Turn off the light (please). Turn on the light. Go to your room. Sing me a song. Stand up! Sit down! Fight, fight fight! Be nice. Roll over! Kiss me. Make love to me. Shut up! etc. etc. These are all examples of what we call imperatives or commands.

Italian Imperative or commands

It’s easy to form the imperative especially with “tu” and “Lei”, you just need to switch them in the case of (~are) verbs, for example in the present tense we say:
“tu parli” informal of (you speak) and (Lei parla) formal of (you speak), in the imperative you just need to switch them.
“parla!” means “speak!” informal, “parli!” means “speak!” formal.
For (~ere, ~ire) the affirmative second person singular is identical to the second person singular form of the present tense.
For all conjugations (are/ere/ire), the second person plural (voi) is identical to the second person plural form of the present tense.

So the formation of the imperative in Italian follows a sort of backward rulefor the tu and Lei forms. In other words, parlare generates tu parla and Lei parli which is the opposite of the present form. Samething for ere and ire Italian verbs.

Check out the table below, it will explain it all:

Italian Imperative

parlare vendere aprire

tu parla vendi apri (Normally in present tense you would say Lei parla, tu parli, Lei venda, tu vendi etc.

Lei parli venda apra

Negative commands are usually expressed in Italian with non followed by the infinitive verb. For example:
Don't eat! (non mangiare!)
No smoking! (non fumare!)

Commands for class lessons.

Vada alla porta. Dove sei andata? Sono andata alla porta. Go to the door. Where did you go? I went to the door.

Apra la porta. Che cosa hai fatto? Ho aperto la porta. Open the door. What did you do? I opened the door.

Chiuda la porta. Che cosa hai fatto? Ho chiuso la porta. Shut the door. What did you do? I shut the door.

Apra la finestra. Che hai fatto? Ho aperto la finestra/window.

Spenga la luce. Che ha fatto? Ho spento la luce. Turn the light off. What did you do? I turned off the light.

Accenda la luce. Che hai fatto? Ho accceso la luce. Turn on the light. What did you do? I turned on the light.

Thanks Villa. As you know, it works very similar to the Spanish commands. the Tú and Usted forms are sort of flipped backwards from the normal present tense endings. A note to anyone learning Italian for the first time: When you learn one romance language (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) then it becomes so much easier when you want to learn a second romance languuage.

__________________
Dimmi con chi vai e ti dirò chi sei.

Giacomo, tu hai ragione big time. Giacomo, did you see my thread below on missing the boat if you didn't learn Spanish.?

You missed the boat if you didn't learn Spanish when it comes to ... I hope this gets controversial. As you know I just came back from Italy. When I first got to Vicenza I stayed with an American couple who are in the.
my.lifeinitaly.com/.../you-missed-boat-if-you-didnt-learn-spanish-when-comes-learning-italian-6021.html - Cached - Similar

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