Question about the 8 Irregular Affirmative Tú Commands.

Question

I know that for "Decir" we use di to command someone, for example: Díme (Tell me).

But how come in this sentence "Dígasela. (Tell it to her.)," we include the g and a ?

I know that "se" is the Indirect Object and "la" is the Direct object, but I don't understand why we included the "ga" in "Dígasela."

In the sentence " Ponte los zapatos. (Put on your shoes.)," we don't use the subjunctive form of Poner like we did for Decir.

Answer 1

Please keep in mind the difference between informal and formal commands:

Dígaselo is a formal command, aimed at someone you use usted with, not tú. The se stands in for le, her (remember la is the feminine direct object, but as an indirect object it is le for either gender), because it is followed by lo, it. I am not sure what the la would refer to, unless you were referring to telling la palabra, la frase, or something, so I changed it to lo, the generic it.

So instead of Di, you use Diga- the subjunctive. For tú it would be díselo

In Ponte you are using a tú command, so you use the irregular form for poner, pon, plus the reflexive te.

The formal, usted, would be póngase- so instead of pon, you use the subjunctive, ponga, and instead of te, you use the usted reflexive, se.

Here are the eight irregulars, for tú in the positive, unless it is one of these you use the present indicative 3rd person, not the subjunctive. With tú commands the subjunctive is only used for negative commands.

decir di

salir sal

hacer haz

ser sé

ir ve

tener ten

poner pon

venir ven

Ah, so that's why. Sorry, on the article I was reading, it said that all the examples were informal so I was curious as to why that sentence was different from all the others. Thanks for your help. - unbelievable, Oct 16, 2014

Very nice explanation, however, to say that formal commands and familiar negative commands are the subjunctive is confusing - they all just happen to use the same conjugation. Look: "Yo fui marinero de joven" / "Ayer fui a la playa"..................... - 005faa61, Oct 16, 2014

Are we to say that for first person singular "I was" we use first person singular of "I went"? I think not. They just happen to have the same conjugation :-) - 005faa61, Oct 16, 2014

That is the truth, I really meant are constructed in the same manner as, and just used "is/are" as a shorthand to avoid typing all that. Clearly the positive tú command is not the indicative third person present, they are just formed the same way ... - bosquederoble, Oct 16, 2014

except for 8 specific exceptions. In the case of the subjunctive, sometimes I just imagine that I have a "quiero que" in front of the command. I wish I had learned Spanish when I was three years old, and it was automatic- instead I use shortcuts. :) - bosquederoble, Oct 16, 2014

Have a vote amigo. - ian-hill, Oct 16, 2014

I should add, even when considering the subjunctive, it is not the same in the affirmative, as the pronouns are attached to the end in the command forms, and precede the verb with the subjunctive. - bosquederoble, Oct 16, 2014