It’s Professor Dave, let’s learn how to use passato prossimo with avere.
We just learned about passato prossimo, and pointed out that it is a tense similar to
the present perfect in English.
This is a typical way that Italians will refer to past events, so let’s learn how to conjugate
verbs in passato prossimo, starting with avere.
Once again, this will have two parts.
The first part is the present indicative of the auxiliary verb.
In this case, avere is used with transitive verbs.
The second part is the past participle of the main verb.
Let’s go over the past participles of regular verbs now
For the first conjugation, the verb ends in ATO, so comprare becomes comprato.
For the second conjugation, the verb ends in UTO, so ripetere becomes ripetuto.
For the third conjugation, the verb ends in ITO, so dormire becomes dormito.
So all we have to do is take the correct form of avere and combine it with the participle
to get the passato prossimo.
To make a full sentence, we could say:
So this is the most common way that Italians use the past tense.
We can continue this with direct object pronouns if we like, in which case the ending of the
past participle will change.
For the same sentences above, we could instead say:
Notice the new agreement between the past participle and the following word
We should note that while many past participles will follow this simple pattern, there are
many irregulars.
Here are some common exceptions.
For the first conjugation there is only one, fare becomes fatto.
The second conjugation brings us the longest list of exceptions.
And there are others still.
For the third conjugation, coprire becomes coperto.
These will take some time to memorize, but as with everything else, repetition and familiarity
will be the key.
Now let’s try some examples.
That’s all we need to know, so let’s check comprehension.