In short

Every Italian noun is masculine or feminine, and its last letter usually tells you which: -o is masculine, -a is feminine, -e can be either. The plural is a vowel swap, not an added -s: -o -> -i, -a -> -e, -e -> -i.

The rule

Italian has no neutral gender and no plural -s. Instead the final vowel carries both pieces of information at once, and it changes when the noun goes plural. Because the article and every adjective must agree with the noun, learn each word with its article: not libro but il libro.

Step 1 - Read the ending for the gender.

• -o -> masculine: il libro, il tavolo, il ragazzo.
• -a -> feminine: la casa, la penna, la ragazza.
• -e -> either one; you must learn it. il padre (father) and la madre (mother) look identical at the end - only the article separates them.

Two endings inside the -e group are reliable and worth banking now: -zione and -sione are always feminine (la stazione, la televisione), and -ore is masculine (il colore, il dottore).

Step 2 - Swap the final vowel for the plural.

• -o -> -i: il libro -> i libri.
• -a -> -e: la casa -> le case.
• -e -> -i, whatever the gender: il padre -> i padri, la madre -> le madri.

Notice the trap built into this system: le case is plural, but the same -e is the singular mark of il padre. The ending alone is never enough - read it together with the article.

Step 3 - Keep the sound: -ca / -ga / -co / -go. This is the c/g rule from the pronunciation guide doing its job. c and g are hard before a, o, u but soft before e, i - so a plural ending in -i or -e would silently soften them. An h is inserted to stop that.

• Feminine -ca -> -che, -ga -> -ghe. Always. l’amica -> le amiche, la banca -> le banche, la riga -> le righe. The hard sound is always preserved.
• Masculine -co / -go: it depends, and the stress decides most cases. If the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable, the sound stays hard: il fuo-co -> i fuochi, il la-go -> i laghi, il par-co -> i parchi. If the stress falls further back, the sound goes soft: il me-di-co -> i medici, il tec-ni-co -> i tecnici.
• Four rebels are stressed on the second-to-last syllable but go soft anyway - learn them as words: amico -> amici, nemico -> nemici, greco -> greci, porco -> porci.

So the pair the whole lesson turns on is l’amico -> gli amici (soft) against l’amica -> le amiche (hard). Same word, different gender, different fate.

Step 4 - Two irregulars you meet on day one.

• la mano -> le mani. Feminine despite the -o, and its plural is -i, not -e. Both halves are irregular.
• l’uomo -> gli uomini. The stem itself changes. La donna -> le donne is perfectly regular next to it.

Forms & patterns

The master table - gender and plural in one:

Nouns in -e: the article is your only clue.

Hard or soft? The c/g alternation:

The two day-one irregulars:

Examples

• Il libro è nuovo. - The book is new.
• La casa è grande. - The house is big.
• Il padre e la madre parlano italiano. - The father and the mother speak Italian.
• Le chiavi sono qui. - The keys are here.
• Ho due amici italiani. - I have two Italian friends.
• Ho due amiche italiane. - I have two Italian friends (women).
• I medici lavorano molto. - The doctors work a lot.
• I laghi italiani sono belli. - The Italian lakes are beautiful.
• Le mani sono fredde. - The hands are cold.
• Gli uomini parlano con le donne. - The men are talking with the women.

Common mistakes

• le amice -> le amiche - a feminine -ca always keeps its hard sound, so the plural needs the h.
• gli amichi -> gli amici - amico is the famous rebel: the masculine goes soft even though amica stays hard.
• le madre -> le madri - an -e noun takes -i in the plural whatever its gender; only the article stays feminine.
• i mani -> le mani - mano is feminine despite the -o, so the article is le, not i.
• gli uomi -> gli uomini - the plural of uomo is irregular and has to be memorised whole.

Tips

• Store every noun with its article (il / la), the way a dictionary does. For -o and -a words it is a safety net; for -e words it is the only information you get.
• The h is a spelling device, not a grammar one - it exists purely to keep the c or g hard, exactly as in the pronunciation guide. Feminines are the safe side (-ca / -ga always become -che / -ghe); only the masculines make you stop and think.
• Say the singular out loud and find the stress: fuo-co (near the end) -> fuochi; me-di-co (further back) -> medici. Then add the four exceptions - amico, nemico, greco, porco - as vocabulary.
• Mano and uomo are two of the most common nouns in the language and both are irregular. Learn le mani and gli uomini now, as whole words, and you are done with them.

In short

Essere (“to be”) and avere (“to have”) are the two verbs you cannot postpone: both are irregular, so learn the six present forms of each by heart. Watch out for two traps - Italian says ho vent’anni and ho fame where English says “I am”, and “there is / there are” is c’è / ci sono, which changes with the number of the thing.

The rule

Essere - to be

Use essere to say what or how someone or something is: identity, nationality, profession, description, and location.

• Identity and nationality: Marco è italiano.
• Profession - no article before the job: Sono studente.
• Description - with an adjective, which agrees with the subject (step 6): Siamo stanchi.
• Location: Il libro è sul tavolo.

Note that sono does double duty: it is both io (“I am”) and loro (“they are”). The subject or the context tells them apart - sono italiano (“I am Italian”) vs sono italiani (“they are Italian”), where the adjective ending gives it away.

Avere - to have

Use avere for possession - and for a family of everyday states that English builds with “to be”.

• Possession: Ho una macchina. Hai un fratello?
• Age - English “to be … years old”, Italian “to have … years”: Anna ha vent’anni.
• Physical and mental states - avere + noun, with no article: Ho fame. Hai freddo?

Because fame, sete, freddo are nouns, not adjectives, you intensify them with molto, which agrees with the noun: ho molta fame, ho molto sonno. Never sono fame.

All four forms with h - ho, hai, ha, hanno - are silent: the h is not pronounced, but it is compulsory in writing, because it is the only thing separating them from other words (ho vs o “or”, ha vs a “to”, hanno vs anno “year”).

C’è and ci sono - there is / there are

To say that something exists or is present somewhere, Italian uses only the third person: c’è and ci sono. Unlike English “there is/are”, the choice is a real agreement, so make it in two steps.

• Step 1 - look at the noun that follows, not at anything before it. In c’è un problema the verb agrees with un problema.
• Step 2 - pick the number. Singular noun -> c’è; plural noun -> ci sono. Nothing else changes: c’è una sedia, ci sono due sedie.

C’è is written ci + è with an apostrophe, and it keeps the accent on è. Ci sono is two separate words and never takes an apostrophe. To negate either one, put non in front: non c’è, non ci sono.

Do not confuse the existential c’è (“there is”) with è (“he/she/it is”): C’è un ristorante (“There is a restaurant”) vs È un ristorante (“It is a restaurant”).

Forms & patterns

The present indicative of the two verbs - the single most useful table in this path:

States expressed with avere + noun (no article):

The existential, singular vs plural:

Examples

• Marco è italiano. - Marco is Italian.
• Sono studente. - I am a student.
• Siamo molto stanchi oggi. - We are very tired today.
• Il libro è sul tavolo. - The book is on the table.
• Ho due fratelli e una sorella. - I have two brothers and one sister.
• Anna ha vent’anni. - Anna is twenty years old.
• Hai freddo? - Are you cold?
• Ho fame e ho sete. - I am hungry and thirsty.
• C’è un buon ristorante qui vicino. - There is a good restaurant near here.
• Ci sono molti turisti in città. - There are many tourists in the city.

Common mistakes

• Sono venti anni -> Ho vent’anni - age is expressed with avere, never with essere.
• Sono fame -> Ho fame - hunger, thirst, cold and fear are nouns you “have” in Italian, not adjectives you “are”.
• O due fratelli -> Ho due fratelli - the h of ho, hai, ha, hanno is silent but never optional in writing; it separates ho from o (“or”).
• C’è due problemi -> Ci sono due problemi - the existential agrees with the noun that follows: singular c’è, plural ci sono.
• Lui e italiano -> Lui è italiano - è (“is”) always carries its accent; bare e is a different word meaning “and”.

Tips

• Drill both paradigms aloud until they are automatic. Almost everything ahead leans on them, and they are the two most frequent verbs in the language.
• The h-forms are your silent-letter set: ho, hai, ha, hanno. Say them without the h, but never write them without it.
• Rule of thumb for the avere idioms: if English says “I am hungry / cold / sleepy / afraid / right / 20”, Italian almost certainly says “I have”. Translate the idea, not the words.
• C’è has an apostrophe because it is ci + è; ci sono is two clean words. If you can put a number in front of the noun, you want ci sono.

In short

Italian has subject pronouns - io, tu, lui/lei, noi, voi, loro - but normally leaves them out, because the verb ending already says who is speaking. You add a pronoun only to contrast or emphasise. To be polite with a stranger, use Lei and put the verb in the third person singular.

The rule

Step 1 - Know the seven pronouns

Two things surprise English speakers immediately:

• There is no “it”. Italian has no subject pronoun for things. English It is on the table is simply È sul tavolo. Weather and impersonal statements have no subject at all: Piove (It’s raining), È tardi (It’s late).
• loro covers both genders. There is no they-masculine vs they-feminine split in the subject pronoun; loro does all the work.

(You may meet egli, ella, esso/essa, essi/esse in old books. They are literary and effectively dead in speech - do not learn them as active forms.)

Step 2 - Leave the pronoun out by default

Italian verb endings are distinct enough to identify the person on their own, so the pronoun is redundant and sounds heavy when repeated. This is the normal, native way to speak:

• Sono italiano. - not Io sono italiano.
• Abitiamo a Roma. - not Noi abitiamo a Roma.

Think of the verb ending as the pronoun: -o already means io, -iamo already means noi.

Step 3 - Put the pronoun back for contrast or emphasis

Use the pronoun when it does real work - when you are pointing at who, as opposed to someone else:

• Contrast: Io lavoro, lui dorme. (I work, he sleeps.) Two subjects set against each other.
• Emphasis: Pago io. (I’ll pay - me, not you.)
• Standing alone, with no verb: Chi vuole il caffè? - Io.
• After anche / neanche / proprio: Anch’io sono stanco.
• To disambiguate: lui and lei take the same verb form, so Lei è a Milano, lui è a Torino keeps them apart.

Step 4 - Use Lei to be polite

To address one adult you do not know, Italian uses Lei - and Lei takes the third person singular, exactly like lui/lei. You are grammatically talking about the person, not to them.

Lei is genderless. It comes from an old feminine phrase (la Signoria Vostra, “Your Lordship”), which is why the pronoun is feminine and takes feminine third-person agreement - but you use it for men and women alike. The adjective, however, agrees with the real person in front of you:

• To a man: Lei è stanco, signore?
• To a woman: Lei è stanca, signora?

Write it with a capital L. In writing, Lei (polite) is capitalised to separate it from lei (she). In speech only context tells them apart - and since the pronoun is usually dropped anyway (È italiano?), context is doing most of the work.

Step 5 - Choose the register

• tu - family, friends, children, classmates, colleagues your own age, anyone who offers it. Increasingly the default among young people.
• Lei - strangers, shop and office staff, older people, anyone with signore/signora/dottore in front of their name. Start with Lei when in doubt; it is never rude to be too formal.
• In the plural, use voi for everyone - friends and strangers alike. The old polite plural Loro survives only in very formal service situations, so voi is the safe and normal plural of both tu and Lei.
• Italians say Diamo del tu? to propose dropping the formality. Let the older person or the local make the offer.

Forms & patterns

The pronouns with essere and avere:

Which “you” do I use?

Drop it or keep it:

Examples

• Sono spagnola, e tu? - I’m Spanish, and you?
• Io lavoro, lui dorme. - I work, he sleeps.
• Chi ha le chiavi? - Io. - Who has the keys? - Me.
• Anche noi siamo di Napoli. - We’re from Naples too.
• Voi parlate italiano molto bene. - You (all) speak Italian very well.
• Loro non sono a casa oggi. - They aren’t at home today.
• È sul tavolo. - It’s on the table.
• Scusi, Lei è il signor Rossi? - Excuse me, are you Mr Rossi?
• Signora, Lei ha una prenotazione? - Madam, do you have a reservation?
• Lei è stanco, dottore? - Are you tired, doctor?

Common mistakes

• Io sono studente. Io abito a Roma. Io ho vent’anni. -> Sono studente. Abito a Roma. Ho vent’anni. - the ending already says io; repeating the pronoun sounds insistent, like shouting “ME” every line.
• Esso è sul tavolo. -> È sul tavolo. - Italian has no subject “it”. Never translate an English dummy subject.
• Lei parli italiano? -> Lei parla italiano? - Lei is polite, but the verb is third person singular, never second.
• Scusi, Lei è stanca? (to a man) -> Scusi, Lei è stanco? - the pronoun is feminine by history, but the adjective agrees with the real person.
• Chi vuole il caffè? - Me. -> Chi vuole il caffè? - Io. - a one-word answer to who? is still the subject, so it takes io.

Tips

• The ending is the pronoun. Before writing io or noi, ask: is it doing a job? If you could delete it and lose no meaning, delete it.
• Lei = “Your Lordship”. That old feminine title explains everything strange about it: feminine pronoun, third-person verb, used for men too.
• Capital Lei = you; small lei = she. The capital exists precisely because the words are identical.
• voi is the only plural you need. One tu + one Lei still adds up to voi.
• When you are unsure of the register, ask nothing and use Lei - being over-formal is invisible, being over-familiar is not.

In short

An Italian adjective copies the gender and number of the noun it describes: un libro rosso, una borsa rossa, due borse rosse. Its normal place is after the noun, unlike English. A small group of very common adjectives goes before the noun instead, and a few of those change shape there.

The rule

Step 1 - Find the noun’s gender and number. The adjective has no gender of its own; it borrows the noun’s. Look at the noun first, then dress the adjective to match.

Step 2 - Pick the adjective’s class. There are only two.

Class 1 has four endings: -o (masculine singular), -a (feminine singular), -i (masculine plural), -e (feminine plural). Dictionary form: alto.

Class 2 has two endings: -e (both genders, singular), -i (both genders, plural). Dictionary form: grande. These adjectives do not show gender at all in the singular - only number.

Step 3 - Attach the ending. un ragazzo alto, una ragazza alta, dei ragazzi alti, delle ragazze alte. And with class 2: un ragazzo grande, una ragazza grande, dei ragazzi grandi, delle ragazze grandi.

Step 4 - Mixed groups go masculine plural. If an adjective describes a masculine noun and a feminine noun together, the ending is -i: Marco e Anna sono italiani.

Step 5 - Place it after the noun by default. This is the neutral, informative position: una macchina rossa, un film italiano, un esercizio difficile. Adjectives of colour, nationality, shape and material are effectively always post-nominal - una bandiera verde, never una verde bandiera.

Step 6 - Know the pre-nominal set. A handful of short, high-frequency adjectives normally go before the noun: bello, buono, brutto, grande, piccolo, giovane, vecchio, nuovo, bravo, lungo, breve. Before the noun they feel expected, subjective, part of the label; after the noun they carry emphasis or a real contrast.

With some of these the position changes the meaning, not just the tone:

• un grand’uomo = a great man / un uomo grande = a big (tall, large) man
• un vecchio amico = a long-standing friend / un amico vecchio = an elderly friend
• una povera donna = a poor thing, to be pitied / una donna povera = a woman with no money
• un certo risultato = a certain (some) result / un risultato certo = a sure result
• diverse persone = several people / persone diverse = different people

Step 7 - Reshape bello, buono, grande before the noun. Placed before the noun, these three shorten or follow the article pattern.

bello behaves like the definite article il / lo / la / i / gli / le: il bel libro, il bello specchio, il bell’albero, i bei libri, i begli specchi, la bella casa, le belle case. After the noun it is regular: un libro bello.

buono in the singular behaves like the indefinite article un / uno / una / un’. Ask which article the noun would take, then use the matching form: un libro -> un buon libro; uno studente -> un buono studente; una ragazza -> una buona ragazza; un’amica -> una buon’amica (though una buona amica is more common today). The plural is regular: buoni, buone.

grande may shorten to gran before a consonant (un gran successo, una gran festa) and to grand’ before a vowel (un grand’uomo). Grande in full is always acceptable.

Forms & patterns

Class 1 - four endings (rosso):

Class 2 - two endings (verde):

bello before the noun, matched to the definite article:

buono in the singular, matched to the indefinite article:

Position and meaning:

Examples

• Ho comprato una macchina rossa. I bought a red car.
• Marco è un ragazzo simpatico e generoso. Marco is a nice, generous guy.
• Le mie amiche sono italiane. My friends (f.) are Italian.
• Anna e Paolo sono molto contenti. Anna and Paolo are very happy.
• È un esercizio difficile, ma è un buon esercizio. It is a difficult exercise, but it is a good exercise.
• Che bella giornata! What a beautiful day!
• Abbiamo visto dei begli alberi nel parco. We saw some beautiful trees in the park.
• Giuseppe Verdi è stato un grand’uomo. Giuseppe Verdi was a great man.
• Mio nonno è un uomo grande e forte. My grandfather is a big, strong man.
• Ci sono due finestre grandi in cucina. There are two large windows in the kitchen.

Common mistakes

• una casa piccolo -> una casa piccola The adjective must copy the noun’s gender, not stay in the dictionary form.
• una ragazza francesa -> una ragazza francese francese is a class-2 adjective (-e / -i): it has no separate feminine singular. Same for inglese, grande, giovane, difficile, felice.
• le rosse macchine -> le macchine rosse Colours, nationalities and materials always follow the noun.
• Anna e Marco sono contente. -> Anna e Marco sono contenti. A mixed masculine + feminine group takes the masculine plural -i.
• un buono caffè -> un buon caffè Before the noun buono follows the un / uno / una pattern; buono in full only appears where you would say uno.

Tips

• Two classes, two questions. Does the dictionary form end in -o? Then it has four endings. Does it end in -e? Then it has two, and the singular tells you nothing about gender - un problema difficile, una scelta difficile.
• A useful ear-check: the endings -o / -a / -i / -e are the same ones you already saw on nouns in Nouns: gender and number. Le case sono belle rhymes; le case sono bello does not. If the sentence sounds off, it usually is.
• The pre-nominal adjectives are a small, closed list you can memorise (bello, buono, brutto, grande, piccolo, giovane, vecchio, nuovo, bravo). Everything else you will ever learn goes after the noun. When in doubt, put it after - that is never ungrammatical, at worst slightly emphatic.
• bello before a noun = the definite article with b- in front (il -> bel, gli -> begli). buono before a noun = the indefinite article with buon- in front (un -> buon, uno -> buono). One pattern each, already learned in Definite and indefinite articles.

In short

Italian verbs come in three families, named after their infinitive ending: -are, -ere, -ire. Drop that ending, add the six present endings for the family, and you can talk about the present, the habitual and the immediate future all at once. One extra thing to learn: many -ire verbs insert -isc- (finire -> finisco).

The rule

The form you find in a dictionary is the infinitive: parlare (to speak), credere (to believe), dormire (to sleep). It never appears as a finished sentence - you must conjugate it.

• Step 1 - Find the stem. Remove the last three letters of the infinitive: parlare -> parl-, credere -> cred-, dormire -> dorm-.
• Step 2 - Add the ending for the person. Each family has its own set of six. They overlap a lot, so learn the differences, not six separate lists.
• Step 3 - For an -ire verb, check the subclass. Some -ire verbs add -isc- between the stem and the ending in four of the six forms.

The endings carry the person. Because parlo can only mean “I speak” and parli can only mean “you speak”, Italian normally drops the subject pronoun: you say Parlo italiano, not Io parlo italiano (see Subject pronouns and the polite Lei). The verb ending is not decoration - it is the information.

One present, three English meanings. Italian has a single present tense here: Mangio = “I eat”, “I am eating” and “I do eat”. Italian also uses it for a scheduled near future: Parto domani = “I’m leaving tomorrow”.

The -isc- subclass

Roughly half of the common -ire verbs insert -isc- before the ending - but only in the forms where the stress falls on the stem: io, tu, lui/lei and loro. The noi and voi forms are always plain: finiamo, finite - never finisciamo.

There is no rule that predicts which -ire verbs do this, so learn each verb with its io form: finire (finisco), dormire (dormo). The good news is that the -isc- group is the larger and more productive one, so when a new -ire verb turns up, -isc- is the safer bet.

Spelling adjustments that keep the sound

The -i and -iamo endings begin with i, and that collides with the c/g spelling rule from [Pronunciation, spelling and stress__XLINK__. Two opposite fixes result:

• -care / -gare verbs add an h (cercare, pagare, giocare, spiegare). In cerco the c is hard; before the i of cerchi it would go soft, so an h is inserted to protect it: cerco -> cerchi, cerchiamo; pago -> paghi, paghiamo. This affects tu and noi only.
• -ciare / -giare verbs drop an i (cominciare, mangiare, viaggiare, lasciare). Here the i is already in the stem, where its job is to keep the c/g soft. The ending supplies its own i, so the two merge into one: mangio -> mangi (never mangii), comincio -> cominci. Same at noi: mangiamo, cominciamo, not mangiiamo.

Both are spelling, not sound: nothing about the pronunciation of the verb changes. These verbs are still fully regular.

Where the stress falls

The loro form pulls the stress back onto the stem: PARlano, CREdono, DORmono, fiNIscono - never par-LA-no. It is the one form learners routinely stress wrong.

Forms & patterns

The three regular conjugations, plus the -isc- subclass:

The endings alone - notice how much is shared:

Which -ire verbs take -isc-? Learn them in pairs:

The c/g spelling adjustments (bold = adjusted cell):

Examples

• Parlo italiano ogni giorno. - I speak Italian every day.
• Anna lavora in un ufficio. - Anna works in an office.
• Mangiamo alle otto. - We eat at eight.
• Cerchi le chiavi? - Are you looking for the keys?
• Il treno parte alle nove. - The train leaves at nine.
• Loro capiscono bene l’inglese. - They understand English well.
• Marco finisce il lavoro alle sei. - Marco finishes work at six.
• Scrivete molte email. - You write a lot of emails.
• Preferisco il caffè freddo. - I prefer cold coffee.
• Il film comincia adesso. - The film is starting now.

Common mistakes

• voi credite -> voi credete - the voi ending is the one place the three families really split: -ate / -ete / -ite. Match it to the infinitive.
• loro parlano pronounced par-LA-no -> PARlano - the stress goes back onto the stem in the loro form of every regular verb.
• loro parlono -> loro parlano - an -are verb keeps its a: -ano. Only -ere and -ire verbs take -ono.
• noi finisciamo -> noi finiamo - -isc- never appears at noi or voi; those forms are always plain.
• tu mangii / tu cerci -> tu mangi / tu cerchi - the stem i of mangiare merges with the ending, while cercare needs an h to keep the c hard.

Tips

• Chant the io and tu rows first: every regular verb, all three families, ends in -o and -i. That is a third of the work done for free.
• noi is -iamo for all three families, with no exceptions - and it is the same form you will meet again in the subjunctive and the imperative.
• Learn every new -ire verb as a pair with its io form (capire, capisco). It is the only way to know the subclass, and it takes no extra effort at the moment you meet the word.
• The h in cerchi and the missing i in mangi solve the same problem from opposite sides: the ending’s i would soften a hard c/g, or duplicate one that is already soft. Sound wins, spelling adapts.
• Not every verb that looks regular is: andare, fare, venire and dire end in -are/-ere/-ire but are irregular - they are the next verb lesson.

In short

Italian has eight everyday prepositions: di, a, da, in, su, con, per, tra/fra. Five of them - di, a, da, in, su - are forced to fuse with a following definite article into a single word (a + il = al, di + lo = dello, in + le = nelle). Writing a il or di lo is never an option.

The rule

A preposition is a small linking word that sits before a noun. Choose it for the meaning first, then deal with the article.

Step 1 - Pick the preposition for the meaning you want. The eight core ones:

• di = of (belonging, origin, material) - la casa di Anna, Sono di Roma, un tavolo di legno
• a = to / at (destination and position, cities, people you speak to) - Vado a Roma, Sono a casa
• da = from (where you come from), at someone’s place, since - Vengo da Milano, Vado dal medico
• in = in / to (countries, regions, many enclosed places) - Vivo in Italia, Sono in banca
• su = on, about - Il libro è sul tavolo, un film su Napoli
• con = with - Esco con Maria
• per = for, in order to, and the destination of a vehicle - un regalo per te, il treno per Roma
• tra / fra = between, among; in (future time) - tra i due, fra due ore

Step 2 - Ask: is a definite article coming next? If the noun has no article, the preposition stays alone and nothing happens: a casa, in Italia, di legno, con Maria. Contraction also never happens with the indefinite article: di un amico, a una ragazza, su un tavolo stay as two words.

Step 3 - If a definite article is coming, check whether your preposition contracts.

• di, a, da, in, su -> contraction is compulsory, always one word.
• con -> optional, and only col (con + il) and coi (con + i) are still normal; modern writing prefers con il, con i.
• per, tra, fra -> never contract: per il treno, tra le case.

Step 4 - Build the fused form. The article keeps its usual selection rules (il / lo / l’ / la / i / gli / le, see step 2 of the path) - pick it exactly as you would without a preposition, then glue it on. di becomes de-, in becomes ne-, and the others keep their letter: de + lo = dello, ne + gli = negli, su + il = sul, a + la = alla.

So: if the noun takes lo (lo stadio), every contraction is built on lo -> allo stadio, dello stadio, nello stadio. Get the article right and the contraction is automatic.

Note: di + article before a noun can also mean “some” (del pane = some bread). That is the partitive, a separate job for the same forms - see step 28.

Forms & patterns

The full table. The first five rows are compulsory; the last three show what stays apart.

Which preposition for which place - the choice English speakers get wrong most often:

Examples

• Il libro di Marco è sul tavolo. - Marco’s book is on the table.
• Vado al mercato con mia sorella. - I am going to the market with my sister.
• Abito in Italia, a Firenze. - I live in Italy, in Florence.
• Le chiavi sono nella borsa. - The keys are in the bag.
• Questa sera vado da Paolo. - This evening I am going to Paolo’s place.
• Torno adesso dal lavoro. - I am coming back from work now.
• Studio l’italiano da due anni. - I have been studying Italian for two years.
• La finestra dello studio è aperta. - The study window is open.
• Parliamo degli amici di Anna. - We are talking about Anna’s friends.
• Il treno per Roma parte fra dieci minuti. - The train to Rome leaves in ten minutes.

Common mistakes

• Vado a il cinema -> Vado al cinema - with di, a, da, in, su the fusion is compulsory; two separate words is simply not Italian.
• Vado al stadio -> Vado allo stadio - stadio takes lo, so the contraction must be built on lo: a + lo = allo.
• Sono in Roma -> Sono a Roma - cities take a; in is for countries and regions (in Italia).
• Vado a Marco -> Vado da Marco - going to a person (or their home, shop, surgery) is da, never a.
• Vado nel centro -> Vado in centro - these fixed expressions carry no article, so there is nothing to contract (same with in banca, a casa, a scuola).

Tips

• The five that contract are the five shortest: di, a, da, in, su. con, per, tra/fra are longer and stay free - a rough but reliable memory hook.
• Never memorise 35 separate words. Choose the article the noun needs, then fuse: lo zaino -> nello zaino, gli amici -> degli amici, l’acqua -> dell’acqua.
• di and da look alike and are constantly swapped. di = “of” (la casa di Anna - whose), da = “from” (vengo da Roma - where out of) and “at someone’s” (dal medico).
• tra and fra mean exactly the same thing: choose whichever avoids an ugly echo with the next word - fra tre giorni (not tra tre), tra fratelli (not fra fratelli).

In short

Italian possessives normally come with the article glued in front: not mio libro but il mio libro. They agree with the thing owned, never with the owner - so il suo is both his and her. The one systematic exception is a single family member: mia madre, mio fratello. For “this / that”, use questo and quello, and remember that quello reshapes itself before a noun exactly like the definite article: quel treno, quello studente, quegli amici.

The rule

Possessives

Step 1 - Say the article too. In Italian the possessive is an adjective, not a replacement for the article. The default shape is article + possessive + noun: il mio telefono, la tua casa, i nostri amici, le vostre chiavi. English drops the article (“my phone”); Italian does not. This is the single most frequent beginner error, and it is a hard rule, not a preference.

Step 2 - Agree with what is owned, not with who owns it. The possessive copies the gender and number of the following noun, just like any other adjective from Adjectives: agreement and position. So Anna - a woman - says il mio telefono (masculine, because telefono is masculine) and la mia macchina (feminine, because macchina is feminine).

The consequence learners find hardest: suo / sua tells you nothing about the owner’s sex. il suo telefono = his phone or her phone; la sua macchina = his car or her car. Context decides. If it is genuinely ambiguous, Italian repeats the name (il telefono di Anna).

Step 3 - Treat loro as frozen. loro never changes shape: il loro cane, la loro casa, i loro figli, le loro idee. Only the article in front moves.

Step 4 - Drop the article for ONE family member. With a singular, unmodified noun for a close relative, the article disappears: mio padre, mia madre, tuo fratello, sua sorella, nostro figlio, vostra zia, mio marito, mia moglie, suo cugino.

Three things switch the article back on:

• Plural. i miei fratelli, le tue sorelle, i suoi genitori. One brother is mio fratello; two are i miei fratelli.
• loro. loro is never exempt: il loro fratello, la loro madre. Always.
• Any modification - an adjective, a suffix, a diminutive: il mio fratello maggiore, la mia cara zia, il mio fratellino. Also la mia mamma, il mio papà, which count as altered forms (though mia mamma is heard too).

Step 5 - Use the same forms as pronouns. To say mine, yours, hers, just drop the noun and keep the article + possessive: Questo è il mio libro -> Questo è il mio. (This is mine.) The form still agrees with the noun you left out: Di chi è questa penna? - È la mia. After essere, the article is usually dropped: Questo libro è mio.

Demonstratives

Step 6 - questo = near, quello = far. questo points at what is close to the speaker (here, this one, in my hand); quello points at what is further off (there, that one, over by them). questo is also the “this” of time: questa settimana, quest’anno.

Step 7 - Inflect questo the easy way. Four forms only, like a normal -o adjective: questo, questa, questi, queste. Before a vowel the singular often elides: quest’uomo, quest’idea, quest’estate.

Step 8 - Inflect quello like the definite article. Before a noun, quello copies the il / lo / l’ / i / gli / la / le pattern you learned in Definite and indefinite articles. Ask which article the noun would take, then build the matching form: il treno -> quel treno; lo studente -> quello studente; l’amico -> quell’amico; gli amici -> quegli amici.

Step 9 - Shrink quello back to four forms as a pronoun. When no noun follows, quello stops imitating the article and behaves normally: quello, quella, quelli, quelle. The masculine plural pronoun is quelli, never quegli: Quelli sono i miei amici. (Those are my friends.) Compare the adjective quegli studenti with the pronoun quelli.

Forms & patterns

The possessives - agreeing with the thing owned:

Family members - when the article comes back:

quello before a noun, matched to the definite article:

Adjective vs pronoun - the forms are not the same set:

Examples

• Il mio telefono è sul tavolo. My phone is on the table.
• Le nostre valigie sono ancora in macchina. Our suitcases are still in the car.
• Mia sorella abita a Roma con suo marito. My sister lives in Rome with her husband.
• I miei fratelli lavorano a Milano. My brothers work in Milan.
• Anna cerca il suo passaporto. Anna is looking for her passport.
• Di chi è questa penna? - È la mia. Whose pen is this? - It’s mine.
• Questo treno va a Firenze, quello va a Napoli. This train goes to Florence, that one goes to Naples.
• Quel ragazzo è mio cugino. That boy is my cousin.
• Quegli studenti sono molto bravi. Those students are very good.
• Prendo questa maglietta, non quella. I’ll take this T-shirt, not that one.

Common mistakes

• Mio telefono è rotto. -> Il mio telefono è rotto. The article is obligatory. English deletes it; Italian keeps it.
• La mia madre è insegnante. -> Mia madre è insegnante. One singular, unmodified relative takes no article. But la mia mamma and le mie sorelle are correct - modified and plural bring it back.
• Anna cerca la sua telefono. -> Anna cerca il suo telefono. The possessive agrees with telefono, not with Anna. The owner’s sex is invisible in Italian.
• Quello libro è interessante. -> Quel libro è interessante. Before a noun, quello follows the article pattern: il libro -> quel libro. Full quello only where you would say lo.
• Quegli sono i miei amici. -> Quelli sono i miei amici. quegli exists only in front of a noun. Standing alone, the masculine plural is quelli.

Tips

• quello and bello are the same puzzle twice. Line them up against the article and the pattern is identical: il -> quel / bel, lo -> quello / bello, gli -> quegli / begli, i -> quei / bei. Learn one, you have both.
• A two-word test for the kinship rule: one and plain. One relative, no extras -> no article (mio zio). Break either condition - more than one, or any adjective, suffix, or loro attached - and the article returns (i miei zii, il mio zio americano, il loro zio).
• suo is a trap in both directions. Coming from English you will want to pick the form by the owner’s sex; Italian picks it by the noun. Reading Italian, do not assume il suo means his - four times out of ten it means hers.
• Frequency note: quegli is rare in speech, because it needs a masculine plural noun starting with s + consonant, z, gn, ps or a vowel. quei and quelle do most of the work. If you are unsure and it is a pronoun, quelli is always right.

In short

The verbs you need most - andare, fare, venire, dire, stare, dare, sapere - are the ones that break the rules. But they break them in a small number of shared ways, so learn them in families, not one by one. Almost all of them keep the regular noi and voi forms, so only four cells per verb are really new.

The rule

An irregular verb is irregular in its stem, almost never in its endings. Vado, faccio and vengo still end in -o like parlo; andiamo, facciamo and veniamo still end in -iamo. What changes is what sits in front of the ending. That is why these verbs look frightening and are actually cheap to learn.

• Step 1 - Assume the endings from Present tense: regular verbs. The six endings are the ones you already know. Do not invent new ones.
• Step 2 - Check noi and voi first. In most irregular verbs these two are built on the plain infinitive stem and are completely predictable: andare -> andiamo, andate; venire -> veniamo, venite. Get them for free and stop worrying about them.
• Step 3 - Learn the four odd cells. The irregularity is concentrated in io, tu, lui/lei and loro - the forms where the stress falls on the stem. Learners call this the boot or L-shape: the changed forms are the top three plus the bottom one.
• Step 4 - Sort the verb into a family. Almost every common irregular belongs to one of the three groups below.

Family 1 - the -go verbs

A group of verbs inserts a g in exactly two cells: io and loro. Everything else behaves: vengo, vieni, viene, veniamo, venite, vengono. The members you need at A1 are venire (vengo), tenere (tengo), rimanere (rimango) and salire (salgo). Later you will meet scegliere (scelgo), togliere (tolgo) and spegnere (spengo) - same trick.

The g is never in noi or voi. Venghiamo does not exist.

Family 2 - the short verbs: andare, fare, dare, stare, sapere

These five are the oldest and most worn-down verbs in the language, and they have rubbed against each other until they rhyme. Look at tu, lui/lei and loro across all five - the pattern is identical: -ai, a bare vowel, -anno.

fare and dire hide a longer Latin stem (fac-, dic-) that resurfaces in the plural: facciamo, fate, fanno and diciamo, dite, dicono. This is why voi is the shockingly short fate and dite - not facete, not dicete.

Family 3 - stem-changing verbs

Here the stem vowel changes, but only when it is stressed - so, again, in the boot and not at noi/voi:

• uscire: u becomes e -> esco, esci, esce, but usciamo, uscite, then escono.
• venire, tenere: e becomes ie at tu and lui/lei -> vieni, viene; tieni, tiene. (These verbs are in two families at once: -go at io/loro, ie in the middle.)
• morire: o becomes uo -> muoio, muori, muore, but moriamo, morite, then muoiono.

The logic is the same as the -isc- verbs you met in step 7: stressed stem -> something happens; unstressed stem (noi, voi) -> nothing happens. finire -> finisco but finiamo is not irregular at all - it is just that same rhythm rule, and those verbs stay fully regular.

Forms & patterns

The five high-frequency irregulars, side by side. Read the tu, lui/lei and loro rows across - they rhyme:

The -go family - the g appears at io and loro only:

dire and uscire - the hidden stem and the vowel switch:

Where the irregularity actually sits - the shape of the job, for any irregular verb:

Examples

• Vado a scuola ogni mattina. - I go to school every morning.
• Che cosa fai domani? - What are you doing tomorrow?
• Marco viene con noi. - Marco is coming with us.
• Usciamo alle otto. - We go out at eight.
• Non so dove abita Anna. - I don’t know where Anna lives.
• I bambini stanno bene. - The children are well.
• Mia madre dà un libro a Paolo. - My mother gives Paolo a book.
• Loro dicono sempre la verità. - They always tell the truth.
• Rimango a casa stasera. - I’m staying home tonight.
• Bevo un caffè e vengo subito. - I’ll drink a coffee and come right away.

Common mistakes

• noi venghiamo -> noi veniamo - the g of vengo lives in io and loro only. noi and voi are built on the plain infinitive: veniamo, venite.
• voi dicete / voi facete -> voi dite / voi fate - the two shortest voi forms in the language. There is no way around them: memorise the pair together.
• noi esciamo -> noi usciamo - the vowel only changes when it is stressed. noi and voi keep the u of the infinitive.
• lui da un regalo -> lui dà un regalo - without the accent, da is the preposition “from”. The verb takes a grave accent: dà.
• tu vengi -> tu vieni - tu is not built from the io form. vengo and vieni are different stems, and only loro copies io.

Tips

• Five verbs, one rhyme. vai - fai - dai - stai - sai, then vanno - fanno - danno - stanno - sanno. Say the two chains out loud until they are one word each; that is 10 of the hardest forms in Italian, done.
• The g is a bookend. In every -go verb the g shows up at the top (io) and the bottom (loro) and nowhere in between. If a g appears at noi, it is wrong.
• noi is your safety net. Stuck on a form? The noi form is nearly always regular, and it hands you the true stem: andiamo -> the verb is really and-; diciamo -> the verb is really dic-.
• sapere means to know a fact or to know how to do something (So nuotare - I can swim). Knowing a person or a place is conoscere, which is perfectly regular.

In short

Italian numbers are written as one word and are invariable - only uno changes shape. The two spelling traps are the tens losing their vowel before uno and otto (ventuno, ventotto) and the accent on compounds of tre (ventitré). For the date use the cardinal (il 3 marzo) except on the 1st (il primo maggio), and for the clock say Sono le tre - where le is the plain definite article of an invisible ore.

The rule

Cardinal numbers

Step 1 - Learn 0-20 as vocabulary. There is no logic to find: zero, uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, dieci, undici, dodici, tredici, quattordici, quindici, sedici, diciassette, diciotto, diciannove, venti. Notice the seam at 16/17: up to sedici the unit comes first (sedici = 6 + 10), from diciassette on the ten comes first (dieci + sette).

Step 2 - Build everything above 20 by gluing, in one word. Ten + unit, no space and no hyphen: ventidue, trentacinque, quarantasei, novantanove. This never stops: duecentoventicinque (225), quattromilacinquecento (4500).

Step 3 - Drop the ten’s final vowel before uno and otto. uno and otto are the only units starting with a vowel, and Italian refuses the collision. Every ten from venti to novanta elides:

• venti + uno = ventuno (not ventiuno), venti + otto = ventotto
• trenta + uno = trentuno, trenta + otto = trentotto
• quaranta + otto = quarantotto, ottanta + uno = ottantuno

All other units leave the ten intact: ventidue, ventitré, ventinove.

Step 4 - Put an accent on compounds of tre. Alone it is tre, with no accent. Glued onto a ten, the stress lands on that final syllable and must be written: ventitré, trentatré, quarantatré, cinquantatré. Forgetting the accent is a spelling error, not a shortcut.

Step 5 - Know which big numbers change. cento never changes (duecento, cento euro); mille takes the plural -mila, glued on (duemila, diecimila). Neither needs un in front. But milione and miliardo are true nouns: they take un, they pluralise, and they need di before what is counted - un milione di euro, due milioni di abitanti.

Step 6 - Agree only uno. Every number is invariable except uno, which behaves exactly like the indefinite article from step 2 when a noun follows: un libro, uno studente, una casa, un’amica. The same happens inside compounds: ventun anni, trentun giorni. Before anni, venti and trenta are usually clipped: Ho vent’anni.

Ordinal numbers

Step 7 - Learn the first ten, then use a machine. primo, secondo, terzo, quarto, quinto, sesto, settimo, ottavo, nono, decimo are irregular and must be memorised. From eleven upwards there is one rule: take the cardinal, cut its final vowel, add -esimo. undici -> undicesimo, venti -> ventesimo, cento -> centesimo, mille -> millesimo. Two spellings survive the cut: ventitré -> ventitreesimo (the e stays, the accent goes) and ventisei -> ventiseiesimo.

Step 8 - Treat ordinals as ordinary adjectives. Unlike cardinals they agree in gender and number, exactly like the -o adjectives of step 6: il primo giorno, la prima volta, i primi mesi, le prime settimane.

The date

Step 9 - il + cardinal + month. Months are lowercase and take no article: il 3 marzo, il 15 agosto, il 22 dicembre. That il is the definite article of an unspoken giorno, which is why it is masculine.

Step 10 - The 1st is the single exception. The first of the month uses the ordinal: il primo maggio, il primo gennaio. Every other day - all thirty of them - uses the plain cardinal. Never il terzo marzo.

Step 11 - Read years as one plain number. nel 2026 = nel duemilaventisei, where nel is not a chunk to memorise but in + il from step 8 doing its normal compulsory job. Months take a or in (a marzo, in marzo); the days - lunedì, martedì, mercoledì, giovedì, venerdì, sabato, domenica - go bare for one occasion (Arrivo lunedì) but take the article for a habit (il lunedì = on Mondays).

Telling the time

Step 12 - Ask with Che ore sono? (Che ora è? is equally correct and equally common.) The answer is elliptical: a feminine plural ore is understood but never said. Sono le tre is really Sono le (ore) tre - le is just the definite article, and the verb is plural to match it. It follows that:

• una is singular, so it takes the singular: È l’una.
• mezzogiorno and mezzanotte are masculine singular nouns with no article: È mezzogiorno.
• Everything else is plural: Sono le due, Sono le sette, Sono le ventidue.

Step 13 - Add minutes with e, subtract with meno. Past the hour: Sono le tre e dieci, le tre e un quarto, le tre e mezza. To the hour: Sono le quattro meno un quarto (3:45), le quattro meno cinque. mezza agrees with the hidden ora; mezzo is also heard and accepted.

Step 14 - Say “at” with a + the same article. No new forms here either - just the compulsory contraction of step 8 of the path, applied to the article you have just chosen: a + le = alle (alle tre), a + l’ = all’ (all’una). And where there is no article there is nothing to contract, so mezzogiorno stays bare: a mezzogiorno, a mezzanotte.

Forms & patterns

The cardinals worth knowing cold:

Where the ten keeps or loses its vowel:

Cardinal -> ordinal:

The clock, and the preposition that goes with it:

Examples

• Ho vent’anni e mio fratello ha ventotto anni. I am twenty and my brother is twenty-eight.
• In questa classe ci sono trentatré studenti. There are thirty-three students in this class.
• La casa costa duecentomila euro. The house costs two hundred thousand euros.
• È la prima volta che vengo in Italia. It’s the first time I’ve come to Italy.
• Abito al terzo piano. I live on the third floor.
• Il mio compleanno è il primo maggio. My birthday is the first of May.
• Oggi è il 3 marzo. Today is the third of March.
• Che ore sono? - Sono le tre e mezza. What time is it? - It’s half past three.
• Il treno per Roma parte alle otto e dieci. The train to Rome leaves at ten past eight.

Common mistakes

• Ho ventiuno anni. -> Ho ventun anni. The ten elides before uno and otto: ventuno, ventotto. And before anni the number is clipped again.
• Sono ventitre studenti. -> Sono ventitré studenti. Compounds of tre are stressed on the last syllable, so the accent is compulsory - even though plain tre has none.
• Il mio compleanno è il primo di maggio… il terzo marzo. -> il 3 marzo Only the 1st takes an ordinal. Every other day is a bare cardinal after il.
• Sono le una. -> È l’una. The hidden noun is ora, singular: one hour takes a singular verb and the singular article.
• Ci vediamo a le tre. -> Ci vediamo alle tre. alle is not a time word - it is a + le, and that contraction is compulsory (step 8).

Tips

• The elision rule is smaller than it looks: uno and otto are the only units that begin with a vowel, so they are the only two that ever shorten the ten. Eight tens times two units - sixteen forms, one rule.
• cento and mille are bare (cento euro, mille euro), but milione and miliardo are nouns and need both un and di: un milione di euro. If you can put di after it, it is a noun, not a number.
• Time and date hide the same trick: an unspoken noun supplies the article. le (ore) tre is feminine plural; il (giorno) tre is masculine singular. That is the whole reason Sono le tre but il 3 marzo.
• Nothing about the clock is new grammar. Get the article right and step 8 does the rest automatically: le tre -> alle tre, l’una -> all’una, mezzogiorno (no article) -> a mezzogiorno.

In short

Italian builds a yes/no question out of a plain statement by doing nothing at all: same words, same order, rising voice, question mark. Parli italiano. -> Parli italiano? There is no do, no does, no inversion. For open questions you put a question word - chi, che cosa, dove, quando, come, perché, quanto, quale - at the front, and any preposition goes in front of it: Di dove sei?

The rule

Step 1 - For a yes/no question, change nothing. Take the statement and raise your voice at the end. English rebuilds the sentence (You speak Italian -> Do you speak Italian?); Italian does not.

• Tu parli italiano. -> Parli italiano?
• Anna è in ufficio. -> Anna è in ufficio?
• Avete una prenotazione. -> Avete una prenotazione?

The trap for English speakers is the auxiliary. There is no Italian word for the question do. Nothing goes at the front, nothing swaps places. If you can say the statement, you can already say the question.

If you want to name the subject, you have two natural spots - before the verb, or pushed to the very end for emphasis. Both are correct: Marco parla italiano? / Parla italiano Marco? Most of the time, as always in Italian, you simply leave the subject out (see step 5).

To turn a statement into a question that fishes for agreement, hang vero? or no? on the end: Sei italiano, vero? (You’re Italian, right?)

Step 2 - For an open question, put the question word first. The interrogative opens the sentence, the verb comes immediately after it:

question word + verb + (rest)

Dove abiti? - Quando arrivi? - Come stai? - Perché piangi?

Step 3 - If you name the subject, it goes AFTER the verb. This is the rule English speakers break most. The question word wants the verb next to it, so the subject moves behind it:

• Dove abita Marco? (not Dove Marco abita?)
• Che cosa dicono i tuoi amici?
• Quando parte il treno?

Step 4 - A preposition stays glued to the front of its question word. English happily leaves the preposition dangling at the end (Who are you going out with?). Italian never does: the preposition and the interrogative travel together, at the front.

• Con chi esci? - Who are you going out with?
• Di dove sei? - Where are you from?
• A che ora mangiamo? - What time are we eating?
• Di chi è questa borsa? - Whose bag is this?
• Da quanto tempo studi? - How long have you been studying?

The preposition is chosen by the verb or the meaning, exactly as in a statement (step 8): sono di Roma -> Di dove sei?

Step 5 - Know the small print of three of them.

• chi is invariable and never takes a plural ending, even about many people: Chi sono quelle ragazze?
• quanto agrees like an adjective when a noun follows it (quanti anni, quante ore), but is frozen as quanto when it hangs on a verb: Quanto costa?
• quale has only two forms, quale / quali, and before è it loses its ending with no apostrophe: qual è.

What “what” is. Three forms are all standard and all mean the same: che cosa fai? (neutral), cosa fai? (northern, now everywhere), che fai? (central, informal). Pick one and stop worrying. Before a noun, only che works: Che lavoro fai?

Forms & patterns

The eight question words:

Elision - the three shapes to memorise as whole words:

Preposition + interrogative, the everyday set:

Examples

• Parli italiano? - Do you speak Italian?
• Marco è a casa? - Is Marco at home?
• Chi è quella signora? - Who is that lady?
• Che cosa fai stasera? - What are you doing this evening?
• Dove abita tua sorella? - Where does your sister live?
• Quando parte il treno per Roma? - When does the train to Rome leave?
• Perché non vieni con noi? - Why don’t you come with us?
• Quanto costa questo libro? - How much does this book cost?
• Di dove sei? - Where are you from?
• Con chi esci stasera? - Who are you going out with tonight?

Common mistakes

• Fai tu parli italiano? -> Parli italiano? - Italian has no auxiliary do. The statement itself, said with a rising voice, is the question.
• Qual’è il tuo numero? -> Qual è il tuo numero? - qual is a truncated form, not an elided one, so it takes no apostrophe. (Dov’è and com’è, by contrast, do.)
• Dove Marco abita? -> Dove abita Marco? - after a question word the verb comes first and the named subject follows it.
• Chi esci con? -> Con chi esci? - a preposition can never be left at the end of an Italian question; it leads its question word.
• Quanto anni hai? -> Quanti anni hai? - before a noun quanto agrees in gender and number; it only stays fixed when it modifies a verb (Quanto costa?).

Tips

• The best news in this lesson: a yes/no question costs you zero grammar. If in doubt, say the statement and let your voice climb. That alone is a complete, correct Italian question.
• perché does double duty: it asks why and it answers because. Perché non mangi? - Perché non ho fame. One word, both jobs - and it always keeps its accent on the é.
• che vs quale before a noun: che just asks (Che film guardi? - what film), quale implies a choice from a known set (Quale film guardi, questo o quello? - which of these). When you are unsure, che is the safe everyday pick.
• Learn dov’è, com’è and qual è as three fixed spellings, not as rules to re-derive. They are among the most-written phrases in the language, and qual è is the one Italians themselves get wrong.

In short

Three verbs - potere (can), dovere (must), volere (want) - let you say almost anything you cannot yet say with one verb. They are irregular, they are followed by a bare infinitive with no preposition, and only the modal is conjugated: Devo partire, Posso entrare?, Voglio dormire. Learn vorrei (“I’d like”) as a word, not as grammar - it is the politest thing you can say at A1.

The rule

A modal verb does not stand on its own meaning: it modifies a second verb. Italian builds this with two verbs in a row, and the division of labour is strict.

• Step 1 - Conjugate the modal, and only the modal. The modal agrees with the subject; the second verb never does. Io devo studiare, tu devi studiare, loro devono studiare - studiare never moves.
• Step 2 - Put the second verb in the infinitive. That is the dictionary form: -are, -ere, -ire. Not the present, not anything else. Posso parlo is impossible.
• Step 3 - Put nothing between them. No preposition, no di, no a, no che. English says “I have to go” and learners import that to as di. Italian says Devo andare and nothing else. (Some non-modal verbs do take a preposition before the infinitive - that is step 38, and it is exactly why these three are special.)
• Step 4 - Pick the right one for the meaning. potere = it is possible or allowed; dovere = it is required; volere = I want it. If the meaning is “I have learned how to do this”, you need sapere, not potere - see below.

The meaning range

potere covers three English words at once - can, may, might - because it means “nothing is stopping this”. Posso venire can be I’m free to come, I’m allowed to come, or, with things, it’s possible: Può piovere - It may rain.

dovere is obligation from outside: a rule, a timetable, a boss, a need. Devo lavorare is I have to work - not I’d like to. It is stronger than English should; the softened version (dovrei) is the conditional, which comes at step 37.

volere is plain will. It is also the one modal that happily takes a noun instead of an infinitive: Voglio un caffè - I want a coffee.

potere vs sapere - the trap

English “can” hides two different ideas, and Italian splits them.

• sapere + infinitive = to know how to, to have the skill. So nuotare - I can swim (I learned; I am a swimmer).
• potere + infinitive = to be free, able or allowed right now. Oggi non posso nuotare - Today I can’t swim (the pool is closed, my leg hurts).

A person who says Non posso nuotare is saying something is in the way today. A person who never learned says Non so nuotare.

vorrei - learn the word, skip the grammar

Voglio un caffè is grammatically perfect and sounds like a demand. In a shop, a bar or any request to a stranger, Italians replace it with vorrei - I’d like. Vorrei un caffè, per favore. For now treat vorrei as a fixed polite formula that behaves exactly like a modal: Vorrei parlare con Marco. (It is really the conditional of volere; you will take it apart at step 37.)

Forms & patterns

The three modals in the present. All three are irregular. Only voi stays fully regular (potete, dovete, volete); noi takes an irregular stem too (possiamo, dobbiamo, vogliamo - not potiamo/doviamo/voliamo), alongside the four “boot” cells:

The pattern to build the sentence - three slots, in this order:

What each modal actually means:

“Can” in English -> two verbs in Italian:

Examples

• Posso entrare? - May I come in?
• Non possiamo venire stasera. - We can’t come this evening.
• Puoi parlare più lentamente, per favore? - Can you speak more slowly, please?
• Devo studiare per l’esame. - I have to study for the exam.
• I bambini devono dormire adesso. - The children have to sleep now.
• Dobbiamo partire alle otto. - We have to leave at eight.
• Vuoi un caffè? - Do you want a coffee?
• Vogliamo andare al mare. - We want to go to the seaside.
• Marco non vuole uscire. - Marco doesn’t want to go out.
• Vorrei un biglietto per Roma, per favore. - I’d like a ticket to Rome, please.

Common mistakes

• Devo di andare / Voglio di mangiare -> Devo andare / Voglio mangiare - the English “to” of “I have to go” is not translated. After a modal the infinitive is bare: nothing goes in between.
• Posso parlo italiano -> Posso parlare italiano - only the modal is conjugated. The second verb stays in the dictionary form, whatever the subject is.
• Non posso nuotare (meaning “I never learned”) -> Non so nuotare - a learned skill is sapere. potere would mean something is stopping you today.
• Lui puo venire -> Lui può venire - può carries a grave accent. Without it the word is misspelled; the accent is part of the form, not decoration.
• Voglio un caffè (to a waiter) -> Vorrei un caffè - grammatical, but it lands as an order. vorrei is the polite default with anyone you do not know.

Tips

• volere is a -go verb. voglio … vogliono hides the same g bookend as vengo … vengono from step 10, but vogliamo keeps the -gli- too - it shows up at io, noi and loro, and only vuoi, vuole and volete drop it.
• Two verbs, one subject, no glue. If you remember one thing: modal + infinitive, nothing in the middle. Say Devo andare - Posso andare - Voglio andare out loud as a chain; the shape is identical every time.
• posso / puoi / può is a boot. The o of potere becomes uo exactly where the stress lands on the stem - puoi, può, vuoi, vuole - and goes back to o at noi and voi: possiamo, potete. Same rhythm rule as uscire -> esco / usciamo.
• vorrei is the magic word. One form, endlessly useful: Vorrei un caffè, Vorrei prenotare, Vorrei sapere. You can survive a whole trip on it before you ever study the conditional.
• You will meet debbo for devo in older books. It is a genuine alternative form, but you never need to produce it - devo is what everyone says.

In short

To make any Italian sentence negative, put non directly in front of the verb: parlo -> non parlo. There is no helper verb, no “do”, nothing else to change. And when you add a word like niente or nessuno, you keep the non - the double negative that is wrong in English is compulsory in Italian.

The rule

Italian negation is the cheapest grammar you will ever buy. One word, one position.

• Step 1 - Find the conjugated verb. Not the infinitive, not the participle - the verb that carries the person ending.
• Step 2 - Put non immediately in front of it. The subject, if you say one, stays out in front: Marco non lavora oggi. Nothing may slip between non and the verb except object pronouns, which travel with the verb as one block: Non lo so. / Non ci vado.
• Step 3 - Stop. Non parlo cinese is a complete, natural negative sentence. Italian has no equivalent of English “do not” - do not go looking for one.

With a modal, non goes before the modal, because the modal is the conjugated verb: Non posso venire, never Posso non venire (which means something else - “I can refrain from coming”).

no is not non

No is the word you say when someone asks you a question. Non is the particle that negates a verb. They are not interchangeable, and a full answer often uses both: No, non lo so. - No, I don’t know.

The negative words keep non

This is the part English speakers get wrong. Italian has a set of negative words - niente/nulla, nessuno, mai, più, ancora, né… né, mica - and they normally sit after the verb while non stays before it. The sentence therefore carries two negative pieces:

• Non ho niente. - literally “I don’t have nothing”, and it is correct Italian for I have nothing.
• Non vedo nessuno. - I don’t see anybody.
• Non bevo mai il vino. - I never drink wine.

Two negatives do not cancel each other out. Do not try to “fix” the sentence by dropping non, and do not reach for a word meaning “anything” - Italian has no such swap.

They also stack, three or four deep, with no drama at all: Non dico mai niente a nessuno. - I never say anything to anybody.

The one exception: a negative word in front of the verb drops non

If you move the negative word before the verb - usually because it is the subject - then it does the negating by itself and non disappears:

• Nessuno è venuto. - Nobody came. (not Nessuno non è venuto)
• Niente è impossibile. - Nothing is impossible.
• Né Marco né Anna parlano tedesco. - Neither Marco nor Anna speaks German.

The working rule: one non per verb, and only if no negative word got there first.

The individual words

niente and nulla both mean “nothing” and are interchangeable; niente is far more common in speech.

nessuno is two things. Alone it is a pronoun, “nobody”: Non c’è nessuno. In front of a noun it is an adjective meaning “no / not any”, and it takes the endings of un/uno/una (see Definite and indefinite articles). It is always singular, even where English uses a plural: Non ho nessun amico = I have no friends.

più and ancora are the pair to keep straight: non… più means “not anymore” (it stopped), non… ancora means “not yet” (it hasn’t started).

né… né = “neither… nor”. Both halves are needed: Non bevo né caffè né tè.

mica does not add a negation - it reinforces one, roughly English “not at all”, “not really”. It is colloquial: Non è mica difficile. - It’s not hard at all. Keep it out of formal writing.

Where the word lands in a compound tense

In the passato prossimo (step 15), the short adverbs mai, più, ancora and mica slot between the auxiliary and the participle, while niente and nessuno come after it:

• Non ho mai visto Roma. / Non ho ancora finito.
• Non ho visto niente. / Non ho visto nessuno.

Forms & patterns

The basic frame - parlare, affirmative vs negative:

The negative words, and what they pair with:

nessuno before a noun - identical to the un/uno/una rules:

Word order, the whole system on one page:

Examples

• Non parlo cinese. - I don’t speak Chinese.
• Oggi non ho tempo. - I don’t have time today.
• No, non lo so. - No, I don’t know.
• Non c’è nessuno in ufficio. - There’s nobody in the office.
• Non mangio mai la carne. - I never eat meat.
• Anna non abita più a Roma. - Anna doesn’t live in Rome anymore.
• Non ho ancora finito. - I haven’t finished yet.
• Non bevo né caffè né tè. - I drink neither coffee nor tea.
• Nessuno è venuto alla festa. - Nobody came to the party.
• Non è mica difficile. - It’s not difficult at all.

Common mistakes

• No lo so -> Non lo so - no answers a question, non negates a verb. They sound similar and do completely different jobs.
• Non ho qualcosa da dire -> Non ho niente da dire - Italian does not swap the negative word for an “anything” word. Keep non and add niente.
• Nessuno non è venuto -> Nessuno è venuto - once a negative word sits in front of the verb, non is gone. One non per verb, at most.
• Non ho nessuni amici -> Non ho nessun amico - nessuno before a noun is always singular and takes the un/uno/una endings.
• Non mai bevo il vino -> Non bevo mai il vino - non hugs the verb. mai, più, ancora and the rest come after it, never between non and the verb.

Tips

• non is glued to the verb. The only thing allowed to squeeze in is an object pronoun: Non la conosco, Non ci credo. If you find yourself putting anything else there, it is wrong.
• Two negatives make one negation. Say Non ho visto niente out loud until the English alarm stops ringing. The alarm is the mistake, not the sentence.
• più = stopped, ancora = not started. Non lavora più - he used to work and quit. Non lavora ancora - he hasn’t started working. One letter of difference in meaning, a whole life of difference in fact.
• mica and neanche are the spoken flavour. mica just sharpens a non (Non è mica vero!), and neanche/nemmeno mean “not even”: Non lo sa neanche Marco. Both follow the same rule - move them in front of the verb and non drops: Neanche Marco lo sa.

In short

The passato prossimo is how Italians talk about the past in everyday speech, and it is built from two pieces: the present tense of avere or essere, plus the past participle (ho mangiato, sono andato). Almost every verb takes avere; a short, learnable list takes essere - and with essere the participle agrees with the subject, exactly like an adjective.

The rule

The passato prossimo covers both English past tenses: ho mangiato is I ate, I have eaten and I did eat. Do not look for three different Italian forms - there is one, and it is this one.

Build it in three steps.

• Step 1 - Make the past participle. Drop the infinitive ending and add the matching one: -are -> -ato (parlare -> parlato), -ere -> -uto (credere -> creduto), -ire -> -ito (finire -> finito). Roughly a third of the -ere verbs are irregular, so the table below is compulsory learning.
• Step 2 - Choose the auxiliary. Ask one question: does the verb take a direct object? If yes, it is transitive and takes avere - Ho letto il libro. If it has no object and belongs to the movement/change-of-state group, it takes essere - Sono partito.
• Step 3 - Deal with the ending of the participle. With avere the participle is frozen in -o: Maria ha mangiato, i ragazzi hanno mangiato. With essere it agrees with the subject in gender and number: Marco è andato, Anna è andata, i ragazzi sono andati, le ragazze sono andate.

Which verbs take essere

The essere group is short enough to memorise, and it is remarkably coherent: verbs of going and coming, of staying, and of being born, changing or dying - things that happen to the subject rather than things the subject does to something.

andare, venire, arrivare, partire, entrare, uscire, tornare, salire, scendere, cadere, restare, rimanere, stare, essere, nascere, morire, diventare, piacere, sembrare, succedere, costare, durare, riuscire.

essere and stare share one participle: stato. And essere takes itself as its own auxiliary: sono stato - I have been.

A handful of verbs sit in both camps depending on whether an object follows: cambiare, finire, cominciare, passare, correre, salire, scendere. Object -> avere; no object -> essere. Compare Ho finito il lavoro (I finished the work) with Il film è finito (The film ended).

Modal verbs

Potere, dovere and volere have no auxiliary of their own: they borrow the one belonging to the infinitive that follows. So mangiare takes avere -> Ho voluto mangiare; andare takes essere -> Sono voluto andare. When the modal borrows essere, the participle agrees with the subject as usual: Anna è dovuta partire.

In everyday speech you will hear avere used with modals across the board (ho dovuto andare). It is widely tolerated - but the rule above is what exams and careful writing expect.

Forms & patterns

The two auxiliaries in the present, plus a participle:

Regular participles - one ending per conjugation:

The irregular participles you cannot avoid. They cluster into three shapes - learn them in these columns, not alphabetically:

Agreement, side by side - this is the whole difference:

Mixed company goes masculine plural: one man in the group is enough for -i.

Examples

• Ieri ho mangiato una pizza. - Yesterday I ate a pizza.
• Hai visto il film? - Have you seen the film?
• Abbiamo scritto una lettera. - We wrote a letter.
• Non ho capito la domanda. - I didn’t understand the question.
• Marco è andato a Roma. - Marco went to Rome.
• Anna è arrivata tardi. - Anna arrived late.
• Le mie amiche sono partite lunedì. - My friends left on Monday.
• Sono stato in Italia due volte. - I have been to Italy twice.
• Che cosa avete fatto ieri sera? - What did you do last night?
• Anna è dovuta tornare a casa presto. - Anna had to go back home early.

Common mistakes

• Ho andato al cinema -> Sono andato al cinema - andare has no object: it belongs to the essere group. This is the single most frequent error at A2.
• Anna è arrivato -> Anna è arrivata - with essere the participle is an adjective in disguise and must match the subject: -o / -a / -i / -e.
• Maria ha mangiata la pizza -> Maria ha mangiato la pizza - with avere the participle never agrees with the subject or with a following object. It stays -o.
• Ho stato a Roma -> Sono stato a Roma - essere is its own auxiliary, and its participle is stato.
• Sono potuto finire il lavoro -> Ho potuto finire il lavoro - the modal copies the auxiliary of the infinitive, and finire with an object takes avere.

Tips

• The essere test in one line: if the verb can be followed by “something” (read something, eat something), it takes avere. If it describes the subject going, coming, staying, being born, changing or dying, it takes essere. Roughly 90% of verbs are in the avere camp - so learn the short list and default to avere.
• avere freezes, essere agrees. Two words to hang the whole lesson on. If you wrote essere, immediately check the last letter of the participle against your subject.
• Learn irregular participles in rhyming chains, never alphabetically: fatto - detto - letto - scritto - rotto; preso - chiuso - deciso - speso; visto - chiesto - risposto - rimasto. They stick as sound, not as a list.
• Verbs of movement with a destination still take essere: Sono andato a Milano - the a Milano is a place, not an object. Only a direct object (no preposition) points to avere.

In short

The moment you want a second clause, you need glue: e (and), ma (but), o (or), perché (because), quindi (so), se (if), quando (when). All of them take the indicative - the verb form you already know - and none of them changes the word order of the clause that follows. Learn the ten or so words on this page and you can join any two sentences you can already say.

The rule

Step 1 - The three that just link: e, ma, o. They sit between the two clauses and change nothing inside them.

• Studio l’italiano e lavoro a Milano. (addition)
• Vorrei uscire ma piove. (contrast)
• Prendi il treno o vai in macchina? (alternative)

Two small notes. e becomes ed before a word starting with e- (ed ecco, ed era tardi); before other vowels ed is optional and nowadays rare, so e Anna is perfectly good. And o… o doubled means either… or: O vieni o resti.

Step 2 - perché does two jobs. It asks why and it answers because - same word, same accent on the é, always the indicative after it.

• Perché non mangi? - Perché non ho fame. - Why aren’t you eating? - Because I’m not hungry.

Step 3 - Cause first or result first: choose the connective accordingly. This is the one real decision in the lesson. The same two facts can be packed two ways, and each way has its own word:

cause AFTER the result -> perché: Non esco perché sono stanco. cause BEFORE the result -> siccome: Siccome sono stanco, non esco. result AFTER the cause -> quindi / perciò / allora: Sono stanco, quindi non esco.

siccome can only open the sentence - it never comes second. quindi, perciò and allora are the mirror image: they introduce the consequence, so they can never open the whole pair. infatti is different again: it does not add a cause, it confirms what you have just said - Era stanco, infatti è andato a letto presto.

Step 4 - Contrast: ma, però, invece. ma and però both mean but, and they are interchangeable in meaning - the difference is placement. ma must open its clause and stay there. però is mobile: it can open the clause, sit inside it, or land at the end.

• Vorrei venire ma non posso.
• Vorrei venire, però non posso. / Vorrei venire, non posso però.

invece means instead / on the other hand, and it marks a swap between two subjects or two facts: Io prendo un caffè, Anna invece prende un tè.

Step 5 - anche goes BEFORE the word it adds. English hangs too at the end of the sentence; Italian puts anche immediately in front of whatever is being added, and moving it moves the meaning:

• Anche Marco studia l’italiano. - Marco too (as well as other people).
• Marco studia anche l’italiano. - Italian too (as well as other subjects).

With a pronoun the fixed everyday shape is anch’io, anche tu, anche lui/lei, anche noi. Anch’io is the only one that elides.

Step 6 - Time and condition: quando, mentre, poi, se. All indicative.

quando = when; mentre = while (two things at once, and also whereas); poi = then, next, for sequencing; se = if for a real condition, and also whether after verbs like non so, chiedere, dipende.

• Quando arrivo, ti chiamo. - Mentre cucino, ascolto la radio. - Prima mangiamo, poi usciamo. - Se piove, restiamo a casa. - Non so se viene.

Step 7 - Nothing here takes the subjunctive. Every connective on this page governs the plain indicative. The set that forces the subjunctive - benché, purché, prima che - is a separate, much later job (step 48). One useful pair to notice now: anche se (even if / even though) belongs to this group and takes the indicative - Esco anche se piove.

Forms & patterns

The working set, by job:

Cause and consequence - the same idea, three builds:

Placement of the two but-words:

Examples

• Studio l’italiano e mi piace molto. - I study Italian and I like it a lot.
• Vorrei uscire, ma sono troppo stanco. - I’d like to go out, but I’m too tired.
• Prendiamo il treno o andiamo in macchina? - Shall we take the train or go by car?
• Non vengo alla festa perché domani lavoro. - I’m not coming to the party because I’m working tomorrow.
• Siccome non ho la macchina, prendo l’autobus. - Since I don’t have a car, I take the bus.
• Ho perso il treno, quindi sono arrivato tardi. - I missed the train, so I arrived late.
• Marco beve il caffè, io invece preferisco il tè. - Marco drinks coffee, I prefer tea though.
• Anche mia sorella abita a Roma. - My sister lives in Rome too.
• Mentre studiavo, mia madre cucinava. - While I was studying, my mother was cooking.
• Se hai tempo, ci vediamo domani. - If you have time, we’ll see each other tomorrow.

Common mistakes

• Io anche. -> Anch’io. - anche always comes in front of what it adds, never after it; the fixed answer form is anch’io.
• Ma però non posso. -> Ma non posso. / Però non posso. - ma and però mean the same thing, so stacking them is a double but. Pick one.
• Non esco siccome sono stanco. -> Non esco perché sono stanco. / Siccome sono stanco, non esco. - siccome can only open the sentence; when the cause follows, the word is perché.
• Non so che viene. -> Non so se viene. - after non so, chiedere, dipende, English whether/if is se, never che.
• Non vengo perchè piove. -> Non vengo perché piove. - the accent leans the other way: perché, poiché, affinché all end in -ché with an acute accent.

Tips

• perché is two words in one: it opens the question and it opens the answer. If you learn nothing else here, learn that Perché…? - Perché… is a complete, natural exchange.
• Cause vs consequence is just a question of which fact you say first. perché points backwards to the cause, quindi points forwards to the result. If you can’t remember siccome, you never need it: perché covers the same ground with the clauses swapped.
• però is the flexible one, ma is the rigid one. When you have already started the clause and only then remember the contrast, però can still be dropped in - ma cannot.
• infatti is a false friend. It confirms (“indeed, and that’s why”); it does not correct. English actually in the sense of “no, in fact the opposite” is in realtà or anzi.

In short

Sto mangiando = I am eating right now; sto per mangiare = I am about to eat. Both conjugate only stare and leave the second verb fixed. The catch for English speakers: Italian does not need the progressive - mangio already means both I eat and I am eating, so use sto mangiando only when you want to insist that the action is happening at this very moment.

The rule

English forces you to choose between I eat and I am eating. Italian does not: the simple present (step 7) covers both. Stare + gerundio is an optional zoom lens - you reach for it only to frame an action in progress at a specific moment. If you translate every English -ing with it, your Italian will sound wrong, which is why this lesson is as much about when not to use it as about how to build it.

stare + gerundio - an action in progress

• Step 1 - Conjugate stare. Only this word changes. Present: sto, stai, sta, stiamo, state, stanno. Imperfect: stavo, stavi, stava, stavamo, stavate, stavano.
• Step 2 - Make the gerundio. Drop the infinitive ending and add: -are -> -ando (parlare -> parlando); -ere and -ire -> -endo (credere -> credendo, dormire -> dormendo).
• Step 3 - Put them together. Sto parlando, stavo dormendo. The gerundio never agrees with anything - it has one form for every subject.

Two tenses cover almost everything you need at A2:

• Present: happening now. Che cosa stai facendo? - Sto studiando.
• Imperfect: was happening then, typically interrupted. Stavo uscendo quando ha telefonato.

There is no compound version: sono stato mangiando does not exist. For a finished past action use the passato prossimo (step 15).

When Italian does NOT use it

This is the part that costs marks. Use the plain present instead when the action is:

• Habitual: Ogni mattina bevo un caffè - Every morning I drink a coffee. Never sto bevendo here.
• Future: Domani vado a Roma - Tomorrow I’m going to Rome. English uses -ing for plans; Italian cannot. Sto andando a Roma can only mean I’m on my way to Rome right now.
• A state rather than an activity: Sono felice, Ho fame, Conosco Marco, Mi piace la musica. Verbs like essere, avere, sapere, conoscere, piacere normally resist the progressive.

stare per + infinitive - the imminent future

Same skeleton, different filling: conjugate stare, add per, then the infinitive (the dictionary form, never a gerund). It means to be about to / to be on the point of:

Sto per uscire. Il treno sta per partire. In the imperfect it means was about to, and it is the natural way to say something almost happened: Stavo per chiamarti.

Pronouns

With both periphrases, an object or reflexive pronoun has two homes: before stare, or attached to the end of the gerundio/infinitive. Both are correct, and the meaning is identical.

• Lo sto facendo. = Sto facendolo.
• Mi sto lavando. = Sto lavandomi.
• Lo sto per fare. = Sto per farlo.

Note the boundary: the gerundio also lives outside these periphrases, on its own, meaning by doing / having done (Avendo finito, sono uscito). That is a different, later job - see Non-finite forms and implicit clauses. Here the gerundio only ever follows stare.

Forms & patterns

stare in the two tenses that matter, with the gerundio bolted on:

Building the gerundio - two endings, no exceptions by conjugation:

The irregular gerunds. They are few, and they all reuse the verb’s long Latin stem - the same stem you already see in the imperfect (facevo, dicevo, bevevo):

The two periphrases side by side - one letter of difference in your head, a whole tense apart in meaning:

Examples

• Sto studiando l’italiano. - I’m studying Italian (right now).
• Che cosa stai facendo? - Sto guardando la televisione. - What are you doing? - I’m watching TV.
• I bambini stanno dormendo, non fare rumore. - The children are sleeping, don’t make noise.
• Stavo uscendo quando è arrivata Maria. - I was on my way out when Maria arrived.
• Non stiamo dicendo questo. - That’s not what we’re saying.
• Sta piovendo, prendi l’ombrello. - It’s raining, take an umbrella.
• Il treno sta per partire. - The train is about to leave.
• Sto per finire il lavoro. - I’m about to finish the work.
• Stavo per chiamarti, che coincidenza! - I was about to call you, what a coincidence!
• Scusa, ti sto disturbando? - Sorry, am I disturbing you?

Common mistakes

• Sto andando a Roma domani -> Vado a Roma domani - stare + gerundio can only mean now. It has no future reading, so English “I’m going to Rome tomorrow” is a plain present in Italian.
• Sto per mangiando -> Sto per mangiare - after per comes the infinitive. Mixing the two patterns is the classic slip: gerundio after stare, infinitive after stare per.
• Sto faciendo i compiti -> Sto facendo i compiti - fare, dire, bere build the gerundio on their long stem: facendo, dicendo, bevendo. The forms faciendo, diciendo and beendo do not exist.
• Sono stato mangiando quando è arrivato -> Stavo mangiando quando è arrivato - there is no compound form of this periphrasis. Ongoing in the past = stavo + gerundio.
• Ogni giorno sto lavorando dalle nove -> Ogni giorno lavoro dalle nove - a habit is never progressive. Ogni giorno, sempre, di solito are a red flag for the plain present.

Tips

• Ask “is it happening while I speak?” If yes, sto + gerundio is available (but optional). If no - habit, plan, state - the simple present is the only right answer.
• stare + gerundio is never obligatory. Mangio is a perfectly good I am eating. Italians use the periphrasis far less than English uses -ing, so when in doubt, drop it: a plain present is never wrong, an unnecessary sto mangiando often is.
• Two words, two verb forms: per -> infinitive, nothing -> gerundio. Sto per uscire / Sto uscendo.
• The irregular gerunds are free if you know the imperfect: take facevo, dicevo, bevevo, swap the ending for -endo, and you have facendo, dicendo, bevendo.

In short

Instead of repeating a noun, Italian puts a tiny unstressed pronoun in front of the verb: Conosci Marco? Sì, lo conosco. There are two sets - direct (lo, la, li, le: him, her, them) and indirect (gli, le: to him, to her) - and they differ only in the third person. Everything else (mi, ti, ci, vi) is the same in both columns.

The rule

An unstressed pronoun (pronome atono) is not a word you stress or pause on - it leans on the verb like a prefix. That is why it goes before the verb, not after it as in English.

• Step 1 - Find out what the verb does with the person. Does the verb reach them directly, with no preposition (vedere qualcuno, aspettare qualcuno)? That is a direct object. Or does it reach them through a (telefonare a qualcuno, scrivere a qualcuno)? That is an indirect object.
• Step 2 - Pick the pronoun from the right column. Direct: mi, ti, lo, la, ci, vi, li, le. Indirect: mi, ti, gli, le, ci, vi, gli. Only lui, lei and loro force you to choose; the rest are identical.
• Step 3 - Put it in front of the conjugated verb. Lo vedo. Gli scrivo. With non, the negation stays outside: Non lo vedo, non gli scrivo.
• Step 4 - Elide if you can. Only lo and la shrink to l’ before a vowel or h: L’aspetto, L’ho visto. li, le and gli never elide.

Ignore the English preposition - it lies

English “listen to him” has a preposition and Italian does not; English “phone him” has none and Italian does. The only thing that counts is what the Italian verb does.

Direct (no a): vedere, guardare, ascoltare, aspettare, cercare, chiamare, incontrare, aiutare, conoscere, seguire, ringraziare, salutare, pagare, invitare. -> L’ascolto (I listen to him), La chiamo (I call her).

Indirect (with a): telefonare a, scrivere a, parlare a, dire a, chiedere a, rispondere a, dare a, offrire a, regalare a, mandare a, spiegare a. -> Gli telefono (I phone him), Le rispondo (I answer her).

Where the pronoun sits

Before a conjugated verb it is a separate word: Ti chiamo stasera. But it attaches to the end of an infinitive (which drops its final -e) and of an informal imperative: vedere -> vederlo, dire -> dirgli, Guarda! -> Guardalo!

With modale + infinito you get two placements, both fully correct - just never both at once, and never in the middle: Lo voglio vedere = Voglio vederlo.

The imperatives da’, di’, fa’, sta’, va’ double the consonant of whatever attaches: dammi, dimmi, fallo, vacci - except before gli, which never doubles: digli, dagli. The imperative itself is step 25; with the polite Lei the pronoun goes back in front (Mi dica), which belongs to step 39.

Stay in the simple tenses for now. When a direct lo/la/li/le comes before a compound tense the past participle has to agree with it (Li ho visti), and pronouns also combine into single words like glielo and me ne - both of those are step 31.

The stressed forms (i pronomi tonici)

The atoni cannot be stressed, so when you need emphasis, contrast, or a preposition, Italian swaps in the heavy forms: me, te, lui, lei, noi, voi, loro. They go after the verb.

• After any preposition: con me, per te, da lui, secondo noi. (senza, dopo, prima, sopra, sotto insert di: senza di te.)
• For contrast or emphasis: Cercano me, non te. Compare the neutral Mi cercano.
• For an indirect object, the heavy form keeps its a: Parlo a lui, never Parlo lui. The a that disappeared inside gli comes back.
• After anche, solo, neanche: Anche lui viene.

Note that me and te are the forms after a preposition - con io, per tu do not exist.

One caution about loro

The strictly correct indirect plural is loro, placed after the verb: Parlo loro. Nobody says this outside formal writing. Modern spoken Italian uses gli for to them as well: Gli parlo. Use gli and recognise loro.

Forms & patterns

The two columns side by side - the whole lesson is the four cells that differ:

Unstressed vs stressed - same meaning, different weight:

Position, by verb form:

Elision - only two forms shrink:

Because le and gli never elide, le ho scritto can only be I wrote to her - the elided l’ho is always a direct lo/la.

Examples

• Conosci Marco? Sì, lo conosco bene. - Do you know Marco? Yes, I know him well.
• Dov’è la chiave? Non la trovo. - Where is the key? I can’t find it.
• Ti aspetto davanti al bar alle otto. - I’ll wait for you in front of the bar at eight.
• Questi libri sono interessanti: li leggo stasera. - These books are interesting: I’ll read them tonight.
• L’ho visto ieri al mercato. - I saw him yesterday at the market.
• Gli telefono ogni domenica. - I phone him every Sunday.
• Anna non risponde: le scrivo una mail. - Anna isn’t answering: I’ll write her an email.
• Scusa, puoi aiutarmi? / Scusa, mi puoi aiutare? - Sorry, can you help me?
• Cercano me, non te. - They’re looking for me, not you.
• Vieni con noi al cinema? - Are you coming to the cinema with us?

Common mistakes

• Vedo lo domani -> Lo vedo domani - an unstressed pronoun never follows a conjugated verb. If you really want it after the verb, you need the stressed form: Vedo lui domani.
• Le ascolto (meaning “I listen to her”) -> L’ascolto - ascoltare takes a direct object in Italian. The English “to” is not there in ascoltare qualcuno, so the pronoun is la, not le. Same trap with aspettare (wait for), guardare (look at), cercare (look for).
• Telefono lo stasera -> Gli telefono stasera - telefonare reaches the person through a (telefonare a Marco), so it needs the indirect gli, even though English “phone him” looks direct.
• Lo ho comprato -> L’ho comprato - before a vowel or h, lo and la must elide. (li and le must not: Li ho comprati.)
• Devo lo finire -> Lo devo finire / Devo finirlo - the pronoun cannot sit between the modal and the infinitive. It climbs in front of the modal or attaches to the infinitive - one or the other, never both.

Tips

• Only the third person is real work. mi, ti, ci, vi are identical in both columns, so four cells carry the whole system: lui = lo/gli, lei = la/le. Learn them as two pairs and you are done.
• The “a” test beats translation. Say the sentence with a name: Telefono a Marco -> there is an a -> indirect -> gli. Aspetto Marco -> no a -> direct -> lo. Never reason from the English preposition; it disagrees with Italian about half the time.
• Atono = leaning, tonico = pointing. If you could bang the table on the word (“I’m looking for you, not him”), you need the heavy form: Cerco te. If it is just information, use the light one: Ti cerco.
• le has a twin. le is both the direct them (feminine) and the indirect to her - the verb tells you which: Le vedo = I see them (women); Le parlo = I speak to her.

In short

Italian does not say I like pizza. It says Mi piace la pizza - literally to me pleases the pizza: the thing you like is the subject, and the person who likes it is an indirect object. So the verb agrees with the thing, not with you: mi piace il caffè but mi piacciono i biscotti. A whole family of everyday verbs - servire, mancare, bastare, sembrare, interessare, fare male - works exactly the same way.

The rule

Step 1 - Turn the English sentence around. Take I like the film and rebuild it as to me is-pleasing the film. The person disappears from the subject slot and comes back as a dative pronoun from step 18 (mi, ti, gli, le, ci, vi, gli); the thing liked moves to the end and becomes the subject.

I like the film -> Mi piace il film. word for word: to me is-pleasing the film

The subject normally follows the verb here. Il film mi piace is also correct and means the same thing - it just puts il film in focus - but mi piace il film is the neutral everyday order.

Step 2 - Count the thing, not the person. This is the whole difficulty. Ask how many things are pleasing?

• one thing -> piace: Mi piace la musica.
• more than one -> piacciono: Mi piacciono le canzoni italiane.
• an action (an infinitive) -> piace, always singular: Mi piace viaggiare. Even two infinitives keep it singular: Mi piace leggere e ascoltare musica.

The pronoun mi never changes when the thing changes. Mi piace / mi piacciono are the only two forms you will need in 95% of sentences.

Step 3 - Say who, in one of three ways. With a pronoun, use the unstressed dative: Le piace il mare (she likes the sea). With a noun, you must add the preposition a: A Marco piace il calcio - never Marco piace il calcio, which would mean Marco is pleasing to football. For emphasis or contrast, use the stressed form a me, a te, a lui… in front: A me piace il tè, a lui piace il caffè.

Do not use both at once for the same person: A Marco gli piace is heard in casual speech but is not standard. Pick A Marco piace or Gli piace.

Step 4 - In the past: essere, and the participle agrees. piacere is in the essere group (step 15), so the participle piaciuto agrees with the subject - that is, with the thing liked, not with you:

• Mi è piaciuto il film. / Mi è piaciuta la mostra.
• Mi sono piaciuti i film. / Mi sono piaciute le foto.
• With an infinitive, default masculine singular: Mi è piaciuto ballare.

Negation wraps the whole block: Non mi piace, Non mi è piaciuto.

Step 5 - The same machine drives a whole family. Once the pattern clicks, six more high-frequency verbs come free. All of them put the thing in the subject slot and the person in the dative, and all of them live mostly in the third person singular and plural:

servire (to need), mancare (to miss, to be lacking), bastare (to be enough), sembrare (to seem), interessare (to interest), fare male (to hurt).

mancare is the one that surprises everyone: the person or place you miss is the subject. Mi manca l’Italia = I miss Italy - Italy is doing the “lacking”, to me.

One footnote on the past: piacere, mancare, bastare, sembrare and servire take essere (mi è servito, mi sono mancati), but fare male is built on fare, so it takes avere and the participle does not agree: Mi ha fatto male la testa.

Forms & patterns

piacere in the present. All six persons exist, but only the shaded pair is common - the others appear when a person is what you like:

The core pattern, person by person:

Passato prossimo - essere plus an agreeing participle:

The family, same construction throughout:

Examples

• Mi piace la cucina italiana. - I like Italian food.
• Ti piacciono questi film? - Do you like these films?
• A Marco piace giocare a calcio. - Marco likes playing football.
• A me piace il mare, a lei piace la montagna. - I like the sea, she likes the mountains.
• Non ci è piaciuta la fine del libro. - We didn’t like the end of the book.
• Le sono piaciuti molto i tuoi regali. - She liked your presents a lot.
• Scusi, mi serve un’informazione. - Excuse me, I need some information.
• Ci mancano due sedie per la festa. - We’re two chairs short for the party.
• Mi sembra un po’ caro. - It seems a bit expensive to me.
• Oggi mi fanno male gli occhi. - My eyes hurt today.

Common mistakes

• Io piaccio la pizza. -> Mi piace la pizza. - piaccio means I am pleasing. You are not the subject: the pizza is. Flip the sentence before you open your mouth.
• Mi piace i gatti. -> Mi piacciono i gatti. - the verb agrees with the thing liked. Two or more things -> piacciono, no matter who likes them.
• Mio fratello piace il calcio. -> A mio fratello piace il calcio. - a noun in the “who likes it” slot always needs a. Without it you have said your brother pleases football.
• Ho piaciuto il concerto. -> Mi è piaciuto il concerto. - piacere takes essere, and the participle matches the subject: Mi è piaciuta la festa, mi sono piaciuti i concerti.
• Mi manco la mia città. -> Mi manca la mia città. - same inversion as piacere: the city is the subject and does the missing. Manco would mean I am missing / I’m absent.

Tips

• One mental translation fixes everything: read mi piace as “to me it appeals”, and mi piacciono as “to me they appeal”. Then the agreement is obvious - and it is the same trick that unlocks to me it is lacking (mi manca) and to me it is enough (mi basta).
• Count the thing, not the person. The pronoun tells you who; the ending of the verb tells you how many things. They are independent: mi piacciono and gli piacciono have the same -ono because both talk about several things.
• Short answers are stressed forms. You cannot answer with a bare clitic, so learn the ready-made replies: Anche a me! (me too), A me no (I don’t), Neanche a me (me neither), A me sì (I do).
• Frequency note: apart from the flirty mi piaci (I like you), you will almost never need any form of piacere other than piace and piacciono. Drill those two until they are automatic and the rest of the family follows for free.

In short

The imperfetto is the past tense of description, habit and background: what things were like, what you used to do, what was going on. Building it is the easiest job in the Italian verb system - cut -re off the infinitive and add -vo, -vi, -va, -vamo, -vate, -vano (parlavo, credevo, dormivo). Only four verbs need learning: essere, fare, dire, bere.

The rule

If the passato prossimo (step 15) is a camera taking snapshots of finished events, the imperfetto is the camera panning slowly across the scene: no beginning, no end, no result - just how it was.

Building it - three steps

• Step 1 - Take the infinitive and cut off -re. parlare -> parla-, credere -> crede-, dormire -> dormi-, finire -> fini-.
• Step 2 - Add one set of endings: -vo, -vi, -va, -vamo, -vate, -vano. That is the whole tense: parlavo, parlavi, parlava, parlavamo, parlavate, parlavano.
• Step 3 - Learn the four verbs that refuse. essere (ero), fare (facevo), dire (dicevo), bere (bevevo). Nothing else on your A2 list misbehaves.

The reward for this rule is large: every verb that tortures you in the present tense (step 10) is perfectly tame here. Andare -> andavo, venire -> venivo, uscire -> uscivo, potere -> potevo, sapere -> sapevo, dare -> davo, avere -> avevo. No stem changes, no -isc-, no surprises.

What the imperfetto is for

Reach for it when you mean one of these four things:

• Description in the past - people, places, things, feelings and states, with no interest in when they started or stopped: La casa era grande. Ero stanco. Non sapevo che cosa fare.
• Habitual action - what happened again and again. This is English used to or would: Da bambino giocavo a calcio. Ogni estate andavamo al mare.
• Age, weather, time and the setting of a scene - the standing facts a story opens with: Avevo dieci anni. Faceva freddo. Erano le otto. C’era molta gente.
• Background - an action already under way, in progress rather than completed. Two of them running side by side take mentre: Mentre leggevo, mio fratello ascoltava la musica.

Words that almost force the imperfetto: sempre, spesso, di solito, ogni giorno, tutti i giorni, da bambino, da piccolo, a quei tempi, allora, mentre.

That fourth use has a famous partner - the single event that cuts into the background (Leggevo quando ha telefonato). Choosing between the two tenses is a real skill and it has a lesson of its own: see Passato prossimo vs imperfetto. Here, learn the forms and the four uses above until they are automatic.

Forms & patterns

The three conjugations. Notice that the endings are identical - only the vowel you kept from the infinitive changes:

The four verbs to memorise. Only essere is genuinely irregular; the other three are simply old - they build on the long older infinitives facere, dicere, bevere, which is why the stem looks longer than the modern verb:

Verbs that are a nightmare in the present and a gift in the imperfetto - the tense flattens them all:

Where the stress falls - the loro form is the one that trips people up out loud:

Examples

• Da bambino abitavo a Roma. - As a child I lived in Rome.
• La casa era grande e aveva un giardino. - The house was big and had a garden.
• Faceva freddo e pioveva. - It was cold and it was raining.
• Ogni estate andavamo al mare. - Every summer we went to the seaside.
• Quando avevo dieci anni, giocavo a calcio. - When I was ten, I played football.
• Erano le otto e c’era molta gente. - It was eight o’clock and there were a lot of people.
• Mentre leggevo, mio fratello ascoltava la musica. - While I was reading, my brother was listening to music.
• Di solito bevevo un caffè alle sette. - I usually drank a coffee at seven.
• Mia nonna diceva sempre la stessa cosa. - My grandmother always used to say the same thing.
• Non sapevo che cosa fare. - I didn’t know what to do.

Common mistakes

• Quando ero dieci anni -> Quando avevo dieci anni - age runs on avere, not essere, exactly as in the present (ho dieci anni). And avere gives no trouble in this tense: avevo, avevi, aveva.
• Io eravo felice -> Io ero felice - essere is the one truly irregular verb of the tense, and its io form is short: ero, eri, era, eravamo, eravate, erano.
• Da bambino favo molto sport -> Da bambino facevo molto sport - do not cut fare down to fa-. Fare, dire, bere keep the long stem: facevo, dicevo, bevevo. Watch bere especially - bevo already exists, but it is the present (I drink), so the imperfetto has to be bevevo.
• Ogni sera finiscevo i compiti -> Ogni sera finivo i compiti - the -isc- of finisco belongs to the present tense only. It never appears in the imperfetto.
• Loro giocavono a carte -> Loro giocavano a carte - the loro ending is -vano for every single verb, with the stress pulled back: giocàvano.

Tips

• One rule, four exceptions, zero stem changes. If you can say the infinitive, you can conjugate the imperfetto: chop -re, add -vo. After the present tense, this feels like a holiday - so it is a good tense to be fast and confident in.
• “Used to” or “was …-ing” in English -> imperfetto in Italian. Both English shapes land on this one Italian tense. If neither fits your sentence and you are reporting a single finished event, you probably want the passato prossimo instead.
• fare, dire, bere are free if you know the gerundio. The imperfetto and stare + gerundio (step 17) share a stem: facevo / facendo, dicevo / dicendo, bevevo / bevendo. Learn one pair, get the other.
• The politeness trick. Native speakers soften a request by putting it in the imperfetto: Volevo un caffè and Volevo chiederLe una cosa are far gentler than voglio. It costs nothing to learn and instantly sounds Italian.

In short

A reflexive verb is an ordinary verb plus a small pronoun that points back at the subject: mi lavo, ti alzi, si sveglia. The pronoun changes with the person and normally sits before the verb. One rule outranks everything else here: in the passato prossimo a reflexive verb always takes essere, and the participle agrees with the subject - mi sono alzato, Anna si è alzata.

The rule

Italian marks reflexivity with a pronoun, not with a word like English myself. You already know most of these pronouns from step 18 - only the third person is new: si covers himself, herself, itself, themselves.

mi, ti, si, ci, vi, si.

The dictionary lists these verbs with -si stuck to the infinitive: lavarsi, alzarsi, chiamarsi. That -si is not part of the verb - it is a slot you must fill with the pronoun matching your subject. Lavarsi -> io mi lavo, tu ti lavi, noi ci laviamo.

• Step 1 - Take off the -si and you have a normal infinitive: lavarsi -> lavare.
• Step 2 - Conjugate that verb normally for your subject: io lavo.
• Step 3 - Put the matching pronoun in front: io mi lavo. Nothing else changes - reflexive verbs have no special endings.

The pronoun goes before the conjugated verb, and after non: Non mi alzo presto. In questions it stays put: A che ora ti alzi?

Three jobs, one set of pronouns

The same pronouns do three different jobs. Recognising which one is in front of you is most of this lesson.

• True reflexive - the subject does the action to itself. Mi lavo = I wash myself. Here the pronoun is a real object, and you could swap it for someone else: lavo il bambino (I wash the child) -> mi lavo (I wash myself).
• Reciprocal - two or more people do the action to each other. Only the plurals ci, vi, si can do this: si scrivono = they write to each other, ci vediamo = we see each other.
• Inherently pronominal - the pronoun is welded to the verb and means nothing on its own. Arrabbiarsi (to get angry), accorgersi (to notice), pentirsi (to regret), vergognarsi (to be ashamed), innamorarsi (to fall in love), ammalarsi (to fall ill), sedersi (to sit down), sbrigarsi (to hurry). There is no everyday verb arrabbiare to strip the pronoun from - you learn arrabbiarsi whole. Nobody gets angry “to himself”; the pronoun is simply part of the word.

Good news: all three behave identically in grammar. The distinction is about meaning, not about forms.

Reciprocals and their ambiguity

Si guardano can mean they look at themselves or they look at each other. Context usually settles it, and when it doesn’t, add a vicenda, tra loro or l’un l’altro: Si aiutano a vicenda - They help each other.

The passato prossimo - the rule to burn in

Forget the auxiliary rules of step 15 here. A reflexive verb takes essere. Always. No exceptions, no lists.

This surprises learners because the same verb takes avere when it is not reflexive. Compare: Ho lavato la macchina (I washed the car - avere) with Mi sono lavato (I washed - essere). The verb did not change; the pronoun changed the auxiliary.

And because the auxiliary is essere, the participle agrees with the subject in gender and number, exactly as in step 15: Marco si è svegliato, Anna si è svegliata, i ragazzi si sono svegliati, le ragazze si sono svegliate.

When a direct object follows, the participle still agrees with the subject, not with that object: Anna si è lavata le mani.

Body parts and clothes - no possessive

With reflexives Italian uses the definite article where English uses my / your / his. The pronoun has already told you whose they are, so a possessive would be redundant: Mi lavo le mani, Si mette la giacca, Ti sei rotto il braccio?

With a modal

Potere, dovere, volere give the pronoun two homes, and both are fully correct:

• before the modal: Mi devo alzare presto.
• attached to the infinitive (which loses its final -e): Devo alzarmi presto.

Choose one. The pronoun appears once, never twice.

In the passato prossimo the pronoun’s position picks the auxiliary: in front -> essere (Mi sono dovuto alzare); attached -> avere (Ho dovuto alzarmi). Both are standard.

The boundary of this lesson: verbs like farcela, andarsene and cavarsela look reflexive but carry extra frozen particles and idiomatic meanings. They are a later job - see Pronominal verbs.

Forms & patterns

The pronouns, and lavarsi in the present:

The passato prossimo - essere for every person, participle tracking the subject:

The three jobs, side by side:

Same verb, pronoun or no pronoun - a genuine change of meaning:

Examples

• Mi sveglio alle sette ogni mattina. - I wake up at seven every morning.
• Come ti chiami? - Mi chiamo Luca. - What’s your name? - My name is Luca.
• I bambini si lavano le mani prima di mangiare. - The children wash their hands before eating.
• Non mi ricordo il suo nome. - I don’t remember his name.
• Ci vediamo domani alle otto! - See you tomorrow at eight!
• Marco e Anna si sono conosciuti a Roma. - Marco and Anna met each other in Rome.
• Mi sono alzata tardi e ho perso il treno. - I got up late and missed the train.
• Vi siete divertiti alla festa? - Did you enjoy yourselves at the party?
• Mi devo sbrigare, sono in ritardo. - I have to hurry, I’m late.
• Si è arrabbiato perché non l’ho chiamato. - He got angry because I didn’t call him.

Common mistakes

• Mi ho svegliato tardi -> Mi sono svegliato tardi - a reflexive verb takes essere, even when the same verb takes avere without the pronoun. This is the number one error of this lesson.
• Anna si è alzato presto -> Anna si è alzata presto - essere means the participle agrees with the subject. Write the pronoun, then check the last letter against who is speaking.
• Mi devo alzarmi presto -> Mi devo alzare presto (or Devo alzarmi presto) - the pronoun has two possible homes, but it only fills one of them.
• Mi lavo le mie mani -> Mi lavo le mani - mi already says the hands are yours; Italian takes the article, never the possessive.
• Si chiamo Marco -> Mi chiamo Marco - the pronoun follows the subject, not the verb’s dictionary form. Si is only for lui, lei, loro.

Tips

• Reflexive = essere. Full stop. It is one of the few rules in Italian with no exception list. If you see a pronoun from the mi/ti/si/ci/vi/si set attached to the verb, the auxiliary question is already answered.
• The dictionary form lies to you. -arsi never appears in a conjugated sentence. Reading alzarsi, immediately say the io form out loud: mi alzo. That habit stops si chiamo forever.
• Reciprocals need a plural. Ci, vi, si + plural subject can mean each other; mi and ti never can. Ci telefoniamo = we phone each other.
• Your daily routine is a reflexive drill. svegliarsi, alzarsi, lavarsi, vestirsi, prepararsi, addormentarsi - narrate your morning in Italian once and you have practised the whole paradigm.

In short

Italian builds the future on the infinitive: drop the final -e, turn -are into -er-, and add one set of endings that works for all three conjugations (-ò, -ai, -à, -emo, -ete, -anno). In everyday speech Italians very often use the present instead - Domani parto is more natural than Domani partirò.

The rule

The futuro semplice says that something will happen later: Domani ti chiamerò. One set of endings covers every verb - the only work is getting the stem right.

Step 1 - Build the stem from the infinitive. Take the infinitive and cut the final -e:

• -ere and -ire verbs keep their vowel: prendere -> prender-, partire -> partir-.
• -are verbs change a to e: parlare -> parler-, mangiare -> manger-. This is the one systematic surprise, and it is why parlaro never exists.

Step 2 - Add the endings. They never change: -ò, -ai, -à, -emo, -ete, -anno. Note the written accent on io and lui/lei: parlerò, parlerà. Without it you have written a different word (parlerà vs. nothing at all; compare parlo = “I speak”).

Step 3 - Handle the two stem adjustments.

• Spelling-adjusted stems. Verbs in -care/-gare insert an h to keep the hard /k/ and /g/ sound: cercare -> cercherò, pagare -> pagherò. Verbs in -ciare/-giare drop the i, which has done its job already: cominciare -> comincerò, mangiare -> mangerò.
• Contracted stems. A small group of very common verbs loses the stem vowel, sometimes assimilating: andare -> andrò, avere -> avrò, potere -> potrò, dovere -> dovrò, sapere -> saprò, vedere -> vedrò, vivere -> vivrò; and with a double r: venire -> verrò, volere -> vorrò, bere -> berrò, rimanere -> rimarrò, tenere -> terrò. Essere is its own thing: sarò. Fare, dare and stare keep the a: farò, darò, starò.

Step 4 - Decide whether you even need it. For a scheduled or near event, the present is the normal spoken choice: Domani parto per Roma, Stasera usciamo. Reach for the future when the event is further off, less certain, or when you want to sound more formal or more emphatic: Un giorno tornerò. After quando, appena and se, Italian does use the future where English uses the present - Quando arriverò, ti chiamo - but the present is also fine there.

This lesson covers the temporal future only: the future that talks about later. Italian also uses these same forms to guess about the present (Saranno le otto) - that belongs with the future perfect.

Forms & patterns

Regular endings, all three conjugations:

Spelling-adjusted stems (the sound stays the same as in the infinitive):

Contracted and irregular stems (endings are still the regular ones):

Future or present? Both are correct; the right column is what you will hear more:

Examples

• Domani parlerò con il direttore. Tomorrow I will speak with the director.
• L’anno prossimo andremo in Italia. Next year we will go to Italy.
• Quando avrai tempo, ci vedremo. When you have time, we will see each other.
• Marco verrà alla festa con sua sorella. Marco will come to the party with his sister.
• Cercherò le chiavi più tardi. I will look for the keys later.
• Stasera mangeremo a casa. This evening we will eat at home.
• Non so se sarà possibile. I don’t know whether it will be possible.
• I ragazzi non vorranno alzarsi presto. The boys will not want to get up early.
• Fra due anni finirò l’università. In two years I will finish university.
• Domani parto alle sei. (present, and perfectly normal) Tomorrow I leave at six.

Common mistakes

• Domani io parlaro con lui. -> Domani parlerò con lui. Two errors: -are becomes -er-, and the io form needs its accent - parlerò.
• Cercero le chiavi. -> Cercherò le chiavi. Without the h, cerce- would be read with a soft “ch” sound, as in cena. The h protects the hard /k/.
• Mangierò la pizza. -> Mangerò la pizza. In -giare/-ciare the i only softens g/c before a; before e it is redundant, so it goes.
• Venirò domani. -> Verrò domani. Venire, volere, tenere, bere and rimanere contract to a double r: verrò, vorrò, terrò, berrò, rimarrò.
• Io vado a mangiare domani sera con lei. -> Domani sera mangerò con lei. / Domani sera mangio con lei. There is no andare a + infinitive future in Italian; use the future or simply the present.

Tips

• One ending set, three conjugations. Learn -ò, -ai, -à, -emo, -ete, -anno once and you can conjugate any Italian verb in the future the moment you know its stem.
• The contracted stems are the frequent verbs. avrò, sarò, andrò, potrò, dovrò, saprò, vedrò, verrò, vorrò - roughly a dozen forms cover most of what you will ever say. Drill them as vocabulary, not as a rule.
• -erò is the giveaway for -are verbs. If you hear -erò but the infinitive ends in -are, that is the regular pattern, not an irregularity.
• When in doubt, use the present. For anything happening today, tomorrow or this week, Domani parto is what a native speaker says. The future is never wrong, just heavier.

In short

To say “some” you first ask whether you can count the noun: countable -> qualche + a singular noun or alcuni/alcune + a plural noun; uncountable -> un po’ di. Then remember the two invariables that trap everyone: qualche and ogni are always followed by a singular noun, and molto/poco/troppo/tanto agree before a noun but freeze as molto, poco, troppo, tanto when they modify a verb or an adjective.

The rule

Indefinites answer “how many / how much” without giving a number. Italian sorts them by two questions.

Step 1 - Can you count the noun? This decides which “some” you use.

• Countable (libri, amici, giorni): qualche libro or alcuni libri. Both mean some books, and they are interchangeable. Only the grammar differs - see Step 2.
• Uncountable (pane, acqua, tempo, zucchero): un po’ di pane, un po’ di tempo. qualche and alcuni are impossible here, because you cannot count bread.

There is a third way to say this - the partitive del pane, dei libri. It is the same idea with a different tool, and it is taught in The partitive article. Until then, qualche / alcuni / un po’ di cover everything.

Step 2 - Singular or plural after it? This is pure form, and it is where the marks are lost.

• qualche is invariable and takes a singular noun, even though the meaning is plural: qualche libro = some books. The verb goes singular too: Qualche studente è arrivato in ritardo.
• alcuni / alcune are plural and agree in gender: alcuni ragazzi, alcune ragazze.
• ogni is invariable and takes a singular noun, always: ogni giorno, ogni volta, ogni studente. There is no ogni giorni.
• un po’ di never changes: un po’ di pane, un po’ di pazienza. Note the apostrophe - po’ is a chopped poco, so it is never un pò.

Step 3 - Adjective or adverb? molto, poco, troppo and tanto wear two hats.

• In front of a noun they are adjectives and agree: molta acqua, molti libri, troppe cose, poche volte.
• Attached to a verb, an adjective or another adverb they are adverbs and never change - the form is always molto / poco / troppo / tanto: Lavoro molto, È molto bella, Sono troppo stanchi.

The test takes one second: if you can point at a noun right after the word, make it agree; otherwise leave it alone. This is why La pizza è molto buona is correct and molta buona is not - molto is describing buona, not the pizza.

Step 4 - Use tutto with the article. tutto agrees (tutto, tutta, tutti, tutte) and then demands the definite article before the noun: tutto il giorno, tutta la notte, tutti i ragazzi, tutte le ragazze. English drops the article (“all day”); Italian cannot. Alone, tutto means everything (Ho capito tutto) and tutti means everybody (Tutti sono d’accordo).

Step 5 - Know the stand-alone pronouns. These replace a noun instead of introducing one: qualcuno (someone), ognuno (each one), qualcosa (something), altro (other, another), nessuno (nobody). Two habits matter:

• qualcosa and niente take di before an adjective and da before an infinitive: qualcosa di bello, qualcosa da bere, niente di speciale.
• ognuno and qualcuno are always singular, and take di before a group: ognuno di noi, qualcuno di voi.

nessuno is the negative member of the family, and it keeps non in front of the verb: Non ho nessun problema, Non c’è nessuno. The mechanics of that double negative belong to Negation.

Forms & patterns

Choosing your “some”: