The Romanian imperative

The Romanian imperative gives a direct instruction, invitation, or request to the person addressed: Vino aici! (Come here!) Romanian has second-person singular and plural forms, and its negative singular has a particularly useful pattern: nu plus the verb without a.

How many imperative forms does Romanian have?

Romanian has an imperative for tu (one familiar person) and one for voi (several people); dumneavoastră uses the plural form, whether it addresses one person formally or several people.

The imperative does not have a separate first- or third-person form. Romanian can express a suggestion or a command involving other people with the present subjunctive, for example Să intrăm! (Let us go in!). See the present subjunctive with să for that wider pattern.

How do you form the affirmative imperative?

For voi, use the second-person plural present form, usually unchanged; for tu, use the verb-specific affirmative form. The singular can match the third-person singular present, the second-person singular present, or neither, so do not apply one ending to every verb.

The comparison is a guide, not a conversion rule. With some transitive verbs, including a vedea, the imperative follows the second-person singular present (vezi); with an intransitive verb such as a merge, it also has the same shape (mergi). A verb such as a trece can show different singular imperative shapes according to its use: Treci acolo! (Go over there!) but Trece-i strada! (Help them cross the street!).

How do you form a negative command?

For tu, put nu before the bare infinitive: remove the infinitive marker a from a cânta and get nu cânta. For voi, put nu before the second-person plural present form: cântați becomes nu cântați.

1. Start with the dictionary form, such as a veni or a hotărî; the infinitive is the form introduced by a. See the Romanian infinitive and dictionary form for this terminology.
2. For a singular negative, remove a: a veni gives veni, and a hotărî gives hotărî.
3. Put nu before that form: Nu veni! (Do not come!) and Nu hotărî! (Do not decide!).
4. For voi or formal dumneavoastră, use nu plus the plural form: Nu veniți! (Do not come!).

Which irregular forms should you memorize?

Several frequent verbs have special affirmative singular forms. Their negative singular still follows the general nu plus bare infinitive pattern. The plural forms below are the standard forms for voi and formal dumneavoastră; a fi is exceptional in the plural too.

Keep the difference in fii versus nu fi: Fii calm! (Stay calm!) but Nu fi zgomotos! (Do not be noisy!). The negative uses one i in fi, not the two i of fii; choose the complement that expresses what should not be the case. The forms vino / nu veni and du-te / nu te duce show the same important contrast between an irregular affirmative and an infinitive-based negative.

Where do short pronouns go?

With an affirmative imperative, an unstressed object or reflexive pronoun follows the verb and is joined with a hyphen: Îmbracă-te! (Get dressed!), Ajută-mă! (Help me!), and Amintește-ți! (Remember!). With a negative imperative, the pronoun comes after nu and before the verb: Nu te îmbrăca! (Do not get dressed!), Nu mă ajuta! (Do not help me!), and Nu-ți aminti! (Do not remember!).

A reflexive verb keeps its reflexive meaning in the command: du-te is the imperative of a se duce, not a spelling variant of plain du. Do not move the pronoun after a negative verb, and do not omit the hyphen in affirmative combinations such as du-te, duceți-vă, or zi-i. For the larger reflexive system, see Romanian reflexive pronouns.

How can you make a request less direct?

The imperative is not automatically rude or polite. It can be a normal instruction, an invitation, a warning, or a firm order; relationship, intonation, setting, and words such as te rog or vă rog shape the effect. With an unfamiliar person or in a service context, a request with the present subjunctive is often a useful choice.

The subjunctive frame să lets the request sound like a request rather than a bare command, but it is not a mechanical politeness switch: Vă rog să intrați is formal because of vă rog and the formal address, while a bare Intrați! can be perfectly normal in an appropriate setting. See polite pronouns for dumneavoastră and neutral, formal, and conversational Romanian for the role of context and register.

Mistakes to avoid

• Do not put the infinitive marker a after nu: write Nu cânta!, not Nu a cânta!.
• For one familiar person, do not replace the negative imperative with an ordinary present statement: Nu veni! means Do not come!, while Nu vii is a present-tense form whose meaning depends on context.
• Do not assume that every affirmative singular imperative equals the tu present or the el / ea present; compare mergi, cântă, vezi, and the irregular vino.
• Do not place a reflexive clitic before an affirmative imperative or after a negative verb: use Îmbracă-te! but Nu te îmbrăca!.
• Do not treat fii and nu fi as the same stem with a simple nu: the affirmative and negative forms are both normative but different.