Imperativ (zapovedni način)
Overview
The imperative is the verb form Serbian uses for commands, requests and instructions: Читај! (Read!), Седите! (Sit down!). Unlike the tenses covered so far, it has no 1st or 3rd person singular - you can only command ти (you, singular), ми (we, as a suggestion - Let's…) or ви (you, plural/formal).
The imperative is built from the present tense, not the infinitive: take the 3rd person plural form (they-form) you already know from present-tense-regular-verbs-a1, and apply one of three mechanical rules depending on its ending.
Formation - three rules from the 3rd person plural
If the 3rd plural ends in -ају, drop -ају and add -ај: читају (they read) → читај. If it ends in -ју after a vowel, drop -ју and add -ј: пију (they drink) → пиј. Everything else - a 3rd plural ending in -е or -у - drops that final vowel and adds -и: говоре (they speak) → говори, пишу (they write) → пиши.
Once you have this 2nd person singular form, the plural endings are automatic: add -мо for ми and -те for ви - говори → говоримо / говорите.
Irregular imperatives
Four very frequent verbs are worth memorizing as fixed forms: буди (бити, be), једи (јести, eat), реци (рећи, say), дођи (доћи, come) - though only буди and реци are actually exceptions to the three-rule mechanism above. Буди is suppletive relative to бити's present tense (сам, си, је…), but not unrelated to бити itself - it comes from бити's own older буд- root, the same root behind the future auxiliary биће; it's сам/си/је that is the true suppletive outlier, borrowed from an unrelated verb. Реци is the trickiest of the four: рећи's 3rd plural is реку, so the rule would predict *реки - but к becomes ц before -и, giving реци. Једи and дођи, by contrast, are perfectly regular: their own 3rd plurals, једу and дођу, already fall under the -у → -и rule above (једу → једи, дођу → дођи) - they're grouped here for how often you'll need them, not because the rule fails.
Моћи (to be able to) has no imperative form at all - use another verb instead, such as Покушај! (Try!).
Negative imperative - не vs. немој(те)
There are two ways to forbid something. Не + an imperfective imperative directly negates the command: Не говори тако! (Don't talk like that!). The alternative, немој(те) (the negative imperative of хтети, used on its own) + да + the present tense, works with any verb, any aspect: Немој да говориш тако!, Немој да закасниш!. Немој(те) can also be followed by a bare infinitive instead of да: Немој говорити тако!.
The aspect rule: prohibitions strongly prefer the imperfective. Не directly in front of a perfective imperative sounds like a warning against accidentally doing something (rare, marked), not an ordinary instruction not to start - so for perfective verbs, reach for немој(те) да instead of bare не. When in doubt, немој(те) да + present is the safe, all-purpose choice, because it accepts either aspect.
Softening a command - хајде, изволите
Хајде turns a command into an encouragement or a shared suggestion - Хајде, идемо! (Come on, let's go!) - and never conjugates. Изволите politely invites someone to do something (sit, enter, take an item) rather than ordering them - Изволите, седите. (Please, sit down.). Both are register tools; see register-style-b2 for the fuller formal/informal system they belong to.
Tables
| 3rd plural ending | Rule | Example |
|---|---|---|
| -aju | drop -aju, add -aj | čitaju → čitaj |
| -ju (after a vowel) | drop -ju, add -j | piju → pij |
| -e / -u (everything else) | drop the final vowel, add -i | govore → govori; pišu → piši |
Examples
Compared with…
English marks the imperative with the bare infinitive and nothing else - Speak!, „Don't speak!“ - with no distinction between commanding one person and several, and no aspect choice at all. Serbian's separate ти/ви endings and its imperfective-vs-perfective decision in negation are both genuinely new categories, not stricter versions of anything English already marks.
Common mistakes
Tips & exceptions
- Find the verb's 3rd person plural first (you already know it from present-tense-regular-verbs-a1), then apply the three-way rule mechanically - the imperative almost never needs to be memorized separately for regular verbs.
- буди, једи, реци, дођи are extremely frequent - learn all four as fixed chunks; буди and реци are the true exceptions to the three-way rule, while једи and дођи just save you a step (same rule, applied to једу/дођу, which are themselves worth knowing by heart).
- Немој(те) да + present is the safe, all-purpose negative command - it accepts both aspects, so default to it whenever you're unsure which prohibition pattern fits.
- Моћи has no imperative form at all - a command to be able to do something makes no sense; reach for a different verb (e.g. Покушај!, Try!) when you need to encourage an attempt.
- A reflexive verb's се keeps the exact same second-position rule in imperative clauses as everywhere else - since the subject is dropped, се simply follows the verb: „Обуци се!“ (see reflexive-verbs-a2).
Summary
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