Geared toward Absolute Beginners, this course gives you a solid start and foundation to build upon.
This is an introductory course to the Portuguese language as spoken in Portugal. Throughout the course, we will focus on the Portuguese sound system and basic Portuguese grammar.
You will also learn how to introduce yourself and day-to-day, useful phrases. Finally, we will discuss learning resources and strategies to support your learning journey.
After the course, you will have a basic understanding of European Portuguese pronunciation and grammar. You will also be capable of engaging in simple, short oral interactions. Last but not least, you will be aware of a variety of learning resources and strategies to help you succeed at learning the language.
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Like other Romance languages, Portuguese has an abundance of verb forms. Adding to the pile is the imperative mood.
In Portuguese, just like in English, we use the imperative to give instructions and commands, to urge someone to do something and to give spatial directions, among others.
Depending on (1) whether the tone is casual or formal, (2) you are affirming or negating something, or (3) you are talking to a single person or a group of people, there are 4 different imperative forms to keep track of*:
Imperative 1
singular, informal (tu), affirmation
Imperative 2
singular, informal (tu), negation
Imperative 3
singular, formal (você)
Imperative 4
plural
* As a matter of fact, there are a few other imperative forms that I will skip since these are archaic and seldom used in modern Portuguese.
Here’re are a few examples
Vá sempre em frente! Go straight ahead!
Nãodigas isso! Don’t say that!
Faz-me um favor! Do me a favor!
Tragam uma garrafa de vinho. Bring a bottle of wine.
In all likelihood, the challenge for you is not so much knowing when to use the imperative as it is recalling the right imperative form that matches the context (out of the 4 conjugations in the table above).
Keeping track of all these imperatives might be disheartening. But look, we use the imperative all the time and, therefore, it is totally worth it to make an effort to come to grips with it.
In what follows, I will share two alternative strategies that will help you recall the imperative verb form that suits your context.
Strategy 1 – Tweaking the endings of the first-person present-tense
Many beginners fall for this strategy because it’s simple and practical.
You start with the first-person present-simple form 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. Neat.
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, and as you may know, some of the most frequently used verbs are irregular.
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 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!
* These infinite forms are examples of verbs fitting into each conjugation group. All other regular verbs of each group follow the same patterns.
Você(formal)
In formal contexts, there’s only one imperative form (regardless of whether the sentence is affirmative or not).
To find it, and for each conjugation group, we tweak the endings of the first-person 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!
Vocês(plural)
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 won’t work with irregular verbs. To deal with that, you’ll have to either turn to our second strategy below or learn them by heart.
Irregular verbs
Here are the imperative forms of six widely used irregular verbs*:
Now, let’s see if the scheme shown above holds. We start with the regular verb beber :
BEBER present tense
> Indicative
>Subjunctive
eu
bebo
beba
tu
bebes
bebas
ele, ela
bebe
beba
nós
bebemos
bebamos
vocês eles, elas
bebem
bebam
As we can see, the suggested imperative forms of strategy 2 match those indicated by strategy 1.
Let’s now try with an irregular verb:
IR present tense
>Indicative
>Subjunctive
eu
vou
vá
tu
vais
vás
ele, ela
vai
vá
nós
vamos
vamos
vocês eles, elas
vão
vão
Again, if you look up the table of the irregular verbs above, you’ll see that the imperative forms are the same.
There’s only one exception! And that’s the imperative 1of the verb ser – “sê”. In this case, the third-person indicative mood won’t match it. But that’s about it when it comes to exceptions.
This is it. I hope that these two strategies will somehow help you to cope with this imperative challenge.
Reading tips! Do you want to explore more verb-related topics? Here’re a few suggestions for you: