Italian All-in-One For Dummies (169 page)

Over and Done with: The Past Absolute

You use the present perfect (discussed earlier in this chapter) to talk about past (completed) actions. For example:

Giuseppe è arrivato.
(
Giuseppe arrived.
)

Maria ha dato dei bei regali.
(
Maria gave some beautiful presents.
)

Non sono andati.
(
They didn't go.
)

On a related note, you use the past absolute to discuss a completed action from long ago and far away.

Giuseppe arrivò negli Stati Uniti molti anni fa.
(
Giuseppe arrived in the United States many years ago.
)

Maria diede dei bei regali.
(
Maria gave beautiful presents.
)

Non andarono a scuola.
(
They didn't go to school.
)

As you see, the past absolute consists of just one conjugated verb; it's not compound like the present perfect. You conjugate it by adding the appropriate endings to the verb stem (what's left of the verb after you remove the infinitive's ending). For the three types of infinitives, the endings are as shown in
Table 1-4
.

Table 1-4 Conjugations in the Past Absolute Tense

The past absolute stem for some verbs is highly irregular.
Table 1-5
shows you some of the most common forms.

Table 1-5 Conjugations of Irregular Stems in the Past Absolute

The past absolute is the literary past, and you're going to find it useful to recognize, if not produce. As for use in everyday speech, the past absolute often gets used in parts of Tuscany and the south of Italy to refer to the not-so-distant past. If you want to see these forms in action, look at the titles of operatic arias:
donna non vidi mai
(
I never saw such a woman
),
vissi d'arte
(
I lived for art
), and
nacqui all'affanno
(
I was born to worry
). Or look at a biography:
Rossini nacque il 29 febbraio nel 1792
(
Rossini was born February 29, 1792
);
morì nel 1868
(
He died in 1868
).

Once Upon a Time: The Imperfect Tense

The imperfect tense is just that — imperfect. In other words, the actions of imperfect verbs aren't perfected, not finished. The imperfect tense sets the stage for what's to come and frequently answers questions like, “What was something or someone like? What did you used to do (habitually, regularly)? What was happening?”

The imperfect tense allows you to use verbs to describe physical and mental states. If someone was rich, poor, tall, short, hungry, thirsty, sleepy, sad, or happy, then you use the imperfect tense to express these conditions.

The imperfect also tells you about things that used to be or that used to happen. For example:
I used to cut school every day. It was a beautiful time. The weather was glorious. Every Sunday they came to dinner. Every Monday we had leftovers.

You can combine the imperfect with the present perfect to indicate that while one thing was going on (in the imperfect tense), something else happened (in the present perfect).
While I was eating
(imperfect),
the phone rang
(present perfect).

Other uses of the imperfect include telling what time it was (
it was 3:00 in the morning
), discussing weather conditions (
it was a dark and stormy night
), and reporting indirect discourse (what someone said):
My friend told me
(present perfect)
that he was
(imperfect)
unhappy.

The following sections explain how to form the imperfect and when to use it.

Forming the imperfect

The imperfect tense is the most regular of any of the Italian verb tenses. To form it, you drop only the final two letters (
-re
) from any infinitive, leaving the stem to which you attach subject-specific endings.

Here's the good news: The endings are the same for all the different conjugations. Nothing in Italian could (or ever will) be simpler. See the examples in
Table 1-6
.

Table 1-6 Conjugations in the Imperfect Tense

You can also translate these forms as, for example,
I used to sleep,
or simply,
I slept
.

Of all the Italian verbs, only three are irregular in the imperfect tense.
Essere
(
to be
) is irregular because it's always irregular. Irregularity is in its nature and, no doubt, part of its charm. (
Avere,
which means
to have,
is regular in the imperfect, for a change.) The following table shows you how
essere
conjugates in the imperfect.