"DÍMELO YA": INFORMAL/FORMAL COMMANDS IN SPANISH

Have you ever had the need to scream "listen to me!" at that one friend who keeps blabbering on? Or tell the class to "be quiet" because you can't hear the IB coordinator making an announcement on the intercom? If so, you're looking for mandatos, "Spanish commands." These are used to tell someone to do something without the extra "It's necessary that you" or "It's important to..." of the subjunctive. You use mandatos to straight up tell someone, "Hey, do this."

There are two kinds of commands: formal and informal.

The tú commands are informal and are used for friends, close family members, peers, those younger than you, and pets.

The usted or ustedes commands are formal and are used for people you don't know well, those older than you, and those you want to (or should) show respect towards (such as managers or teachers).

Mandatos are conjugated using specific conjugation rules. The following chart outlines the conjugation rules:

For example, if you were to tell your friend, "cut the paper," you would conjugate "cortar" in the tú afirmativo form. Thus, you would say "corta el papel" because the 3rd person singular of "cortar" is "corta".

If you told your friend, "don't cut the paper," you would conjugate "cortar" in the tú negativo form (since you are telling them NOT to do something). Thus, you would say "no cortes el papel."

If you told someone you respect to "cut the paper", you would conjugate for the usted afirmativo. It would be "Corte el papel." If it were multiple people, it would be "corten el papel" because you switch between the 3rd person singular/plural of the subjunctive tense when using formal commands.

It starts to get tricky when you involve direct and indirect object pronouns.

Sometimes when you tell people to do something, you might tell them to give something to another person or help someone with an activity. When this is the case, direct and indirect objects are used. Consider the following sentence:

Help him cut the paper.

"Cut the paper" is the direct object because it answers what the verb (help) is doing. "Him" is the indirect object because it answers for whom the action (help) is being done.

In Spanish, the direct and indirect objects usually go in front of the verb (for example, we could say "se lo dimos", or "we gave it to him"). Mandatos follows the same rules, except in the case of the tú afirmativo.

If you are conjugating for the tú afirmativo and are using direct/indirect object pronouns, you MUST attach them to the end of the verb.

So if you want to tell your friend, "tell me," you would say, "díme."

In the example, "me" is the indirect object. Because the tú afirmativo form is being used, the "me" is attached to the verb instead of being in front of it (for example, "me dí" would be incorrect).

There is one last thing that you need to know about Mandatos, and that is that there are irregular verbs for the tú affirmative form.

The following chart displays some of the common ones:

That's all for mandatos! Now go out there and tell your friend to stop procrastinating and do their Spanish homework! If you have any questions, you can contact us using the chat box on the bottom right of our website or reaching us in person. Until next time, ¡Ciao!