Question 1

Why is it videro and not a regular ending for vedere?

Accepted Answer

Videro is the passato remoto (historical past) form of vedere for "they" (loro). Vedere is highly irregular in this tense. Like many irregular verbs in the passato remoto, it uses a special irregular stem (vid-) for the 1st person singular (io vidi), 3rd person singular (lui/lei vide), and 3rd person plural (loro videro).

Question 2

In everyday spoken Italian, would I actually use videro?

Accepted Answer

In standard everyday conversation, especially in northern and central Italy, you are much more likely to hear the passato prossimo: hanno visto un bel tempio. You will encounter videro mostly in written literature, history books, fairy tales, or when speaking with people from certain southern Italian regions where the passato remoto is still used for recent events.

Question 3

Why does this sentence use bel instead of bello?

Accepted Answer

When placed directly before a noun, the adjective bello changes its form to match the definite article that the noun would take. Because you say il tempio, bello changes to its il-matching form, which is bel. If the noun required lo (like specchio), you would use bello (un bello specchio).

Question 4

What happens if I want to talk about multiple beautiful temples? What is the plural of tempio?

Accepted Answer

You have to be careful with this noun! The plural of tempio is templi, suddenly adding an l. This irregularity exists to avoid confusion with tempi, which is the plural of tempo (time or weather). If they saw multiple beautiful temples, you would say videro dei bei templi.

Videro un bel tempio per la dea.

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