Hi, this is Mara from MosaLingua! Welcome to our grammar hacks series
on how to learn Italian quickly.
I already talked to you about verbs in a previous video lesson. We learned about
regular verbs and the present tense. Today I’m going to give you some tips for
memorizing irregular Italian verbs.
The first things to learn in order to be able to speak are the
most common verbs, like essere (to be), fare (to do), andare (to go). You don’t need to learn all of the
irregular verbs at once. In this case, practice will
help you remember, little by little, the different conjugations of the irregolari verbs
and memorize them quickly. You may understand them more easily if you think about
the irregular verbs in your native language. Let’s start with the most important Italian
irregular verbs: essere (to be) and avere (to have). Here is the present tense of the verb essere:
io sono / tu sei / lui-lei è / noi siamo / voi siete / essi sono. And the present for the verb avere:
io ho / tu hai / lui-lei ha / noi abbiamo / voi avete / essi hanno. Among other irregular
verbs frequently used you have: the verb fare (to do): io faccio / tu fai / lui
lei fa / noi facciamo / voi fate / essi fanno. The verb andare (to go): io vado /
tu vai / lui-lei va / noi andiamo / voi andate / essi vanno. As you can
see, avere, essere, fare, and andare all have the same endings: -o / -ai / -a / -iamo /
-ate / -anno, so the simplest thing to do is learn the irregular form of your verb instead
of its endings. Many past participles
follow common rules, too. If you learn some of the verbs that belong to
the same “family” you will be able to quickly and easily
remember all the others that follow the same rules.
Now let’s look at some examples of verbs that I've sorted into families that follow
the same rules. “Ieri ho fatto i compiti di italiano poi
ho letto un libro e ho scritto una mail.” “Il professore mi ha chiesto come ho
imparato così bene l'italiano, ho risposto grazie a MosaLingua.” As you may
notice with these examples, we can identify some verb families that follow the
same rules. If you learn to conjugate one verb for each family,
it’s a done deal. It’ll be easy for you to conjugate the rest of the
verbs from that family. Here’s a summary of the
main family groups of irregular Italian verbs. -TO fare, fatto (to do/done);
scrivere, scritto (to write/written); leggere, letto (to read/read); dire, detto (to say/said). -RTO offrire, offerto (to offer/offered); coprire,
coperto (to cover/covered); morire, morto (to die/died); -NTO spegnere, spento (to switch off/switched off); aggiungere, aggiunto (to add/added);
vincere, vinto (to win/won); dipingere, dipinto (to piano/painted). -LTO scegliere, scelto (to choose/chosen); raccogliere, raccolto (to pick/picked)/; -SO
prendere, preso (to take/taken); accendere, acceso (to turn on/turned on); spendere, speso (to spend/spent); scendere, sceso (to go down/gone down); ridere, riso (to laugh/laughed);
decidere, deciso (to decide/decided). -STO vedere, visto (to see/seen); rispondere, risposto (to nswer/answered); chiedere, chiesto (to ask/asked).
-RSO perdere, perso (to lose/lost); correre, corso (to run/run). -SSO mettere, messo (to put/put); succedere, successo (to happen/happened);
discutere, discusso (to discuss/discussed). Be careful, these verbs are also irregular: essere /
stato (to be/been); venire / venuto (to come/come); nascere / nato (to be born); vivere/ vissuto (to lived/lived). In another lesson I
will teach you a trick for choosing the right auxiliary verb. Thanks a lot for
watching this video! If you want to find out more about how
to improve your Italian quickly and easily,
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A presto!