The Imperative in Portuguese

Like other Romance languages, Portuguese has an abundance of verb forms. Adding to the pile is the Imperative mood. We use the Imperative to give instructions and commands, urge someone to do something, and give spatial directions.

Now, the Imperative form in Portuguese will change depending on whether the tone is casual or formal, whether you are affirming or negating something, or whether you are talking to a single person or a group of people.

Here’s an example with the verb Falar (Speak): 

Imperative 1	singular, informal	Fala mais baixo. (Lower your voice)
Imperative 2	singular, informal (negation)	Não fales mais baixo. (Don’t lower your voice)
Imperative 3	singular, formal	Fale mais baixo. (Lower your voice)
Imperative 4	plural	Falem mais baixo. (Lower your voice)

Then, the challenge is knowing when to use the Imperative as much as recalling the right form that matches the context. Luckily, there are a couple of helpful tricks. Read on.

Strategy 1 – Tweaking the endings of the first-person of the Present tense

This strategy is simple, straightforward, and popular among beginners. 

You start with the first-person of the Present Simple of the verb in question and, from there,  you tweak its ending to find the Imperative form you are looking for. All you need is to learn a few tweaking patterns as shown below.

But there’s a caveat! It only works for regular verbs.

Granted, most verbs are regular and therefore, this strategy is still widely applicable and useful. However, as you may know, some of the most frequently used verbs are irregular.

That said, let’s learn these tweaks. 

Learn more about regular conjugation:
Portuguese Regular Verbs in the Present Tense
Portuguese Regular Verbs in the Past Tense

Singular and informal (tu)

In informal contexts, the Imperative form varies depending on if it’s part of an affirmative or negative sentence. 

To find the affirmative and negative variants, and for each conjugation group, we tweak the endings of the first-person of the Present tense according to the following patterns: 

	FIRST-PERSON Present tense	IMPERATIVE 1 affirmation	IMPERATIVE 2 negation
-ar | andar	ando	anda!	não andes!
-er | beber	bebo	bebe!	não bebas!
-ir | partir	parto	parte!	não partas!

Singular and formal (você)

In formal contexts, there’s only one Imperative form (regardless of whether the sentence is affirmative or otherwise). 

To find it, and for each conjugation group, we tweak the endings of the first-person of the Present tense according to the following patterns: 

	FIRST-PERSON Present tense	IMPERATIVE 3
-ar | andar	ando	(não) ande!
-er | beber	bebo	(não) bebe!
-ir | partir	parto	(não) parta!

Plural (vocês)

Finally, when we talk to a group of people, we tweak the endings of the first-person Present tense according to the following patterns: 

	FIRST-PERSON Present tense	IMPERATIVE 4
-ar | andar	ando	(não) andem!
-er | beber	bebo	(não) bebam!
-ir | partir	parto	(não) partam!

Again, all these tweaks in spelling won’t work with irregular verbs. To deal with those, you’ll have to adopt the second strategy below or learn it by heart over time. 

Irregular verbs