One thing that struck me as strange for a long time was how the infinitive (full -re ending, like parlare, capire, volere) kept popping up from time to time in a seemingly imperative manner.
Well, truth be told it still seems to happen occasionally in a manner I can't explain, but I managed to finally solve the bulk of the mystery by one day stumbling on the fact that you use the infinitive for the negative imperative! (*for the informal "tu", which is the most common...)
OK OK, so many of you might say "of course! That's what it says in the book...". That might be true, but somehow I missed that page. Others of you might be saying, "Huh? What the heck are you talking about?", so I'll break it down a bit.
An imperative is a command, when you tell someone to do something, such as "Bring me the book!" or "Close the door!" or "Shut up!". These are considered positive imperatives, and are conjugated according to a certain scheme... "Portami il libro!", "Chiudi la porta!", "Stai zitto!".
A negative imperative, naturally, is the opposite- when you tell someone to NOT do something. "Don't go to work", "Don't leave me", "Don't worry". All of these are formed simply with the infinitive... "Non andare al lavoro", "Non mi lasciare", "Non ti preoccupare".
To the untrained eye, those can seem a bit strange... "Don't to-go to work"? "Don't to worry yourself"? But lucky you, you're no longer untrained!
Maybe I'm wrong, but I could have swore I learned that when it's a command, you change the tu form to the lei form... example: Chiuda la porta! Am I wrong? Probably, but tell me what I missed! :)
ReplyDeleteThat's right, for *positive* imperatives like your example, which is telling someone TO close the door. If you were yelling at them in the other direction, though, to NOT close the door, it would be: "non chiudere la porta!"
ReplyDeleteSorry, I didn't realize what you were really commenting on: I used the example "chiudi la porta" in the post.
ReplyDelete"chiudi la porta" is the correct imperative for "tu", informal.
"chiuda la porta" is the imperative for "lei", formal.
The idea that you switch from tu to lei for the imperative works for -are verbs, like the example "portami il libro". Otherwise, for "-ere" and "-ire" verbs, I think it's just the same second person form- that is, it doesn't change.
For formal imperatives you're basically changing to the subjunctive. So, porta (tu)-> porti, chiudi (tu) -> chiuda.
Kind of tough to keep straight. Hopefully that helps a tad, though.