It’s Professor Dave, let’s talk about passato remoto.
We’ve learned about a number of different past tenses, so let’s take a moment to clarify
some things.
First let’s recall that passato remoto, or the past absolute, just like passato prossimo,
or the simple past, is a narrative tense, which describe an action completed in the past.
This tense is definitely different from the imperfect, which is a descriptive tense regarding
a state of being, describing intentions, or habitual actions in the past.
This tense would answer questions like: What was happening?
What used to happen?
Instead, passato remoto describes an action that happened in the past, is completely over,
and is not related to the present.
This tense will be used to answer the question: What happened?
Now you might say that Italian already has a tense that describes completed actions,
the passato prossimo.
So let’s see why there is another one.
First, the word remoto, from Latin re-moveo, which means to move back, seems to indicate
that the action in question is farther away than passato prossimo, which comes from the
Latin proximus, or very recent.
But that is only partly true, and the use of these two tenses is a little more complicated
than this.
The truth is that this tense is highly irregular, and even Italians don’t like to use passato
remoto in speech, no matter how far the past is, with the exception of Southern Italy,
where this tense is used dialectically in colloquial speaking.
But that’s just for speaking.
Despite what you may have heard, passato remoto is still used frequently in written Italian,
provided that the action is completely finished, and bears no effect on the present.
Students should tend to use passato prossimo in conversation, but still be familiar with
passato remoto in order to understand it and recognize it in literature, articles, or anywhere
else the written language can be found.
You may even opt to use it occasionally when speaking.
Let’s look at some sentences using either of the past tenses, and highlight the reasons
they qualify for using one tense over the other.
This has consequence in the present, hence passato prossimo.
This is a completely finished action.
Passato remoto.
This has consequences in the present, since you currently have to memorize this poem.
This is a completely finished action.
He has always lived there and still does, so there are consequences in the present.
He lived there but doesn’t anymore, so this action is finished.
Unfortunately, the endings for passato remoto are the most difficult to learn in the entire
indicative mood.
Let’s go through all the forms for three verbs, one per conjugation, starting with parlare.
Notice the accent in the third person singular, and the double M in the first person plural.
As if these endings weren’t enough, there are many verbs that have highly irregular forms.
Here we list all of the forms for the verbs avere, essere, dare, stare, dire, and fare.
These are the common irregular verbs we are familiar with, and you can refer to this list
should you need to use any of these verbs in passato remoto.
But there are many other irregular verbs in this tense, and it will be easier to remember
them knowing that most of them follow a one-three-three pattern, like chiedere, shown here.
Chiesi, chiese, and chiesero, are forms that will look similar to most of the other irregular verbs.
Once you have these, you should be able to figure out the rest of the conjugation from
the infinitive stem.
Now let’s go through a list of verbs, display the first and second person singular forms
in passato remoto, and then use one of the six forms in a sentence.
And that’s it for passato remoto.
Remember, in speaking Italian, this tense is completely optional, and in fact, rarely
used, so although it is a bonus that this tense doesn’t require an auxiliary verb,
if you just don’t feel like memorizing these strange endings, you can probably just skip it.
But if you plan to read Italian literature, or do some writing, you will certainly find
this tense useful, and now you know what it means, so be brave and go read some Dante!
But first things first, let’s check comprehension.