The imperative voice in German, just like in English, is used to give a command, an instruction, or a prompt. There are three main forms of it, corresponding to the three different ways of saying "you" in German: du, ihr and Sie.
Forming the Imperative with Du
Rule 1: To form the imperative for the 2nd person singular "du," in most of the cases we just have to remove the ending -en from the infinitive and simply use the verb stem.
The pronoun "du" is usually dropped.
Rule 2: In some cases, we add the ending -e to make the pronunciation easier. This happens, for example, when the verb ends in chn-, fn-, or tm-.
Forming the Imperative with Ihr
Rule 3: To form the imperative for the 2nd person plural "ihr," we simply use the simple present of the verb.
The pronoun is also usually dropped in this case.
Forming the Imperative with Sie
Rule 4: To form the imperative with the formal "Sie," you need to use the following formula:
- verb stem + ending -en + pronoun Sie
Using German Imperative to Request Something
Rule 5: We can also use the imperative in German to politely ask someone to do something. This corresponds to the English Can you…? or Could you…?
In this case, we don't add an exclamation mark.