Imperatives! Commands in Latin!

To make a command form, start with the verb’s infinitive, i.e. the second part. For MOST verbs, all you have to do is REmove the RE. What is left is a command form telling one person to do something. For example: Spirare means to breathe, spira means breathe! Tenēre means to hold, tene means hold! Currere means to run, curre means run! Audire means to listen, audi means listen! These are positive commands in the singular.

Now, if you want to give positive commands in the plural, i.e. to two or more people, it is almost as easy! Spirare means to breathe, spirate means breathe! Tenēre means to hold, tenete means hold! Currere means to run, currite means run! Audire means to listen, audite means listen! You can see that for most verbs we just add “te” to make it plural, but in 3 rd (short ere) conjugation, we change the e to i, then add te. (Short ere is ite, you all know what to do for 3!)

Now, if you want to make negative commands, that is, you want to tell people NOT to do something, you are going to start each expression with a form of the verb nolo which is a special irregular verb. What you will actually be saying is “do not wish” or “be unwilling” to do whatever. You will use noli for a singular command and nolite for a plural command. Either way, just follow that with the unchanged infinitive of your verb. Noli currere tells one person “Don’t run!” Nolite currere tells two or more people “Don’t run!”

In other words, Noli is used to say “Don’t!” to one person and Nolite is “Don’t!” to more than one. Just follow it with the infinitive. Here’s a verb with all possible command forms: Specta (Look!) Spectate (Look, you all!) Noli spectare (Don’t look!)Nolite spectare (Don’t look, you all!)

Now, there are four verbs that are exceptions to the rules you have just learned. However they are only “rule breakers” for singular, positive commands. For The other three possible command forms, they follow the rules. These verbs are dicere, ducere, facere, and ferre (ferre looks funny to you because it is irregular). For these four verbs, you take away the entire infinitive ending (ere comes off the first three, re comes off ferre. What’s left is the singular imperative or the command form.

Just remember: Dic and duc, and fac and fer Should have an “e” but it’s just not there!