Well, the World Cup has officially concluded in South Africa, and the Spaniards have come through victorious. If you want moje trzy grosze (my two cents), the Spanish were very lucky with the calls the referee made in this sixty-fourth and final match of the competition. In fact, I think the Dutch really got the krótki koniec kija (short end of the stick). Again, that’s just moje trzy grosze.

I had a follower on our Polish Facebook page ask the question, can you explain how to form the imperative please? I put in a quick response with a general praktyczna zasada (rule of thumb), but thought putting in a post here would be appropriate and helpful. And he did ask so nicely, so why not? Proszę (please) goes a long way with me 🙂

So I titled this post, “Przeczytajcie to – It’s Imperative!” Przeczytajcie to – this is the conjugated third person plural imperative of the verb przeczytać, the perfective form of the verb to read. So translated, Read this – It’s Imperative! Get it, play on the word imperative? Okay, may be funnier in my own head than when you’re reading this, but I am exhausted from that World Cup match and I never claimed to be a komik (comedian). Back to business. So the answer I posted initially was:

In most cases, the imperative is usually equal to to the stem of the third person singular present tense form of the verb. Once you have that conjugation, drop the ending, which varies from -e, -ie, -y, or -i. So an example, the infinitive pisać; 3rd person is pisze and imperative is Pisz! If it ends in -a, then you would add the letter j to the ending. So example, czytać; 3rd person is czyta and add the -j to make imperative Czytaj!

So in this post, I want to elaborate a little more on forming the imperative and provide a few more examples. Obviously, the imperative form is the command form of a verb. It can be conjugated in first, second and third person, however, only plural for first person where second and third person are both singular and plural. So if we refer back to my previous post on conjugating the verb czytać, I’ll continue with its conjugation, now in the imperative tense:

Singular, 2nd person   czytaj
Singular, 3rd person   niech czyta

Plural, 1st person   czytajmy
Plural, 2nd person   czytajcie
Plural, 3rd person   niech czytają

In most speech, you will be using the second person singular or plural, giving the command to another person. Politely, it is advisable to use the word proszę (please) to ease the command onto another. So, using the rule in italics above, some standard conjugations are:

infinitive:  pisać (to write)      third person singular: pisze imperative:  pisz
infinitive:  iść (to go)      third person singular:  idzie imperative: idź
infinitive:  kończyć (to finish)      third person singular:   kończy imperative: kończ
infinitive:  kupić (to buy)      third person singular:  kupi imperative: kup
infinitive:  czekać (to wait)      third person singular:  czeka imperative:  czekaj

Given that, you learn a base example only to be thrown a curveball. And I am speaking from experience. Take the verb robić (to do). The third person singular is conjugated as robi, however, when you go to form the imperative, the imperative follows the rule of dropping the -i. However, the o in the verb requires a vowel change from o (soft oh) to ó (oo), creating the imperative rób. Just like in the English language, some of these cases exist and you don’t have a clear reason as to why, they are just learned.

Another good example of that tenet is the verb być (to be). In English it has a unique conjugation, and the same goes for the Polish.  Conjugated in the present, it is:

Singular, 1st person   jestem
Singular, 2nd person   jesteś
Singular, 3rd person   jest

Plural, 1st person   jesteśmy
Plural, 2nd person   jesteści or jesteście
Plural, 3rd person   są