The Italian Verb System: Overview

Italian verbs do an enormous amount of work. A single conjugated form can tell you who is acting, when it happened, how certain the speaker is about it, and how it relates to other events in the sentence. That packed-in information is the reason Italian sentences often look short on the page but communicate a great deal — and it is also the reason most Italian sentences leave the subject pronoun out entirely. This page is your map of the whole verb system. It will not teach you a single conjugation in detail; instead, it shows you the lay of the land and points you to the dedicated pages for each piece.

Three conjugation classes

Every Italian infinitive ends in one of three suffixes: -are, -ere, or -ire. These are the three coniugazioni, and each one has its own set of endings.

The -are class is by far the largest. It is also the only one that is still productive: when Italian borrows a new verb from English or invents one from a noun, it almost always joins the first conjugation (chattare, cliccare, googlare, taggare). The -ere class is the smallest and contains a high concentration of irregular verbs. The -ire class splits into two flavours: a pure subgroup (dormire, sentire, partire, aprire) and the -isco subgroup (finire, capire, preferire, pulire) which inserts -isc- between the stem and the ending in four out of six present-tense forms.

For a tour of the three classes, see The Three Conjugation Classes.

Subject pronouns are usually invisible

Because each ending uniquely identifies its subject, Italian routinely drops the subject pronoun. Parlo italiano means "I speak Italian"; you do not need to add io. In fact, if you do add io, you are no longer just stating a fact — you are emphasizing or contrasting yourself with someone else.

This is one of the first habits English speakers have to unlearn. See Dropping Subject Pronouns (Pro-Drop) for the full picture, including the few cases where you do want the pronoun.

Seven simple tenses, seven compound tenses

Italian has fourteen finite tenses arranged across the moods. Half are simple (a single conjugated word) and half are compound (an auxiliary verb — avere or essere — plus a past participle).

Counting carefully: that is eight indicative tenses (four simple, four compound), two conditional tenses, and four subjunctive tenses, plus the imperative (one tense, present only). The full inventory is laid out in Tenses in Italian: A Complete Map, but you do not need to learn them all at once. The presente, imperfetto, passato prossimo, futuro semplice, and condizionale presente together cover almost everything you will say in your first year.

Three moods that surface in everyday speech

The mood system is where Italian and English diverge most dramatically. English uses modal verbs (might, would, should, could) to express subjective stances. Italian inflects the verb itself to do the same work.

• Indicativo is the mood of facts and assertions. It is the backbone of narration and the default for stating what is or what was. Parlo italiano — I speak Italian.
• Congiuntivo is the mood of doubt, opinion, desire, emotion, and subjective evaluation. Italian uses it constantly in subordinate clauses introduced by triggers like credo che, voglio che, è importante che, prima che. English speakers often skip it because their own subjunctive has nearly disappeared. Credo che parli italiano — I think he speaks Italian.
• Condizionale is the mood of hypothetical outcomes, polite requests, and reported information the speaker has not verified. Vorrei un caffè — I would like a coffee.

The fourth finite mood is the imperativo, used for direct commands. It has its own form for tu and voi and borrows the Lei form from the congiuntivo: parla! (informal), parli! (formal), parlate! (plural).

For an orientation to all four, see Moods in Italian.

Non-finite forms

Three forms do not carry person marking. They are the building blocks of compound tenses and of many subordinate constructions.

The participio passato is essential — every compound tense uses it. The gerundio shows up in the progressive construction stare + gerundio (sto parlando — "I am speaking right now") and in adverbial clauses (camminando per strada, ho incontrato Marco — "while walking down the street, I ran into Marco"). The participio presente, by contrast, is mostly frozen in nouns and adjectives (cantante — singer; interessante — interesting); it is rarely formed productively.

Three things that make Italian verbs hard

Be honest with yourself about what is going to be difficult. Italian verbs throw three big challenges at English speakers, and the sooner you face them, the better.

1. Auxiliary selection: essere or avere?

Every compound tense is built with an auxiliary plus a past participle. The catch: some verbs take avere (ho mangiato — I ate) and others take essere (sono andato — I went). The choice is not random — intransitive verbs of motion and change of state typically take essere, transitive verbs take avere — but there are exceptions and the line shifts with reflexive constructions. Verbs that take essere also agree with the subject in gender and number (sono andata if you are female, siamo andati if you are a mixed group). This is the single most important Italian-specific challenge in the verb system. See Choosing the Auxiliary: Essere or Avere.

2. The productive subjunctive

English has a few fossilized subjunctive forms (if I were you, I suggest he go) but most native speakers ignore them. Italian uses the congiuntivo every day, in dozens of contexts, and getting it wrong is one of the clearest markers of a foreigner. The form credo che lui sia italiano (subjunctive sia) is what an educated speaker says; credo che lui è italiano (indicative è) is increasingly common in casual speech but is still considered a mistake in writing and in careful conversation.

3. Passato prossimo vs passato remoto

Italian has two complete past tenses for completed actions. The passato prossimo (ho parlato) is a compound tense used in everyday speech in most of Italy. The passato remoto (parlai) is a simple tense, alive in the South of Italy and standard in literary writing, but largely abandoned in spoken Northern Italian. Choosing between them is partly grammatical, partly geographical, and partly stylistic. See Passato Prossimo vs Passato Remoto for the full breakdown.

Common mistakes

Where to go next

Start with The Three Conjugation Classes to see the families of verbs, then Dropping Subject Pronouns to fix the most common English-speaker habit. After that, move into the present indicative and build up from there. The mood and tense overviews (Moods in Italian, Tenses in Italian: A Complete Map) will help you keep your bearings as the system unfolds.