In English this tense looks like "he runs", "they live", "she is working", "we are talking"
These four examples all have pronouns — he, they, she, we, but in Italian the pronouns are not necessary because the verb always has an ending to indicate what personal pronoun we want. the four English examples above would each be one single word in Italian.

Italian does have personal pronouns; you won't see them very often, but here they are:

The pronoun Lei (with a capital L) means you. It is different from the pronoun tu because Lei is formal: you would use it when politely addressing a stranger; if you speak to someone using a formal title like signore/signorina you should use Lei and even if you don't use the pronoun, the verb should be in the 3rd person singular.

Italian verbs fall into 3 types, depending on the vowel in the infinitive. As you learned in Lezione 1B, the infinitive is the basic form of a verb. In English, it is preceded by the word "to" (to be, to play, to eat, and so on). The infintive in italian is a one word form consisting of a stem and one of three characteristic endings: "-ARE", "-ERE" or "-IRE". The grammatical name is not type but conjugation and that's the name we will be using in class

• Conjugation 1 contains verbs with an infinitive ending in -ARE
• Conjugation 2 contains verbs with an infinitive ending in -ERE
• Conjugation 3 contains verbs with an infinitive ending in -IRE

Don't let a table like this put you off; look for all the similarities, not the differences; for example:

All verbs use the ending -o for the first person singular — i.e. if you want to say I do something.

All verbs use the ending -i for the second person singular — i.e. if you want to say you do something.

All verbs use the ending -iamo for the first person plural — i.e. if you want to say we do something.

English has three forms of the present tense and Italian has only one. In English we can say I speak or I am speaking but in Italian there is only the form parlo. To ask a question in English we would use the phrase do you speak? but in Italian you can only indicate a question by the tone of your voice or by writing a question mark — parli?

Here are some common verbs emding in -ARE: