Word
Fecero una freccia e videro il drago.
Meaning
They made an arrow and saw the dragon.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Fecero una freccia e videro il drago.
una
a / an (feminine)
e
and
vedere
to see
fare
to do / to make
Questions & Answers about Fecero una freccia e videro il drago.
Why doesn't "fecero" look like its infinitive verb, "fare"?
Fecero ("they made") is the passato remoto (historical past) form of fare. Fare is highly irregular in this tense and uses the special root fec- for the io, lui/lei, and loro forms. The full conjugation is: feci, facesti, fece, facemmo, faceste, fecero.
Is "videro" following a similar irregular pattern to "fecero"?
Exactly. Videro comes from vedere (to see). Like fare, it has an irregular root in the passato remoto (vid-) that is only used for the io, lui/lei, and loro forms. So "I saw" is vidi, "he/she saw" is vide, and "they saw" is videro. The other forms use the regular root ved- (like vedesti).
Why use the "passato remoto" here instead of the standard past tense ("hanno fatto" and "hanno visto")?
The passato remoto is the go-to tense for historical events, literature, and storytelling in Italian. Because this sentence involves making an arrow and seeing a dragon, it is clearly a line from a fairy tale or fantasy story, making this literary past tense the most natural choice.
I always forget the spelling rules for plurals: how would I say "arrows" and "dragons"?