A Beginner's Guide To Italian Tenses

Italian tenses are quite “a dark wood” for learners who do not come from another romance language. The indicative mood has eight different tenses, and it does not always having a precise English equivalent. Let uss see which ones are really fundamental for beginners and why.

The present tense

This one is, of course, fundamental. If you want to introduce yourself, or to share or ask for any piece of personal information, you are going to use it. Let’s just say you want to declare your name and age:

Sono Daniele e ho 34 anni. (I am Daniele, and I am 34.)

Notice that Italians do not say they are a certain age, rather they have a certain amount of years.

Il presente is a simple (not compound) tense, and you should learn its conjugation by heart.

I would suggest begin learning the present conjugation of:

• Essere: Di dove sei? (Where are you from?)
• Avere: Quanti anni hai? (How old are you?)
• Stare: Come stai? (How are you?)
• Fare: Che fai? (What are you doing?)

Here they are in action:

Io sono Daniele, ho trentaquattro anni, sto in Ialia e faccio l'insegnante. (I am Daniele, I am 34, I stay/live in Italy, and I work as a teacher.)

Later, you may want to add one regular verb for each of the three conjugations: the first is -are (like mangiare), the second is -ere (like correre), and the third is -ire (like dormire).

Per stare in salute mangio bene, corro poco e dormo tanto. (To stay healthy I eat well, seldom rush and sleep a lot.)

Knowing the three conjugations is necessary, but not sufficient as there are also exceptions: verbs following an irregular pattern (fare and stare are typical examples, but there are many others).

Here you can find a table of the three conjugations with some further information and examples.

What about the future?

When speaking informally, many Italians tend to use the present tense instead of the future (I am one of those). In order to put our sentence in the future tense, we very often just add a time adverb, complement or clause.

For example:

• Lo faccio poi/più tardi/domani. (I will do it later/tomorrow.)
• Tra sei mesi vado in vacanza. (I will go on vacation in six months.)
• Quando sono vecchio voglio andare a vivere al mare. (When I am old, I want to go and live by the sea.)
• Tra 85 anni è il 2100. (In 85 years, it will be the year 2100.)

Those sentences may not be formally perfect, but they are actually used by common people in everyday speech. Speaking in the future tense and using the present tense is far too common in Italy. However, in formal contexts you might prefer to use the future tense:

• Lo farò poi

• Tra sei mesi andrò in vacanza.

• Quando sarò anziano voglio andare a vivere al mare.

• Tra ottantacinque anni sarà il 2100.

Note: Anziano as an adjective describing people's age is more formal and, moreover, more polite than vecchio.

There is a case in which the use of the present tense instead of the future is compulsory rather than colloquial. That is when you are speaking about plans in the near future. For instance, your plans for today, this week or this year.

Questa è una settimana piena: oggi vado in palestra, domani ho il dentista, mercoledì vado ad un seminario, giovedì ho lezione e nel fine settimana devo lavorare. (This is a busy week: Today I am going to the gym, tomorrow I am seeing the dentist, on Wednesday I am going to a seminar, on Thursday I am going to have a lesson, and on the weekend I will have to work.)

It is not forbidden to say this sentence using the future tense:

Questa è una settimana piena: oggi andrò in palestra, domani avrò il dentista, mercoledì andrò ad un seminario, giovedì avrò lezione e nel fine settimana dovrò lavorare.

However, using the future tense for plans sounds a bit pompous. An English speaker would probably use a progressive tense here, or the going to form.

We have something similar in Italian: le perifrasi con il verbo stare. Here, stare can be written as stare facendo or stare per fare. However, those periphrases do not have the same function of continuous tenses in English. Instead, they are used only for describing on-going actions (sto guidando) or imminent actions (sto per arrivare), rather than plans or intentions. Those periphrases should be discussed in detail, but this is beyond the purpose of this article.

In a nutshell, the present tense is properly used when speaking about imminent future plans. Furthermore, it can always replace the future tense in colloquial contexts.

Consequently, once you know the present tense conjugation you can also talk about the future. The Italian future tense is beautiful and elegant, but you do not really need it as soon as you start. We might just let sleeping dogs lie a bit more.

Il passato (the past)

So, with just one tense we can already move forward in time. Now we need to be able to also move backwards. In order to do it, you have to learn the most important of all past tenses: il passato prossimo. This tense corresponds to the simple past in English. It is a compound tense and, fortunately, this actually makes learning it easier.

How to put a verb in the passato prossimo? First, you need to find out the past participle of the verb. Like in English, too many of them are irregular, so you should not trust any fixed rules on how to construct it, but rather ask your teacher or interlocutor, or look for it in a dictionary. It does not matter if a verb is regular in its finite forms (like the presente or imperfetto). It may still have an irregular past participle.

Some examples, taken from the second conjugation. Note: Irregular participles are more frequent in the second and third conjugation, rather than in the first:

As in English, they may carry the function of adjectives.

Now that you have the participio passato, in order to conjugate the passato prossimo, you have to add the auxiliary verb essere (to be) or avere (to have) in their present form.

For example:

• Ho mangiato una mela. (I ate an apple.)
• Mi sono mangiato una mela. (I ate an apple.)

Essere or Avere, which one?

All normal transitive verbs use avere as an auxiliary (for example: mangiare), whereas all verbs with a reflexive form (for example: mangiarsi) use essere, whether they are transitive or not. You can see this in the example above.

As for the other verbs (intransitive and without a reflexive form), it would depend. Some may use essere and some may use avere.

Here is an example:

• Sono andato a camminare. (I went walking.)
• Andare: intransitive, non-reflexive verb with the auxiliary essere.

• Ho camminato per due ore. (I walked for two hours.)
• Camminare: intransitive, non-reflexive verb with the auxiliary avere.

The fastest way to know which auxiliary you should use is to ask or to look for it. In this link, you may find the definition of andare.

The last piece of information before the definitions is: aus. essere. That is to say ausiliare essere. Notice that for verbs using the auxiliary essere, the past participle has to be constructed like an adjective, according to number and gender:

Quando mio nonno è andato in guerra, mia nonna è andata a vivere dalla suocera. (When my grandfather went to war, my grandmother went to live by her mother-in-law.)

Some verbs can go with both essere and avere, like:

• piovere (to rain)
• E' piovuto / Ha piovuto (It rained)

You may find further information on the passato prossimo here.

A little tip

If you can manage the presente and the passato prossimo, you can express every concept, although in a rough and not one hundred percent proper way. You might actually say:

Mentre sono andato a casa ho incontrato Matteo (Literally, it means “While I went home I met Matteo”).  

The grammar is off, it is as ugly as sin, but the meaning comes through. That is a mistake native Italians actually make. But, what if I want to speak properly?

Expressing contemporaneity and usual actions in the past: l'imperfetto, the last of the list

The imperfetto is the past tense used for expressing contemporary actions in the past (like the past progressive in English) or to express habits in the past, translating to the "used to" construction. More often than not, Italians naturally and correctly utilize it in informal contexts.

For example:

• Mentre andavo a casa ho incontrato Matteo. (While I was going home I met Matteo.)

• Quando ero bambino mi piacevano I cartoni animati. In realtà mi piacciono ancora. (When I was a kid I used to like cartoons. Actually, I still do.)

The imperfetto, like the presente is a simple tense, and so you ought to learn its conjugation by heart. Start with essere, avere, stare and fare, and then learn the three conjugations.

Tip: in order to recognize the imperfetto, keep in mind that in its conjugation, there is always a V (except in the case of the verb essere). In this link you can find the three conjugations of the imperfetto in the Italian Wikipedia.

A few words about moods

In this article, we only spoke about tenses in the indicative mood (modo indicativo), because that is what you need to get started. Of course, as in English, there are also other moods: the imperative, subjunctive and conditional ones. They are in fact a bit complicated, and native speakers make a lot of funny mistakes in using them.

If you want to see a prompt of all the Italian moods and tenses, you may find it on WordReference.com (just type a verb and select “conjugator”). Here is the full conjugation of the verb studiare.

Please, feel free to send me any questions about the article.

Buono studio! :) (I wish you a nice study time!)