Negative commands with tú, usted(es) and vosotros

No hables tan rápido, por favor.Don't speak so fast, please.

Telling someone not to do something uses a different set of forms from telling them to do it. For tú, usted, ustedes and vosotros, Spanish has one single rule: a negative command is always no + the present subjunctive form for that person. Once you know the subjunctive, there's no new conjugation to learn here — just where to use it. (Nosotros negative commands — "let's not…" — follow the same subjunctive logic but are their own topic, not covered here.)

Quick shortcut: no + present subjunctive, for tú/usted/ustedes/vosotros. No hables. No hable. No habléis. No hablen. For usted/ustedes, that's the exact same form as the affirmative command — for tú and vosotros, it's a different form from their affirmative commands.

One rule for tú, usted, ustedes and vosotros

Because the negative command is always no + subjunctive, you can build it for any of these four persons the moment you know that person's subjunctive form:

No hables tan rápido. (Don't speak so fast — to a friend.) No coma tanto. (Don't eat so much — formally, to one person.) No escribáis con lápiz. (Don't write in pencil — to a group in Spain.) No hablen todos a la vez. (Don't all speak at once.)

Everything that's true of the subjunctive stem carries straight over: irregular yo-based stems (teng-, hag-, dig-), stem changes, and the -car/-gar/-zar spelling adjustments all behave exactly as in present subjunctive: forms — nothing extra to learn for the negative.

tú: a completely different form from the affirmative

This is the one that trips people up, because the affirmative tú command and the negative tú command don't share a mechanism at all. For regular verbs, the affirmative copies the él/ella form of the present (habla); the negative is the subjunctive tú form (no hables) — two unrelated shapes for the same verb. (The eight irregular affirmative commands don't follow that él/ella pattern either, as the table just below shows.)

✅ (afirmativo) Habla más despacio. vs. ✅ (negativo) No hables tan rápido. — same verb, same person, genuinely different forms.

The eight irregular affirmative commands change the most, since their negative counterparts follow the subjunctive stem instead:

No hagas eso. (Don't do that.) No vayas solo. (Don't go alone.) No seas tonto. (Don't be silly.)

Vos negative commands piggyback on the same subjunctive forms already covered in present subjunctive: forms — most varieties simply reuse the tú subjunctive (no hables, no tengas), while others use their own stressed vos subjunctive ending (no hablés, no tengás).

usted and ustedes: no new form to learn

Here the news is good: the affirmative usted/ustedes command is already built from the subjunctive, so the negative command is the exact same word — just with no placed in front. Nothing else changes:

• (afirmativo) Hable más despacio. → (negativo) No hable más despacio.
• (afirmativo) Coman algo. → (negativo) No coman nada.
• (afirmativo) Vaya con cuidado. → (negativo) No vaya solo.

vosotros: its own form too, different from its affirmative

The affirmative vosotros command has its own separate shape — take the infinitive, drop the final -r, and add -d: hablar → hablad, comer → comed, escribir → escribid. The negative vosotros command doesn't reuse that shape at all; like every other person, it's simply no + the subjunctive vosotros/as form:

❌ No hablad tan alto. → ✅ No habléis tan alto. — the affirmative shape (hablad) is never used with no.

Vosotros/as is the informal plural "you" mainly in Spain; see address forms for where each form is used across the Spanish-speaking world. Elsewhere, ustedes covers the plural "you" for every group, so its negative command above already covers that case.

Where pronouns go

Object and reflexive pronouns behave the opposite way in a negative command compared with an affirmative one: instead of attaching to the end, they go back in front of the verb, as their own word — see position of object pronouns for the full rule.

✅ (afirmativo) Cómelo. vs. ✅ (negativo) No lo comas. — the pronoun moves from the end to the front the moment no enters the picture.

No te preocupes. (Don't worry.) No me digas eso. (Don't tell me that.) No os levantéis todavía. (Don't get up yet — vosotros.)

Common mistakes

• ❌ No habla tan rápido. → ✅ No hables tan rápido. (the negative tú command needs the subjunctive hables, not the present-tense/affirmative-looking habla.)
• ❌ No sé malo. → ✅ No seas malo. (sé is the affirmative command of ser — the negative needs the subjunctive seas.)
• ❌ No cómpralo. → ✅ No lo compres. (a pronoun never attaches in a negative command — it goes back in front, unattached.)
• ❌ No hablad tan alto. → ✅ No habléis tan alto. (the affirmative vosotros shape hablad is never used with no; the negative needs the subjunctive habléis.)

Quick check

1. Give the negative tú command of hacer.
2. Give the negative usted command of hablar.
3. What's wrong with No hablad tan alto, and how would you fix it?
4. Rewrite Cómelo as a negative command.
5. Give the negative ustedes command of ir.

Key takeaways

• For tú, usted, ustedes and vosotros, a negative command is always no + the present subjunctive form for that person — one rule covers all four at once.
• tú has two unrelated shapes: in regular verbs the affirmative copies the él/ella present form (habla), the negative always uses the subjunctive (no hables) — and the eight irregular affirmative commands don't follow that él/ella pattern either.
• usted/ustedes already use the subjunctive for their affirmative command, so the negative is the identical word with no added — no new form to learn.
• vosotros has its own affirmative shape (infinitive minus -r, plus -d: hablad) that's never used with no — the negative needs the subjunctive vosotros form instead (no habléis).
• A pronoun that attaches to the end of an affirmative command moves back in front, unattached, in the negative: Cómelo → No lo comas.