Verbs

Friday, November 20th, 2009

The future tense is used in order to express events that will happen in the future. Any Italian verb that is conjugated in the future tense is translated back into English with the word "will"

In order to conjugate a verb in the future tense, you always start with your infinitive. Remember that infinitives end in "are" "ere" and "ire".

The next thing I have to do is to drop the final "e" from the infinitive.

The third thing I do is to add the appropriate ending depending on what the subject of the sentence is.

Past Tense with "essere" (to be)

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Most of the time the past tense in Italian is formed by taking the verb "avere" + the past participle. There are however some cases where instead of using "avere" we must use essere + the past particple

Reflexive Verbs in the Passato Prossimo

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

To conjugate a reflexive verb in the past tense (passato prossimo) we need:

Verbs: Imperfect tense

Friday, October 16th, 2009

The imperfect tense is probably one of the easiest tenses to form in Italian since it has very few irregular verbs. We use the imperfect tense to describe past tense events that are ongoing or have no definite end. This tense many times corresponds to the English expressions "was" "were" and "used to". When we use these expressions we are talking about an event in the past that never really stopped. Here are some examples:

When I was young I used to go to the movies all the time.

They were listening to the radio when...

My mother always used to make frittata for me as a child.

Italian Reflexive Verbs

Verbs in Italaian are called reflexive when the subject is carrying out the action with respect to himself or herself, for example when a man combs his hair. As you might expect, not all verbs can be reflexive: only the ones that the subject can do himself, such as falling asleep.
To create a reflexive verb, you add the ending -si, etiher at the end of the verb in its infinitvie state (addomentarsi) or before the verb when it is conjugated (si e' addormentato).

Past Tense ( Avere )

Learn Italian - Italian for beginners

In English, the past tense is a simple tense meaning it is only made up of a single verb. For example: I spoke . In Italian however, the past is a compound tense meaning that it is made up of an auxilary verb and a past partciple. So in Italian you wouldn't say "I spoke" but rather 'I have spoken (io ho parlato ). Here is how you do it:

First we need to learn th verb "avere" which means "to have"

avere in the present tense
Io Ho = I have
Tu Hai = you (informal) have
Lui Ha = he or she has or it can mean you (formal) have
Noi Abbiamo = we have
Voi Avete = you (plural/informal) have

Italian Paste Tense

ITALIAN for Beginners

Tempo Passato : Italian Past Tense

Italian uses two past tenses to describe actions that happened in the past, L’imperfetto (the imperfect tense) and Passato Prossimo (the perfect tense).

L’IMPERFETTO

This tense is used to describe actions that continued in the past over a period of time or occurred multiple times. In Italian this tense is formed by a single verb while in English it is formed by two verbs, an auxiliary verb and an past participle.

Italian Future tense

FUTURE TENSE IN ITALIAN ( Tempo Futuro )

Italian language has two future tenses - il Futuro Semplice and il Futuro Composto while English has only one future tense.

IL FUTURO SEMPLICE

The simple future tense (il Futuro Semplice) in Italian is used to talk about future actions.

Stasera telefonero’ alla mia amica. Tonight I’ll call my friend.

Mio figlio fara’ l’esame domani. My son will take an exam tomorrow.

Stasera parlero' con mia moglie. This evening I will talk with my wife.

Italian Presente tense

ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS

TEMPO PRESENTE — PRESENT TENSE

Italian has one present tense - il Tempo Presente that is equivalent to two present tenses in English, present indicative (she lives) and present progressive (I’m writing).

The present tense in Italian is formed by adding endings to the verbs. There are two types of verbs, regular and irregular and they follow different patterns to form present tense.

PRESENT TENSE OF REGULAR VERBS

Depending on the vowel in the infinitive form all regular verbs fall into one of the three categories.