German Imperative: du, ihr, Sie Commands (and sei, seid, seien Sie)
By Michael McGettrickUpdated 27 September 2026
English has one command form. Point at a person, drop the subject, and the verb does the rest: Come!, Eat!, Be quiet! German has three, because German never lets you forget who you are talking to, and a command is exactly the sentence type where that choice cannot be avoided.
The three forms track the three ways of saying you: for one person you know well, for more than one person you know well, and for anyone you would address formally, whether that is one person or a room full of them. Learn where each one comes from and the whole system stops being three things to memorise and becomes one idea applied three times. This structure is on the AQA GCSE German (8662) specification at Higher tier.
The du-form: drop the ending
Take the form of the present tense and remove -st. That is the entire rule for most verbs:
!- Come!!- Go!!- Do it! / Make it!
No subject pronoun, and usually an exclamation mark, though everyday requests drop it: (Come in) said in a normal tone needs no shouting.
Some stems cannot lose the ending cleanly, because what is left is nearly unpronounceable. Verbs whose stem ends in -t, -d, or certain consonant clusters keep a final -e:
!- Work!!- Wait!!- Open it!
Modern German also allows an optional -e on almost any -command (! alongside !), but the short form is what people actually say, so learn that one first and treat the long form as something you will only meet in writing.
Strong verbs: two vowel patterns, two different outcomes
Some strong verbs change their stem vowel in the and er/ forms of the present tense. What happens to that change in the imperative depends on which vowel is involved, and the two patterns pull in opposite directions.
e to i or ie: the change survives. These verbs keep their changed vowel in the imperative and drop the -st exactly like a regular verb:
| infinitive | du (present) | du-imperative |
|---|---|---|
| ! | |
| ! | |
| ! | |
| ! | |
| Lies! | |
| ! | |
| ! |
! (Look!) and ! (Eat your bread!) both keep the vowel a learner would expect from the present tense, which is one reason this group feels easier once you already know the present-tense conjugation.
a to ä: the change disappears. Verbs that add an umlaut in the form lose it again the moment you form a command:
| infinitive | du (present) | du-imperative |
|---|---|---|
| ! | |
| ! | |
| ! | |
| ! |
! (Drive carefully!) has no umlaut anywhere, even though the present tense you would build the sentence from does. There is no deeper logic to memorise here beyond the split itself: e-changing verbs keep the change, a-changing verbs lose it. Once the two groups are separate in your head, neither produces a surprise.
The ihr-form: no change at all
The command is the plainest of the three, because it is identical to the ordinary form of the present tense, minus the pronoun:
!- Come! (to several people)!- Work!!- Eat!!- Drive!
Notice and here keep exactly the spelling of the present tense, with no vowel change, because the vowel changes that affect do not touch in the first place. There is genuinely nothing extra to learn for this form beyond removing .
The Sie-form: verb first, pronoun after
The formal command puts the conjugated verb in front of , the same order German uses for a yes-or-no question, but said with command intonation rather than a question mark:
!- Come!!- Work!!- Take a seat!
This is the form you will meet most often in writing, because instructions on forms, in manuals, on signs and in customer service are almost always addressed to a stranger: (Please wait here), (Drive carefully). It never drops , and it never changes the verb's vowel, because the form of the present tense never changes it either.
Sei, seid, seien Sie: sein breaks the rules
is the one verb whose imperative you cannot derive from any of the patterns above, because its present tense (, , , , , ) is already the most irregular verb in the language:
| person | imperative | example | meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| ! | ! | Be quiet! |
| ! | ! | Be on time! (plural) |
| ! | so . | Be so kind. |
Only one of the three is built the normal way. is not minus an ending; is the one regular form, identical to the present-tense ; is the clearest giveaway, because it uses the subjunctive stem - with a full ending rather than the ordinary present-tense . Every German learner simply learns these three as vocabulary, and there is no shortcut around that; the reward is that is common enough that the three forms come up constantly, in phrases as everyday as (Don't be cross) and as formal as (Be honest).
Negative commands: nicht in the usual place
German has no separate "don't" form. A negative command is simply an ordinary command with added, sitting where always sits, as late as possible while staying in front of anything that closes the clause:
spät!- Don't come too late!!- Don't forget that!so unhöflich!- Don't be so rude!!- Don't do that!
There is no equivalent of the English helper don't to learn separately: build the positive command first, then drop into the sentence exactly as negation already teaches for statements.
Reflexive verbs in the imperative: the pronoun changes with the person
A reflexive verb such as (to sit down) keeps its reflexive pronoun in every command form, and the pronoun has to match whichever of the three forms you are using:
->!- Sit down!->!- Sit down! (plural)->!- Sit down! (formal)
Only the form keeps unchanged, because is already the reflexive pronoun that matches everywhere else in the language. The and forms switch to and , the ordinary reflexive pronouns for those two persons, sitting immediately after the verb exactly as an object pronoun would.
Softening a command: doch, mal and bitte
A bare imperative can sound blunt in German just as it can in English, and the same three small words fix it every time:
her!- Come here (a friendlier "come here" than the bare version).!- Do sit down (an invitation more than an order)..- Please wait a moment.
None of these words changes the verb form. They sit inside the sentence and soften the tone, and a learner who adds or to almost every command will sound noticeably more natural than one who does not.
Mistakes English speakers make
Keeping the subject pronoun. English can say you come here as an emphatic command; German drops the subject in the and forms entirely. ! is not how German builds a command; the pronoun simply is not there (for emphasis German puts it after the verb, as in her!, but that is a colloquial extra, not the basic form).
Forgetting the umlaut rule runs backwards for a-verbs. Learners who have just mastered often build ! by analogy with !. The two vowel changes behave oppositely, and there is no way round learning which is which.
Treating like a regular verb. ! is a guess built from the present tense, and the same guess fails for too ( !); only happens to match its present-tense form. , and have to be learned as their own small set.
Using where belongs, or the reverse. A formal command aimed at a friend ( !) sounds oddly distant; an informal one aimed at a stranger (!) sounds rude. The imperative makes this choice unavoidable in a way ordinary statements do not, since every command commits to one of the three forms.
What to do next
Learn the -form first, because it is what you will use with everyone you already speak to informally, and drill the two vowel-change groups (e to i/ie keeps the change, a to ä loses it) as a pair rather than verb by verb. Add next, since it is the safe default with anyone you have not met, and it never has an exception to worry about. Leave until the other two feel automatic, then just memorise its three forms outright; there is no pattern hiding underneath them to discover later. The German course puts commands into practice from the earliest lessons, since telling someone to do something is one of the first jobs any beginner needs a sentence for.