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What Does it Mean if a Verb is Regular or Irregular in Italian?

June 24, 2014 By Cher 6 Comments

Click play on the player at the bottom to listen to this podcast or find it on Apple Podcasts.

What Does it Mean if a Verb is Regular or Irregular in Italian?

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.


Listen to the Episode!

Filed Under: 30 Minute Italian Podcast, Beginner Italian, Grammar, Italian Tagged With: Beginner Italian, ep 115, episode 115, Irregular Italian Verbs, italian grammar, Italian Verbs, show notes

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About Cher

Cher is the founder of The Iceberg Project and a passionate learner of the Italian, Mandarin and Spanish languages. In a little town called Vegas, you can find her searching the Internet for Doctor Who and Parks & Rec memes, drinking bubble tea, or talking about how much she loves grammar.

« When to Use the Subjunctive Mood and When to Use the Present Indicative Tense
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