The past: recounting yesterday
The passato prossimo. Two ingredients — a helper verb and a past participle — and you can talk about anything that has already happened.
Colours live this week
10 of 10 in playA thing, a person or a place.
An action or a state — what is happening.
Describes a noun.
Modifies a verb or an adjective.
the / a / some — and possessives like mon, ma.
Stands in for a noun — I, you, he, it.
Links words together — to, in, of, for.
Joins two parts of a sentence.
Opens a question — where, when, how, why.
Learn it whole. Do not take it apart.
Past participles are verb forms, so they stay green. Where one agrees with the speaker, bold and slanted show that agreement — the speaker's own gender, not a noun's.
How it is built
Two ingredients: avere or essere in the present, plus the past participle. Most verbs use avere. A small group of motion and state verbs use essere instead, and those are the ones where the participle changes to agree with you. If this feels familiar from French, it should — the two languages do it almost identically.
Seven participles that use avere
Learn each one already attached to ho — that is how you will actually say it.
- Ho parlatoI spoke
parlare → parlato
- Ho fattoI did / I made
fare → fatto
- Ho vistoI saw
vedere → visto
- Ho presoI took / I had (food or drink)
prendere → preso. Ho preso un caffè is what you say for I had a coffee.
- Ho mangiatoI ate
mangiare → mangiato
- Ho bevutoI drank
bere → bevuto
- Ho compratoI bought
comprare → comprato
The essere verbs, where the participle agrees with you
A short list of motion and state verbs takes essere rather than avere. When it does, the participle ends in -o if the speaker is male and -a if female.
| Verb | Participle | If you are male | If you are female |
|---|---|---|---|
| andare | andato | Sono andato | Sono andata |
| venire | venuto | Sono venuto | Sono venuta |
| tornare | tornato | Sono tornato | Sono tornata |
| stare | stato | Sono stato | Sono stata |
A different job for bold and slanted
Everywhere else in this system, bold and slanted tell you a noun's gender. Here they show that the participle is agreeing with the speaker. Same two channels, one extra thing they can mean — and only ever on a green participle after essere. If you are a man, use the -o form throughout. If you are a woman, the -a form.
When it happened
- [ieri]yesterday
- [stamattina]this morning
- [ieri sera]last night
Literally yesterday evening.
- [la settimana scorsa]last week
Sentence frames
- 1
[Ieri] ho mangiato al ristorante.
Yesterday I ate at the restaurant.
- 2
Sono andato / andata a Roma.
I went to Rome.
Pick your form once and stick to it — it should become automatic.
- 3
Che cosa ha fatto [ieri]?
What did you do yesterday?
Worth learning whole. It is the question you will be asked most often.
Daily mini-tasks
Listening this week
Podcast Italiano — an episode about a day or a trip
Podcast apps
Listen for the ho… and sono… patterns. You now know them, so they will start jumping out of the stream.