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Using Imperative Forms in Russian
Imperative in Russian: how to give commands, verb conjugation & endings. Essential grammar for learners. Free guide — 4 min read.
How do you give commands in Russian? Why do Russian verbs end with "й"? These and other questions will be answered today! Let's talk about how to give commands in Russian. If you're just starting your journey to learn Russian or beginning your Russian language learning adventure, make sure to check out our complete beginner's guide first.
1st step - understanding conjugation
For you to understand how to make an imperative form, you have to know how conjugation works in Russian. If you need to review verb conjugation basics, check out our complete guide on Russian verb conjugation, learn about present tense, and see how verbs work in future tense and past tense.
Take a verb - играть
Then, we take away "ть" because it's an ending for infinitives - игра
Then we add whatever ending fits - я играю
And the imperative form will work in the same exact way! We just have other endings that we will need to use.
2nd step - learning imperative conjugation
Now let's learn those endings for imperative forms. We have 2 groups of verbs, and here's how those groups decline to imperative:
The highlighted would be the endings for imperative verbs in Russian.
Папа не показывай (показывать) ему дорогу - dad, don't show him the way
and another example:
Мама, купи (купить) мне мороженое - mom, buy me an ice cream.
Hopefully, it's clear on what endings to use, BUT there's always exceptions! If you want to learn this topic more, click on this image and learn with BeFluent!
3rd step - learning exceptions
Of course, any Russian topic will have exceptions. This is common in Russian grammar - you'll encounter similar exceptions when learning Russian cases and other grammar topics. Here's a short list:
There's more, of course, but these will do for now!