remember: because the imperative is expressing a command/request to someone else, you can only use the following pronouns: tu, vous, nous

avoir — (tu) aie, (nous) ayons, (vous) ayez

être — (tu) sois, (nous) soyons, (vous) soyez

savoir — (tu) sache, (nous) sachons, (vous) sachez

vouloir — (tu) veuille, (nous) veuillons, (vous) veuillez

You may notice that these imperative forms are very similar to the subjunctive mood. One way of distinguishing these moods is that the subjunctive has a subject pronoun with it (il faut que tu sois…) while the imperative does not (sois intelligent!).

One more somewhat easier aspect of the imperative mood is the negative form. A negative imperative would express something like: “Don’t do that!” In French, the negative in the imperative mood follows a basic structure: ne+(object)+verb+pas. If you don’t need an object in your sentence it would look something like this: Ne pars pas! (Don’t leave!) However, in the example above (Don’t do that!) you need an object. Thus, it would become in French: Ne le fait pas! if you are speaking to a friend or Ne le faites pas! if you are speaking to a group or want to use the respectful vous form.

Non-negative word order can be trickier with imperatives, however. With the affirmative imperative, the object or adverbial pronouns (like y or en) will come AFTER the verb, attached by a hyphen. This is how you get some common imperatives like: Allons-y (or vas-y), fais-le, or parles-en. 

If you have both direct and indirect objects, the direct object goes before the indirect object in the affirmative imperative. For example, in the imperative “Give it to me!,” it is the direct object and me is the indirect object. In French, this would become: Donne-le-moi! This is different from typical word order in French. Also, it is important when writing imperatives to remember the hyphens. The verb and all objects or adverbial pronouns are separated by hyphens.

Can you think of one affirmative and one negative imperative sentence and leave them in the comments below?