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.
1st step - understanding conjugation
For you to understand how to make an imperative form, you have to know how conjugation works in Russian.
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. Here's a short list:
идти will turn to иди
ходить - ходи
есть - ешь
пить - пей
There's more, of course, but these will do for now!
