Professor Dave again, let’s conjugate stare.
As we said, there are four irregular verbs for the first conjugation.
We learned about andare, so now let’s try stare.
This means to be.
Now you might wonder how this can be the case, since essere also means to be.
These verbs mean “to be” in different ways.
Essere has a more permanent meaning, so this would be used when describing aspects of your
identity that do not change.
If you were born of Italian descent, you must be Italian.
That will always be the case, no matter what.
Stare has a more temporary connotation.
You can feel sick, but once you rest a bit, you won’t be sick anymore.
So we would use stare to describe these kinds of states.
The conjugation of stare isn’t too difficult.
This is the irregular one, since we have used AI instead of just I.
This one is also a little different in that we have added two N’s instead of one.
So that’s all there is to the conjugation.
Now let’s make sure we understand exactly when to use stare and when to use essere.
As we said, essere describes permanent states, and will be followed by an adjective or noun.
It’s true that Marcello could change professions, but grammatically speaking, Italians pretend
that this never happens, and in fact, for them it rarely does.
Stare, once again, indicates a temporary state.
In that moment you are doing very well, but who knows what could happen later.
Just to show you what not to do, the following sentences would be incorrect.
You wouldn’t say io sto italiano.
You’re either Italian forever or you’re not.
And you wouldn’t ask come sei?
That would be too permanent to make any sense.
The main uses for stare are as follows.
First, it can describe a temporary physical condition.
It can refer to someone who remains in a particular place.
Notice the two different verbs in this sentence and try to understand the context for their usage.
As always, there are some idiomatic expressions that use stare.
Stare zitto means to be quiet.
If you want to yell at some noisy people during a movie, you could say: State zitti!
Stare calmo, stare fermo, and stare sveglio represent similar states of action or inaction.
A particular form of stare followed by per followed by an infinitive means to be about to.
Stare can also mean to fit.
There are a few other less common idioms as well as some grammatical variances for stare
that we may come across later.
For now, let’s check comprehension.