Informal Commands (Tú)
Informal Commands (Tú)
English gives a command by just using the bare verb — 'eat', 'go'. Spanish's tú commands mostly reuse a form you already know, but flip to a completely different one the moment you make it negative.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Affirmative tú commands borrow the 'he/she' present-tense form
¡come! (eat!) — identical to 'come' (he/she eats)
eat! — the bare infinitive-like form, with no borrowing from anywhere else
To tell a friend to do something, Spanish reuses the third-person singular present-tense form you already know from way back — come (eat!) is exactly the word for 'he/she eats'. This is a genuine shortcut: if you can conjugate a verb for 'he/she', you already know its affirmative tú command.
Negative tú commands switch to the subjunctive
¡no comas! (don't eat!) — a completely different form from ¡come!
don't eat! — just adds 'don't' in front of the same command form
The moment a tú command becomes negative, Spanish abandons the borrowed present-tense form and switches to the present subjunctive instead (comas, not comes) — a form you'll study in full in a later lesson. For now, just note that affirmative and negative tú commands are built completely differently, unlike English, which handles both with the same bare verb plus an optional 'don't'.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- eat!
- English
- speak!
- English
- write!
- English
- come!
- English
- go!
- English
- do it! / make it!
- English
- don't eat!
- English
- don't speak!
- English
- don't come!
- English
- wait!