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Level I

Lesson1

Lesson2

Lesson3

Lesson4

Lesson5

Lesson6

Lesson7

Italian Expressions

Italian Lesson 6

Italian Adjectives

Adjectives in Italian must agree in gender and number with the noun, if the noun is singular feminine then the adjective should be singular feminine. Adjectives usually come after the noun.

Italian adjectives are different than the English ones, The Italian adjective take 4 forms, usually adjectives take “o” at the end of the singular masculine, and “a” for singular feminine, for plural masculine “i”, plural feminine take “e”

However, it’s not always the case, some adjectives ending with “e” for example only change to their plural, the feminine or masculine doesn’t matter to them.

Other exceptions are:

Adjectives ending in ~co/~ca and ~go/~ga are spelt ~chi/~che and ~ghi/~ghe in the plural; these modifications are made simply to maintain the same sound in the plural as well as the singular.

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Some Italian Irregular Adjectives are: buono, bello, quello, they’re

Buon/ Buono à buona, Buoni à Buoni (Buono is used when uno could be used)

For bello and quello, they are treated like the prepositions (a, con, da, di, in …)

As said before adjectives in Italian usually come after the noun they are describing but there are exceptions where the adjective always stand before its noun; here some examples:

-possessive adjectives (il mio, il tuo…) -demonstrative adjectives (quest, quello …)-the adjectives "molto" (much) and "troppo" (too much) -some adjectives denoting size can come either before or after their noun (un grande amico: a great friend) (un amico grande: a tall/ huge/ big friend), usually when you have such adjectives before the name you focus more on the abstract meaning, while the physical meaning is conveyed when you place the adjective after the noun.

Negation in Italian

To form negative forms just add (non before the verb, Capisco (I understand), non capisco (I don’t understand). Also in other expressions where there is no verb: non c´é problema! (there is no problem)

Italian uses a lot double negatives: non ho dico niente (I haven’t said anything)

Past Perfect in Italian

The Trapassato prossimo (recent pluperfect tense) is similar to the English past perfect "I had gone"; it expresses actions which have taken place a long time ago and ended.

In Italian you can only make the past perfect by combining (the auxiliary in the past + the past participle), it’s not that complicated, it’s almost like English, almost the same way you make the past perfect to express something that had happened in the past: I had written a book.  (avevo escrito il libro)

As you may have noticed in the table above, most verbs are conjugated with “avere”, however some verbs are conjugated with “essere”.

As I have mentioned in the “present perfect” lesson, regular form simply add (~ato, ~uto, ~ito) to the stem of verbs, depending on the type of verbs, if the verbs in the infinitive ends with ~are, then  add ~ato: parlato (the verb parlare), add ~uto to the verbs ending with ~are: creduto (the verb credere), and finally add ~ito to verbs ending in their infinitive with ~ire: partito (the verb partire)

Note that some verbs take their past participle with the verb “avere”, while some other verbs take their past participle with the verb essere (usually motion verbs)

Also note that the past participle of verbs associated with “essere” should agree with the number and gender, so for example partito (gone) can also be ero partita (I had gone, for a female)/ eravano partiti (we men had gone…)/ eravate partite (you females had gone)

Verbs associated with “avere” don’t have to agree with the number and gender, look at the examples in the table above.

Remember: to form the past perfect with verbs conjugated with “essere” the gender and number matter, but not with verbs conjugated with “avere”.

Irregular Forms: memorize the verbs that take irregular forms in the past participle such as:

So you don’t have to add (ate, uto, ito) to these verbs on the top, take their whole new form and place an past form of the auxiliary verb “avere” or “essere”  before them.

Verbs that go with “essere”, most of them are verbs of motion…here is a list:

Except these verbs on the top, 90% of the rest of verbs go with “avere”.

This table has some useful expression that might help you expend your knowledge of Italian: