Sentire is one of those Italian verbs that doesn't fit neatly into any English equivalent. Where English uses five distinct verbs — hear, feel, listen, smell, taste — Italian leans on sentire for almost all of them. Context disambiguates. This page walks through the nine main uses you need to recognize and produce, plus the constructions that go with each.
Before diving in: sentire is a regular -ire verb, but it does not take the -isco infix. The forms are sento, senti, sente, sentiamo, sentite, sentono.
1. Auditory perception (to hear)
The default reading of sentire is "to hear" — to perceive a sound, with no implication that you were trying to. This is exactly the contrast English makes between hear (passive) and listen (active, deliberate). For deliberate listening, Italian uses ascoltare.
Senti quel rumore? Viene dalla cucina.
Do you hear that noise? It's coming from the kitchen.
Non ti sento, c'è troppo casino qui.
I can't hear you, it's too noisy in here.
Ho sentito la porta sbattere alle tre di notte.
I heard the door slam at three in the morning.
2. Physical sensation (to feel)
Sentire also covers the perception of physical sensations — temperature, pain, hunger. Here English would say feel, but the underlying logic is the same: a sensation reaches your awareness.
Sento il freddo sulle mani.
I feel the cold on my hands.
Senti come batte forte il mio cuore?
Can you feel how hard my heart is beating?
Sento un dolore qui, vicino al fianco.
I feel a pain here, near my side.
3. Taste and smell (especially in the imperative)
This is the use that surprises English speakers most. Senti! can mean "Taste this!" or "Smell this!" — particularly in food contexts. The imperative invites someone to register a sensory experience, and Italian doesn't bother specifying which sense.
Senti che buono questo sugo!
Taste how good this sauce is!
Senti che profumo, hanno appena sfornato il pane.
Smell that aroma, they've just taken the bread out of the oven.
Assaggia, senti se ti piace.
Try it, taste if you like it.
4. Being in contact (sentirsi — by phone or message)
The reflexive sentirsi is the standard verb for "being in touch" or "talking" — by phone, text, or any non-face-to-face channel. This is one of the most useful idioms in everyday Italian.
Ci siamo sentiti ieri al telefono.
We talked on the phone yesterday.
Ci sentiamo domani, va bene?
We'll be in touch tomorrow, okay?
Non ci sentiamo da mesi.
We haven't been in touch for months.
Note that sentirsi here is reciprocal — "we hear each other," meaning we communicate. To say "I'll call you" specifically, use ti chiamo; to say "I'll text you," ti scrivo. Ci sentiamo is channel-neutral.
5. Intuition (to sense, to have a feeling)
Sentire also covers the meaning of to sense — an intuitive knowing, often about something that hasn't been confirmed.
Sento che qualcosa non va.
I sense that something is wrong.
Sentivo che sarebbe finita male.
I had a feeling it would end badly.
Lo sento nelle ossa.
I feel it in my bones.
6. Reflexive sentirsi for emotional/physical state
Sentirsi + adjective is how Italian expresses how someone feels in general — emotionally or physically. This is the equivalent of English to feel + adjective ("I feel tired").
Mi sento strano oggi, non so perché.
I feel strange today, I don't know why.
Ti senti meglio?
Are you feeling better?
Non mi sento bene, vado a casa.
I don't feel well, I'm going home.
Note that sentirsi for emotional state is always reflexive — you can never say sento triste to mean "I feel sad." It must be mi sento triste.
7. Sentire + infinitive (perception of an action)
To say you hear (or feel) someone doing something, use sentire + person + infinitive. This parallels the English construction "I hear him sing / I feel her shake."
Ti sento parlare anche da qui.
I can hear you talking even from over here.
L'ho sentita piangere tutta la notte.
I heard her crying all night.
Sento il treno arrivare.
I hear the train coming.
The infinitive — not a gerund, not a che clause — is the standard construction. English progressive (hear him singing) maps to Italian infinitive.
8. Sentire dire (to hear that, hearsay)
Sentire dire (che) is the idiomatic way to introduce hearsay — "I heard that..." Notice the infinitive dire rather than a conjugated form.
Ho sentito dire che si sposano in primavera.
I heard that they're getting married in the spring.
Si sente dire che il governo cadrà presto.
People are saying the government will fall soon.
Hai sentito dire qualcosa di nuovo?
Have you heard anything new?
The structure is fixed: sentire dire stays together as a unit, and any che clause follows.
9. Far sentire (to let know, to make heard)
The causative far sentire literally means "to make hear" — but idiomatically it means "to let someone know" or "to make oneself heard."
Fammi sentire quando arrivi.
Let me know when you arrive.
Fatti sentire ogni tanto!
Get in touch once in a while!
Devo farmi sentire dal capo, è troppo tempo che non parliamo.
I need to check in with the boss, it's been too long since we talked.
Sentire che + indicativo vs congiuntivo
The choice between indicative and subjunctive after sentire che tracks the type of perception:
- Sentire che + indicativo = factual hearing or perceiving a fact
- Sentire che + congiuntivo = intuitive sensing, with uncertainty
| Construction | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| sentire che + indicativo | perceive a fact | Sento che arriva qualcuno (I hear someone coming) |
| sentire che + congiuntivo | have an intuition | Sento che arrivi tardi stasera (I have a feeling you'll be late tonight) |
Sento che hai ragione tu.
I sense you're right. (intuition — but indicative is also acceptable here, since the speaker is fairly sure)
Sento che tu abbia bisogno di parlare.
I have a feeling you need to talk. (subjunctive — hedged perception)
In practice, the indicative dominates in everyday speech. The subjunctive appears mostly in literary or reflective contexts where the speaker wants to flag the perception as subjective.
The big picture
English forces you to choose one of hear, feel, listen, taste, smell every time you describe a perception. Italian collapses most of these into sentire, and lets context — the object, the situation, the body part involved — do the disambiguation. This is not laziness; it's a different way of carving up the perceptual world.
The only sense that sentire doesn't cover is vision, which has its own pair (vedere for see, guardare for look). For active listening as opposed to passive hearing, Italian splits off ascoltare. Everything else — including the social meaning of "being in touch" — runs through sentire.
Common mistakes
❌ Sento triste oggi.
Incorrect — sentire alone cannot express emotional state. You need the reflexive sentirsi.
✅ Mi sento triste oggi.
Correct — emotional and physical states require sentirsi + adjective.
❌ Ascolti quel rumore?
Incorrect — ascoltare implies deliberate listening. For 'do you hear that noise?', sentire is right.
✅ Senti quel rumore?
Correct — passive auditory perception uses sentire.
❌ Ho sentito che lui canta nel coro.
Awkward — for hearsay, Italian uses 'ho sentito dire che', not 'ho sentito che'.
✅ Ho sentito dire che canta nel coro.
Correct — sentire dire is the fixed expression for hearsay.
❌ Ti sento cantando.
Incorrect — perception verbs take an infinitive, not a gerund.
✅ Ti sento cantare.
Correct — sentire + infinitive for perceiving an action.
❌ Noi sentiamo ogni settimana.
Incomplete — to mean 'we talk every week', you need the reciprocal reflexive ci.
✅ Ci sentiamo ogni settimana.
Correct — ci sentiamo means 'we keep in touch'.
Key takeaways
Sentire is a perceptual Swiss Army knife. Internalize three things:
For passive perception of any sense except sight, default to sentire. The object (sound, smell, sensation, food) tells the listener which sense.
Sentirsi (reflexive) covers two huge functions: (a) being in touch with someone — ci sentiamo; (b) feeling some way — mi sento bene.
The fixed phrases sentire dire (hearsay) and far sentire (let know) are everyday idioms — learn them as units and you will sound dramatically more Italian.
Now practice Italian
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Open the Italian course →Related Topics
- Perception Verbs (vedere, sentire, guardare, ascoltare)A2 — How Italian splits perception across the active/passive divide — vedere vs guardare, sentire vs ascoltare — plus the four-way load on sentire (hear, feel, taste, smell, get in touch) and how perception verbs combine with infinitives.
- Perception Verbs: Complete ReferenceB1 — Consolidated reference for the Italian perception verb system — vedere, guardare, sentire, ascoltare, and the rest — with constructions, reflexive forms, and cross-references.
- Communication Verbs (dire, parlare, chiedere, rispondere, raccontare)A2 — The five workhorse Italian verbs for talking — each with its own syntactic frame, prepositions, and complement type. Master the family and you stop translating word-for-word from English.
- Reflexive Verbs: OverviewA1 — How Italian uses reflexive pronouns to mark verbs whose subject and object are the same — and why Italian uses reflexives in many places where English uses no pronoun at all.