The imperative
When you tell somebody to do something — eat, come here, wait, don't touch that — you reach for the imperative. Brazil talks to everyone as você, so you get one imperative to learn instead of two: fale, coma, abra, and the plural falem, comam, abram. The same form does the negative: Não fale, Não coma. Learn how it's built, learn eight irregulars, and put the pronoun in front — Me ajude, Me diga — and you can run a kitchen, a taxi ride and an argument.
One imperative, and it's the você one
The command form for você is the same whether you're saying yes or no. -ar verbs swap the a for an e: falar → fale!, Não fale!; esperar → espere!; lavar → lave!. -er and -ir verbs swap for an a: comer → coma!, Não coma!; abrir → abra!; partir → parta!. That's the whole system: -ar flips to -e, -er and -ir flip to -a. It looks backwards on purpose — the vowel that belongs to the family goes away. Fale mais devagar. Coma a sobremesa. Não abra a panela.
Build it from the eu form
The shortcut that saves you from memorizing lists: take the eu form of the present, drop the -o, and add the ending. falo → fal- → fale. como → com- → coma. abro → abr- → abra. The beauty is that irregular stems come along for the ride. faço → faça. digo → diga. venho → venha. ponho → ponha. saio → saia. tenho → tenha. durmo → durma. If the eu form is odd, the command is odd in exactly the same way, so you only have to remember it once.
The irregulars worth memorizing
Four verbs don't come from an eu form and just have to be learned. ser → seja: Seja paciente. estar → esteja: Não esteja atrasado. ir → vá: Vá com calma. dar → dê: Dê um tempo. Add the four that follow the shortcut but that you'll use hourly: faça, diga, venha, ponha. Eight forms, and after them nothing in this lesson will surprise you.
Telling a group: vocês
For more than one person, add -m: falem, comam, abram, façam, venham, sejam, vão, deem. Meninos, comam devagar! Não façam barulho. Sejam bem-vindos is the standard welcome on a sign or from a host. Nothing else changes — same stem, same negative, one extra letter. There is no separate 'you all' shape to learn, because Brazil has no vós.
Pronouns with commands
In Brazil the pronoun goes in front of the command, which is exactly what you already do with any other verb: Me ajude, por favor. Me diga a verdade. Me espera! In the negative it's the same: Não me diga! (a fixed expression of surprise — 'no way!'), Não se preocupe, Não me deixe aqui. One exception to keep in your pocket: with reflexive verbs in a polite affirmative command, Brazil does hook the pronoun onto the back with a hyphen, and you'll see it on signs and hear it from receptionists — Sente-se, por favor. Levante-se devagar. Portugal hyphenates far more than this (Diz-me, Ajuda-me); in Brazil that back-hooking outside the reflexive sounds like a document being read aloud.
What you'll actually hear on the street
Brazilian speech has a second, shorter command that grammar books file under tu: the bare present form. Fala mais devagar. Vem cá. Me diz. Olha isso. Espera. Faz assim. These are everywhere — in Rio, in the Northeast, in songs, in your friends' messages — and they carry no rudeness at all. Recognize them and enjoy them; the forms this course drills are fale, venha, diga, faça, because they're correct in writing, correct with strangers, correct in every state, and nobody will ever blink at them. The real politeness dial in Brazil isn't the verb anyway, it's what you wrap around it: por favor, Você pode me passar o sal?, Será que você podia me ajudar?
