Imperative is a form of the verb that is used when you give commands.
In English, where most forms look the same, you don’t have to do anything.
- Look!
In German, there’s a small rule. But it’s boring, and so I didn’t talk about it yet.
In short:
The formal form looks like the infinitive.
- Geben Sie mir ein Bier!
- Give me a beer, Sir/man!
The non-formal du-form (which is what you’ll need), is like the normal du-form but without the “st”
- Gib mir ein Bier!
- Give me a beer!
Oh and no vowel change from “a” to “ä”.
- ich schlafe, du schläfst
but
- Schlaf gut!
- Sleep well!
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I’ve got very confused after watching one of easy german’s video, whose title is”Friendships in German”. In this video, Janusz started his interview and asked a man:”Beschreibe uns deinen Freundeskreis.” Isn’t it an imperative? Then why it doesn’t suit in any of the imperative rules in textbooks? And Easy German even get my question replied, which is ‘ “Beschreibe…” ist in diesem Fall richtig! “Beschreib..” wird manchmal umgangssprachlich benutzt, aber nur in der gesprochenen Sprache. “Beschreiben Sie…” wäre die Höflichkeitsform.” ‘
But I still can’t understand! Can you be very good and explain it to me?
Oh, darn it! As soon as I got that published, I saw Elisabeth’s comment…Anyway thank you, I’m already clear now.
Janusz is generally speaking a bit “too textbook”. Both “beschreib” and “beschreibe” are correct in practice and “beschreib” is what the vast majority of Germans would use in daily life.
Easy German in the forum is a bit on the formal side.
“wird manchmal umgangssprachlich benutzt, aber nur in der gesprochenen Sprache.”
This, in my opinion, is misrepresenting realities of German.
You can find plenty of “beschreib” in books.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22beschreib%20mir%22&tbm=bks&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1983,cd_max:2016&lr=lang_de
Does that help?
Yes, thank you! The reason why I get confused is my text book and teacher didn’t mention “e” form for imperative at all. So I just had no way expecting German surprisingly to have the fourth form for imperative!
Actually, us Germans we’re confused about imperative as well.
There are for example many Youtube channels that try to speak “proper” and use forms like “gebe dir Zeit” instead of “gib dir Zeit”, which is hilarious.
I think for some reason people think that the version without “e” sounds “colloquial” and then try to use the “proper” form when they want to sound smart, but in this case it ends up sounding artificial and forced.
Guten Tag. I’m learning German in my old age, it’s my retirement project. Love your blog. I have a problem understanding the imperative (spoken form) when you can (or must, or should or not ? ) add a @e@ to the second person singular. Any explanation would help. Thank you.
In spoken, as a rule of thumb, you can always NOT use that “e”. Sometimes native speakers do use it when they want to sound correct, but it always strikes me as stiff.