1.
Commands are part of the imperative mood. We use this mood to tell someone to do something in a direct way. We use usted, that is the subject pronoun for the second person singular in forma form, to address a person we don't know well, a person older than us, or simply a person we want to talk to respectfully. There are two ways to do this:
Affirmative form:
The conjugations of verbs are the same as in the present subjunctive form. For example, by using the verb comer we can form the following affirmative formal command:
Coma en este restaurante
Negative form:
To form the negative form, just put the word No before the whole sentence
No coma en este restaurante
So the steps are:
1. Define whether the form is affirmative or negative.
2. Conjugate the verb in the present subjunctive form matching usted.
3. Write the sentence.
2.
The informal form uses the subject pronoun tú because this stands for the second person singular in informal form. We use it when talking to someone we know well, like a family member, a friend, a person the same age as you or even younger, a classmate, among others. Regular forms are formed by using the third person singular form of the simple present. For irregular verbs, we also use the same conjugations for the third person singular in the simple present except some verbs that have their own rules. For instance, the regular verb aprender can be used for the informal command:
Aprende un idioma nuevo
Another example using the irregular verb ser that has its own rule:
Sé valiente3. Yo se la doy
There are sentences where a direct object pronoun and an indirect object pronoun work together. That's why we use the phrase double object pronouns. An Indirect Object Pronoun is a person that, in indirect way, takes the action of a verb. So this tells us to whom or for whom an action is done while A direct Object is a noun that receives, in an direct way, the action of a verb and the direct object pronoun replaces the direct object. In the sentence:
Yo doy la carta a mi papá
The direct object is la carta (it matches the third person singular in feminine form).The indirect object is mi papá (it matches the third person singular in masculine form)
Therefore, we can replace the direct object by the corresponding direct object pronoun which is la and we can replace the indirect object pronoun by the corresponding indirect object pronoun which is le. Since the indirect object pronoun always comes before the direct object pronoun we could write the sentence as:
Yo le la doy
But wait a moment! When direct and indirect object pronouns work together, there are some rule we need to keep in mind. The indirect object le changes to se when this happens, so the correct sentence wouldn't be yo le la doy, but:
Yo se la doy
4.
The preterite tense is one of two simple past tenses. It is used to describe actions that took place or were completed at a certain point in the past while the imperfect is used to talk about past actions, conditions, or events that occurred regularly or frequently or that were in progress in a moment in the past. The key words here are completed actions for the preterite, that is, there was a specific moment in the past where the actions occurred; and actions in progress in the imperfect so we can't define a specific moment when something occurred. Finally, let's take the verb correr to give examples:
Preterite:
Yo corrà en la competencia (I ran in the competition)
Imperfect:
Yo corrÃa en las competencias (I used to run in the competitions)
Notice that we use the used to + verb form to translate the sentence from Spanish to English. This is an easy way to understand these two tenses.
