PRESENT TENSE — TEMPO PRESENTE

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. The grammatical name is not type but conjugation and that's the name I'm going to use.

• 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?

You'll see that there are two examples of a 3rd conjugation verb, dormire and capire and they behave differently. Most verbs behave like dormire but a small number insert the syllable -isc- before the personal endings. There is no rule about which do and which don't, you just have to learn as you meet them. The commonest ones which insert -isc- are:-

finire (to finish)

preferire (to prefer)

pulire (to clean)

punire (to punish)

spedire (to send)

IRREGULAR VERBS — There are very few verbs which do not fit into the scheme shown in the table above, but two which are very important are the verb avere (to have) and the verb essere (to be) because as well as being very common verbs in their own right, they are also the auxiliary verbs which help to make the past tense (passato prossimo). Here they are:

	avere	to have	essere	to be
1	ho	I have	sono	I am
2	hai	you have	sei	you are
3	ha	he/she/it has	è	he/she/it is
1	abbiamo	we have	siamo	we are
2	avete	you have	siete	you are
3	hanno	they have	sono	they are

There are twelve common verbs which are irregular in their present tense. They are in the table below. You have to learn them because you will not be able to find these forms in a dictionary.