When it comes to the past tense in Italian, it gets a bit more complicated. “Next summer we’ll go to Sicily on vacation.” L’estate prossima andiamo in vacanza in Sicilia. Of course, there’s a specific tense for future (which we’ll see later on), but keep in mind that it’s extremely common in Italian to use the present tense to express a near-future intention or action. In addition to expressing actions happening right now, the Italian present tense is also commonly used to express the near future or the intention of doing something. It’s by far the most common and most frequently used tense in the Italian language.

The present tense in Italian is used to express an action happening right now, as we speak.

Verb Conjugation and Auxiliary Verbs Summary.

(“I’m eating a pizza.”) Table of Contents

→ Before we start, why not review the 100+ Most Important Italian Verbs? Just keep in mind that you can alw/ays get by knowing just the three basic Italian tenses. Of course, there are other verb tenses in Italian that are used to express more complex thoughts and concepts, but we can worry about those later on. Once you’ve memorized that pattern, you’ll be able to easily apply it to whatever verb and tense you need.

Even though every person of every tense is conjugated and has a different form, the basic forms of the conjugations (the verb endings) follow a very consistent and predictable pattern.

You can also throw in the imperative, if you want, since it has pretty much the same form as the present.

To have a complete and meaningful conversation in Italian, you really just need to know three (3!) tenses: presente (present), passato prossimo (near past), and imperfetto (imperfect).

This means that-unlike in English-every person of every tense has a different form.īut don’t worry, I have good news. And on top of that, each of the Italian tenses has to be conjugated for the six persons ( io, tu, lui/lei, noi, voi, loro).

If you were to browse through any Italian grammar textbook or study an Italian conjugation table, you would probably find yourself overwhelmed by the number (21!) and apparent complexity of the tenses. Verb tenses are absolutely necessary in clearly defining when a given action is taking place.

Words present past future tense list