The imperative form is understood as being in the second person (the subject pronoun you is usually omitted, although it can be included for emphasis), with no explicit indication of singular or plural.
For example, Te Reo Māori has the imperative me, which in addition to being put in front of sentences to command (e.g. Me horoi ō ringaringa; "(you must) wash your hands"), is used to assert the imperative mood in sentences that would be translated as "let's (let us)" in English.
A distinct negative imperative form is sometimes said to be in prohibitive mood (abbreviated PROH).
Imperatives are used principally for ordering, requesting or advising the listener to do (or not to do) something: "Put down the gun!
[4] In polite speech, orders or requests are often phrased instead as questions or statements, rather than as imperatives: Politeness strategies (for instance, indirect speech acts) can seem more appropriate in order not to threaten a conversational partner in their needs of self-determination and territory: the partner's negative face should not appear threatened.
[clarification needed][5] As well as the replacement of imperatives with other sentence types as discussed above, there also often exist methods of phrasing an imperative in a more polite manner, such as the addition of a word like please; or a phrase like if you could; or substituting one directive for another, as in the change from will to may e.g, "you will do that" becomes "you may / can do that".
Imperatives are also used for speech acts whose function is not primarily to make an order or request, but to give an invitation, give permission, express a wish, make an apology, et cetera: When written, imperative sentences are often, but not always, terminated with an exclamation mark.
First person plural imperatives (cohortatives) are used mainly for suggesting an action to be performed together by the speaker and the addressee (and possibly other people): "Let's go to Barbados this year", "Let us pray".
A peculiar feature of Dutch is that it can form an imperative mood in the pluperfect tense.
In order to emphasize their addressee, German imperatives can be followed by the nominative personal pronouns du ("thou; you SG") or ihr ("you PL"), respectively.
German has T/V distinction, which means that the pronouns du and ihr are used chiefly towards persons with whom one is privately acquainted, which holds true for the corresponding imperatives.
Since there exists no actual imperative corresponding to Sie, the form is paraphrased with the third-person plural of the present subjunctive followed by the pronoun: Occasionally, the infinitive (Infinitiv or Infinitiv als Imperativ) may be used as a mild or polite imperative, in order to avoid directly addressing the person or to simplify the sentence's construction.
Examples include: Like English, German features many constructions that express commands, wishes, etc.
A third person imperative can be formed using a subjunctive clause with the conjunction que, as in qu'ils mangent de la brioche (let them eat cake).
Like in English, imperative sentences often end with an exclamation mark, e.g. to emphasize an order.
If an imperative takes a pronoun as an object, it is appended to the verb; for example, Dime (Tell me).
In Portuguese, affirmative imperatives for singular and plural second person (tu / vós) derive from their respective present indicative conjugations, after having their final -s dropped.
In Hindi-Urdu (Hindustani) the imperatives are conjugated by adding suffixes to the root verb.
Standard modern Bengali uses the negative postposition /nā/ after a future imperative formed using the -iyo fusional suffix (in addition, umlaut vowel changes in the verb root might take place).
Ancient Greek has imperative forms for present, aorist, and perfect tenses for the active, middle, and passive voices.
A standard version exists, but it is typically replaced colloquially by the impersonal tense.
However, in modern Hebrew, the future tense is often used in its place in colloquial speech, and the proper imperative form is considered formal or of higher register.
In modern Hebrew, for instance, it contains a synonym of the word "no", that is used only in negative imperative (אַל), and is followed by the future tense.
Auxiliary verbs 않다 anta and 말다 malda are used for negative indicative and prohibitive, respectively.
Standard Chinese uses different words of negation for the indicative and the prohibitive moods.
For the imperative form, the second-person singular, Turkish uses the bare verb stem without the infinitive ending -mek/-mak.
The second person double-plural, reserved for super formal contexts (usually public notifications), uses the suffixes -iniz/-ınız/-ünüz/-unuz.
All Turkish imperative suffixes change depending on the verb stem according to the rules of vowel harmony.
Conjugations of the optative mood for second and third-person pronouns exist, but are rarely used in practice.