I’m Professor Dave, and I command you to watch this video.
The word imperative comes the Latin impero/imperāre, which means to give a command.
In Italian, this implies a very strong mood in which a command, strong request or suggestion,
or even a prohibition is being given.
This will probably not be used with strangers or people you must be cordial with, in such
a case we will use the formal imperative, which we will discuss later.
The normal imperative will be used with family and friends, or others who won’t mind if
you boss them around a little bit.
In such an informal context, Italian has two imperatives.
These are affirmative and negative.
Because it is a command that you give to someone else, the only forms are second person singular
and second person plural, as first person and third person don’t make any sense in
this context.
The endings are very easy and they can be compared in the forms of the present indicative,
with few exceptions.
Let’s see this in action.
Using parlare, we can command that one person speak by using parla.
For several, this will be parlate.
Using scrivere, to command that one person write, we would use scrivi.
For a team of writers, we use scrivete.
Using dormire, to command that one child go to sleep, we use dormi.
For a whole bunch of kids, we use dormite.
You may have noticed that these forms pretty much correspond with the second person forms
of the present indicative, with only one exception, and that is the singular form for the first
conjugation, which we would expect to end in I, but ends in A instead.
There is a context in which you might command using the first person plural, requesting
that the group you are a part of perform a certain action, but this is not technically
a command, but rather an exhortation, so this will take a form of the subjunctive, just
like in Latin.
With imperatives, there are a few irregulars that we must memorize, as always.
These forms with an apostrophe are often substituted by the full form, vai, fai, stai, or dai.
Also, and this is very important, with the imperative, all pronouns will be attached
at the end.
Even the double object pronouns will follow.
So that’s it for commands in the affirmative form.
Now we will discuss the negative form.
If affirmative commands say do this and do that, negative commands say don’t do this
and don’t do that.
This will be a bit different, as in the negative, the second person singular will simply be
the word “non” followed by the infinitive.
The plural will instead look similar to the affirmative.
With the negative imperative, pronouns do not need to follow all the time.
The position simply reflects the emphasis you want to give to a particular word.
The last word is always the one that is stressed the most.
Let’s compare two versions of the same phrases.
And now we know how to give commands in Italian.
But a word of caution, try not to go around barking orders at everyone you see, Italians
love to argue so they won’t be bashful in telling you what they think of your suggestions.
Let’s check comprehension.