El imperativo: habla, coma, no vengas
The imperativo is the shortest sentence Spanish builds: one word, and something happens. ¡Ven! ¡Come! ¡Siéntese! You need three addressees and no more — tú for someone you are close to, usted for someone you keep a respectful distance from, and ustedes for any group on earth, your friends included. Each of the three has an affirmative form and a separate negative one, and the tú row is the one that visibly changes when you say no: ¡Come! turns into ¡No comas!
Three listeners, not four
Every command in this lesson is aimed at one of three people. tú — your brother, your friend, a child. usted — a neighbour you address respectfully, someone older, a stranger in an office. ustedes — two or more people of any kind whatsoever. That last row is the one to fix in your head now, because ustedes is the only plural 'you' this course has: it covers your two best friends at a table and a room full of people you have never met, with no change of form and no change of temperature. Where tú and usted genuinely differ in warmth, their plural does not — it is simply ustedes both times. So the ladder is three rungs, each with a yes form and a no form, six shapes in total per verb, and half of them you can already build from the present tense.
Affirmative TÚ: borrow the present
Take the él / ella form of the present tense and stop there. hablar gives habla — ¡Habla más despacio! comer gives come — ¡Come tu pan! escribir gives escribe — ¡Escribe las palabras! Nothing is added, nothing is cut. Stem changes ride along untouched, because they were already in that present form: cerrar → cierra, dormir → duerme, pedir → pide, empezar → empieza, volver → vuelve. Then there are eight short irregulars that refuse the pattern, and they happen to be eight of the most-used verbs in the language, so learn them as a chant: di (decir), haz (hacer), ve (ir), ven (venir), pon (poner), sal (salir), sé (ser), ten (tener). All eight are one syllable, and ve doubles as the command from ver as well — context has never once failed to sort that out.
USTED and USTEDES: flip the vowel
Here the endings swap sides. An -ar verb takes -e for usted and -en for ustedes: hable, hablen. An -er or -ir verb takes -a and -an: coma, coman; escriba, escriban. That is the whole mechanism — the vowel you expect is replaced by the other one. Build these from the yo form of the present rather than the infinitive, and every irregular falls into line for free: tengo → tenga, tengan; digo → diga, digan; pongo → ponga, pongan; salgo → salga, salgan; vengo → venga, vengan; hago → haga, hagan. Five verbs have no -o in the yo row to work from and simply have to be memorised: ser → sea, sean; ir → vaya, vayan; saber → sepa, sepan; dar → dé, den; estar → esté, estén. If these forms look like a tense you have not met, that is because they are: this is the subjuntivo, and lesson 29 gives it the full treatment. Today you only need it as a command.
Ustedes is what you say to your friends
This is worth its own paragraph, because learners arrive expecting otherwise. Across Latin America ustedes carries no formality at all. Coman, muchachos is what a mother says to her own children; Siéntense, por favor is what a clerk says to two strangers. Same word, same verb form, and the choice of warmth simply is not made in the plural. In the singular the distinction is alive and well — Ven acá to your brother, Venga acá, por favor to a stranger — so keep tú and usted apart there. But the moment you are speaking to more than one person, the decision disappears and you say ustedes. Note also that ustedes takes exactly the same verb form as ellos / ellas: hablen, coman, vengan, no se preocupen. One form covers 'you all' and 'they', in this tense as in every other. If a book written for Spain has shown you a second plural command form, park it — lesson 44 explains what it is and why you will not be using it.
Saying no changes one row
Negative commands all run on the usted shape you just built, with no in front. For usted and ustedes literally nothing else happens: hable → no hable, hablen → no hablen; coma → no coma, coman → no coman. For tú the form changes, and this is the single most-missed detail of the lesson: the negative tú command is the usted form plus an -s. ¡Habla! but ¡No hables! ¡Come! but ¡No comas! ¡Escribe! but ¡No escribas! The irregulars follow the same recipe from their yo stem: ven → no vengas, haz → no hagas, pon → no pongas, di → no digas, sal → no salgas, ve → no vayas, ten → no tengas, sé → no seas. Read that list twice. The affirmative and the negative of the same verb often share not a single letter, and a learner who tries to bolt no onto ¡Ven! produces something no one says.
Where the pronouns go
Pronouns switch sides depending on whether the command is a yes or a no. In the affirmative they attach to the back of the verb as one word, and an accent usually appears to hold the original stress in place: ayuda + me = ¡Ayúdame!, come + lo = ¡Cómelo!, sienta + te = ¡Siéntate!, digan + las = ¡Díganlas!, laven + se = ¡Lávense las manos! Short ones need no accent because the stress is already where it belongs: dime, ponlo, hazlo. In the negative they go back in front of the verb, exactly where they live in an ordinary sentence: No me ayudes. No lo comas. No te sientes. No se preocupen. Two details specific to this course. The plural reflexive is always se — siéntense, lávense, cuídense — and it attaches with an accent, just like any other pronoun. And the direct object for a man is lo: ¡Llámalo! is 'call him', ¡Llámala! is 'call her'. le stays where it belongs, as the indirect object: ¡Dile la verdad!
Softening: por favor, usted, -ito, no más
A bare imperative is not rude here, but it almost never travels alone. The commonest wrapper is por favor, before or after: Pase, por favor. Por favor, espera un momento. The second is the diminutive, which does more politeness work in this region than any other single device — Espéreme tantito. Siéntese un ratito. Hable despacito. Ahorita se lo traigo. Nothing there is small; it is all softness. Third is no más placed after the verb, an invitation rather than an order: Pase no más. Siéntese no más. Sírvase no más. And fourth, you can dodge the imperative altogether by asking: ¿Me pasas el agua? ¿Me puede ayudar, por favor? — both are commands wearing a question mark. Pushing the other way, when you want someone to get on with it, the region has its own noises: ándale and órale in Mexico, dale in the Southern Cone. And the one phrase you will hear more than any other in this shape: No se preocupe.
Spelling repairs
Three families of verbs change their spelling — not their sound — the moment the vowel flips. Verbs in -car turn c into qu: buscar → busque, busquen, no busques. Verbs in -gar insert a u: llegar → llegue, lleguen, no llegues. Verbs in -zar turn z into c: empezar → empiece, empiecen, no empieces. Every one of these repairs exists to keep the sound of the infinitive intact under a new vowel; nothing is being pronounced differently. Note that the -zar repair is invisible to your ear, since z and c before e are both plain /s/ across Latin America — empiece and the misspelling empiese sound identical, so this one has to be learned with your eyes. Stem changes, meanwhile, carry into these forms just as they did into the present: empiece keeps its ie, vuelva keeps its ue, pida keeps its i.
