French Imperative: Conjugation, Rules and Verbs

The French imperative chart

The table gives five verbs, parler, finir, attendre, aller and se lever, for tu, nous and vous, affirmative and negative. Tu is the “you” for one friend (parle), nous means “let's,” as in parlons, “let's talk,” and vous is the formal “you” or “you all” (parlez).

There's no je, il or ils command, and the imperative has no subject pronoun, so parle stands without tu in front of it. The negative puts ne before the verb and pas after it (ne parle pas), and ne becomes n' before a vowel, as in n'attends pas and n'allons pas. Se lever puts its pronoun after the verb (lève-toi, levons-nous, levez-vous), except in the negative: ne te lève pas.

Why parle has no -s

The tu command of an -er verb is the tu form of the present tense without its -s. Tu parles gives parle, tu manges gives mange and tu achètes gives achète. Other verbs keep the -s, so tu finis gives finis and tu prends gives prends.

Of the 600 verbs in our conjugation tables, 11 outside the -er group have a tu command with no -s as well. Four of them are avoir (aie), aller (va), vouloir (veuille) and savoir (sache). The other seven are ouvrir, découvrir, offrir, couvrir, souffrir, accueillir and cueillir, whose present looks like an -er verb's (tu ouvres → ouvre).

When the s comes back: vas-y and parles-en

Before y or en, a tu command that doesn't end in s takes one, for the sound, joined by a hyphen. Va + y gives vas-y, parle + en gives parles-en, pense + y gives penses-y, achète + en gives achètes-en and cueille + en gives cueilles-en. Prends-en needs nothing added, because prends already has its s.

The s stays off in va-t'en, where t' comes between va and en, and in donne-m'en. It also stays off when en or y belongs to a verb that follows, as in va en chercher, “go and get some.”

Irregular French imperative verbs: sois, aie, sache, veuillez

Four verbs have command forms of their own: être (sois, soyons, soyez), avoir (aie, ayons, ayez), savoir (sache, sachons, sachez) and vouloir (veuille, veuillons, veuillez). Veuillez is the polite “please” of signs and letters, as in veuillez patienter, “please wait.” The tables also give veux, voulons and voulez, which you mostly hear in ne m'en veux pas, “don't be angry with me.”

Other irregular verbs use their present tense. Faire gives fais, faisons and faites, dire gives dis, disons and dites, and prendre gives prends, prenons and prenez. Venir gives viens, venons and venez, ouvrir gives ouvre, ouvrons and ouvrez, and s'asseoir gives assieds-toi or assois-toi. Dites and faites are the only vous commands in our quiz that don't end in -ez.

Where the pronouns go

After an affirmative command, the pronouns follow the verb and join it with hyphens: fais-le, attends-moi, donne-le-moi. In a negative command they go between ne and the verb, with no hyphens: ne le fais pas, ne m'attends pas, ne me le donne pas.

Y and en work the same way, so vas-y becomes n'y va pas and parles-en becomes n'en parle pas. Reflexive verbs follow the same rule: lève-toi becomes ne te lève pas, and allez-vous-en becomes ne vous en allez pas. The table pairs each affirmative command with its negative.

Pronoun order: donne-le-moi, but ne me le donne pas

Two pronouns follow one order after an affirmative command and another before a negative one. After the verb, le, la or les comes first, then moi, toi, nous, vous, lui or leur, then y, then en. Before the verb, me, te, nous or vous comes first, then le, la or les, then lui or leur, then y, then en.

That gives donne-le-moi, but ne me le donne pas. With lui and leur the order doesn't change, so donne-le-lui becomes ne le lui donne pas, with le first both times. Donne-moi-le is heard in speech, but the Académie française and the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), Quebec's French language office, both say to write donne-le-moi.

Moi, toi, m' and t'

After the verb, me becomes moi and te becomes toi: aide-moi, lève-toi. Before en they become m' and t', with an apostrophe: donne-m'en, va-t'en, occupe-t'en. The t' in va-t'en is te with its e dropped, so it takes an apostrophe, not a hyphen.

In a negative command, ne, me, te, le and la lose their vowel before a vowel or a silent h: n'oublie pas, n'y va pas, ne l'ouvre pas, ne t'habille pas. Hurler's h counts as a consonant, though, so you write ne hurle pas.

Reflexive verbs: lève-toi and ne te lève pas

The pronoun of a reflexive verb, such as se lever (“to get up”), follows the same rules as any other pronoun. In an affirmative command the pronoun follows the verb, with toi for tu (lève-toi), and in a negative command it goes before the verb (ne te lève pas).

The table gives se lever, s'asseoir, se dépêcher, s'habiller, se coucher and s'en aller for tu, nous and vous, plus the tu negative. Se dépêcher gives dépêche-toi, dépêchons-nous, dépêchez-vous and ne te dépêche pas, and s'en aller gives va-t'en, allons-nous-en, allez-vous-en and ne t'en va pas.

Verbs with no command

Pouvoir, falloir, pleuvoir and neiger have no command at all. Devoir, devenir and naître have one in the verb tables, but it's a command nobody gives, so our quiz leaves them out.

Our tools also leave out two things that sources disagree on. One is moi or toi with y, written menez-m'y in some sources and menez-y-moi in others. The other is y and en in the same command.

Practice the French imperative

The French imperative quiz drills these forms one at a time. You choose the persons, affirmative or negative, the number of pronouns and the verb sets, and after every answer a one-line reason gives the rule. For a class, the French imperative worksheets print four exercises, from writing the command to a fill-in chart, with an answer key that starts on a new page. To learn the French imperative rules step by step, start with tu and the regular -er verbs (parle), then add one pronoun (fais-le), and then two (donne-le-moi). Every form of the 600 verbs behind them is in the French verb conjugation tables. If you learn Spanish, Italian or German too, the Spanish commands chart, the Italian imperative guide and the German imperative guide each set out the forms and rules for commands in that language.

Frequently asked questions

Licenses and credits

Conjugation tables come from English Wiktionary through kaikki.org (CC BY-SA 4.0). Verbs are ranked by Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords list, built from OpenSubtitles 2018 (CC BY-SA 4.0).