Imperative in German

Imperative in German are usually followed by an exclamation mark, when giving orders and instructions.

However, they do not require an exclamation mark if they are not being used to give an order or instruction.

For example, they can also be used where we might say Can you… or Could you … in English.

 There are three main forms of the Imperative in German that are used to give instructions or orders to someone.

These correspond to the three different ways of saying you: du, ihr and Sie. However, it is only in the Sie form of the imperative that the pronoun usually appears – in the du and ihr forms, the pronoun is generally dropped, leaving only the verb.

 Most weak, strong and mixed verbs form the present tense imperative in the following way:

 Note that the -e of the du form is often dropped, but NOT where the verb stem ends, for example, in chn-, fn-, or tm-. In such cases, the -e is kept to make the imperative easier to pronounce.

 Weak verbs ending in -eln or -ern also retain this -e, but the other -e in the stem itself is often dropped in spoken German.

 Any vowel change in the present tense of a strong verb also occurs in the du form of its imperative and the -e mentioned above is generally not added. However, if this vowel change in the present tense involves adding an umlaut, this umlaut is NOT added to the du form of the imperative.

 Note also that the verb sein (meaning to be) is a strong, irregular verb. Its imperative forms are also irregular and the du, Sie and less common wir forms are not the same as the present tense forms of the verb.