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When you think of regular and irregular verbs, I want you to think of heartbeats.
The regular verbs have regular heartbeats.
And the irregular verbs have irregular heartbeats.
A verb has no heartbeat (NO LIFE!) unless you remember what kind of heartbeat it has.
So, what does it mean to be regular or irregular?
You might already have an idea, but I’ll break it down for you.
In Italian, we conjugate verbs.
Meaning, we change verbs to represent who is speaking or being spoken to.
For example, in a sentence where we say “I am going to your house later. Will you all be there?”
The words you would conjugate would be “I am going” and “Will you all be?”
There are three kinds of verbs in Italian.
Ones that end with -are, -ire, and -ere.
Per esempio –
— Mangiare – to eat
— Sentire – to feel, hear
— Credere – to believe
Those are all regular verbs because they follow a verb pattern according to the tense they’re in – meaning past tense, present tense, future tense, etc.
Here’s the regular pattern for verbs in the present tense.
Verbs ending in -are, like “mangiare – to eat”
— Mangio – I eat
— Mangi – You eat
— Mangia – She/he eats
— Mangiamo – We eat
— Mangiate – You {all} eat
— Mangiano – They eat
Verbs ending in -ire, sentire – to feel/hear
— Sento – I feel
— Senti – You feel
— Sente – He/she feels
— Sentiamo – We feel
— Sentite – You {all} feel
— Sentono – They feel
Verbs ending – ere, credere – to believe
— Credo – I believe
— Credi – You believe
— Crede – He/she believes
— Crediamo – We believe
— Credete – You {all} believe
— Credono – They believe
So if a verb is IRREGULAR, then there’s no pattern tense at all.
For example, the verb fare – to do/to make
You would NEVER treat this entire conjugation as an -are verb. It would end up looking like this: “Fo, Fi, Fa,” which sounds like that giant who says “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum.” Not Italian.
Here’s the irregular conjugation for fare – to do/to make
— Faccio – I do
— Fai – You do
— Fa – He/she does
— Facciamo – We do
— Fate – You {all} do
— Fanno – They do
To see the top ten irregular verbs in Italian, read this article.
Looking for a resource for ALL of the verb tenses in Italian? Go here.
Any questions? Drop ‘em in the comments below.
