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 14) 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 9) 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

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 16) 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.