Pronouns and the Commands

As you may recall, there are only three places we can put object pronouns:

They either come directly before a conjugated verb or negative command: Yo los doy or No lo hagas.
or are attached to an infinitive or gerund Yo estoy dándolos or Yo voy a darlos.
or directly attached to the command form of a verb: Délos or Tráigalos or Hazlo or Suéltelo.

It is the relationship of the object pronouns with the commands which we will examine here.
Let's begin with a look at Direct and Indirect Object Pronouns with the Informal Tú Commands: We'll tell our dog Fifi to bring in the newspaper:

Fifi, Bring it!
First we form an informal command out of our verb, Traer.
To turn this into an affirmative command, we take the third person singular form (or the tú form, dropping the "s") : Trae.
We now identify our direct object (DO) - the newspaper, el periódico. It is masculine and singular, so our pronoun is lo.
We attach lo directly onto trae to form our informal command to Fifi: Fif, ¡Tráelo!
Don't forget we need an accent mark to preserve the original pronunciation of trae.

What if we want to tell Fifi not to bring in the paper? With the Informal negative commands we need to use the subjunctive form.

First we take the same verb, Traer , and identify the first person singular (Yo ) form: Traigo
Now we remove the"o" which leaves us with traig -
And we add the opposite ending "as" to = Traigas.
Now, we take our direct object pronoun and place it directly before the command after the No.
And we tell Fifi: ¡No lo traigas!

Let's do another:

Manolo compra las papas.	Manolo las compra.
verb DO	DO verb
Manolo buys the potatoes.	Manolo buys them.

Now let's tell Manolo, "Buy them!"

We use the Informal command form of Comprar: compra
We add the Direct Object (DO) pronoun: las
To end up with our command to Manolo, ¡Cómpralas!
Don't forget to add the accent to retain the original pronunciation of compra!

Let's tell him not to buy the potatoes: Manolo, don't buy them!

We still use Comprar, but for the Informal Negative command, we start with the Yo form, compro
We take off the "o" and add the opposite ending "es"
To get our negative command: No compres
Now we add the Direct Object pronoun "las"
And we place them directly in front of the command: Manolo, ¡No las compres!
Remember the word "no" in Spanish commands corresponds with our "don't" in English.

¡No lo hagas!	Don't do it!
¡No me digas eso!	Don't tell me that!
¡Muéstramelo!	Show it to me!
¡Suéltalo ahora mismo!	Drop it now!

Double Object Pronouns work the same way with the Formal Commands. Just as before, there are only three places for object pronouns: They either come directly before a conjugated verb or negative command: Yo les doy una boleta, or ¡No me diga! , attached to an infinitive or gerund: Yo estoy dándolos; Yo voy a darles una fiesta or directly attached to the affirmative command form of a verb: Déles un regalo.

As before, the Indirect always precedes the Direct Object Pronoun (I-D) and the Indirect object pronouns Le and Les convert to Se if followed by a Direct Object Pronoun:

Pedro le va a traer el menú a Susana.
IO verb DO IO specifier

Pedro se lo va a traer.
IO DO verb

Let's look at an example using a Formal command (the object pronouns follow the identical I-D pattern as with the Informal Tú commands.)

To turn the sentence above into a Formal command, we first change Trae to its Formal command form:

Identify the Yo form: Traigo
Remove the "o" and add the opposite ending "a" = Traiga.
Now, we add the object pronouns= Traiga + se + lo = ¡Tráigaselo!

Let's do another:

Él nos compra las papas para nosotros.
IO verb DO IO specifier

Él nos las compra.
IO DO verb

We make our command out of the verb: Compro - "o" = compr + opposite ending "e" = compre.
Add the Object Pronouns: Compre + noslas = ¡Cómprenoslas!
Don't forget to add the accent to retain the original pronunciation of compre!

Negative Commands and the Pronouns

When commands (Formal or Informal) are in the negative, we must "unwrap" the Object pronouns.
Let's use this example of a Formal command:

Pedro, ¡cómprelas!

Pedro, buy them!

Now we want to tell Pedro NOT to buy them.
We simply start with No ("do not") and peel off the Object pronoun and place it after the No and before the command:

¡No las compre!

Don't buy them!

We no longer need to place an accent on the command itself when there are no pronouns attached.

Tráigala	No la traiga
Póngalo en la mesa	No lo ponga en la mesa
Córtelas	No las corte

When there are Double object pronouns, we always put the Indirect object pronoun before the Direct Object pronoun. This applies whether the pronouns are attached to an affirmative command or come before a negative command.

¡Sírvanoslo!	¡No nos lo sirva!
¡Cómpremelas!	¡No me las compre!
¡Tráigaselas!	¡No se las traiga!

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