Il passato prossimo

Il passato prossimo con avere

The past tense using avere

Il passato prossimo (the past tense)

In Italian, the past tense is formed using 2 verbs instead of just 1 like in English. The first verb is called the auxiliary verb and will always be either avere or essere. The second verb is called the past participle which will be the action happening in the sentence.

Multiple Choice

In Italian, how many verbs are needed to form the past tense?

• 1

• 2

The auxiliary verb (first verb used to write in the past tense)

• The first auxiliary verb we will focus on is avere.

• When writing in the past tense, we actually need to use the present tense of avere.

• The avere conjugation is: io ho, tu hai, lui/lei ha, noi abbiamo, voi avete and loro hanno.

Multiple Choice

When using avere to write in the past tense, we need to write present tense conjugations of avere. Which are the correct present tense conjugations of avere?

• ho,hai,ha,abbiamo,avete,hanno

• avo,avi,ave,aviamo,avete,avono

The past participle (the second of two verbs used to write in the past tense)

• After the auxiliary verb (present tense of avere) we need to write the past participle.

• The past participle is the past tense form of the verb (action) in the sentence.

Multiple Choice

The past participle (past tense form of the verb) comes after the auxiliary verb (avere).

• vero

• falso

Forming the past participle (past tense verb)

• To form the past participle (past tense verb) we need to remember that we have 3 groups of verbs in Italian. -Are, -ere and -ire verbs

• To form the past participle we need to first drop the are, ere or ire and replace them with -ato, -uto or -ito.

Multiple Choice

The past participle ending for an -are verb is...

• -uto

• -ito

• -ato

Multiple Choice

The past participle ending for an -ere verb is...

• -uto

• -ito

• -ato

Multiple Choice

The past participle ending for an -ire verb is...

• -uto

• -ito

• -ato

The full past tense is formed as follows

Subject + present tense of avere + past participle

Subjects: (io,tu,lui,lei,noi,voi,loro)

Present tense of avere: ho,hai,ha,abbiamo,avete,hanno

Past participle: -ato, -uto, -ito

Il passato prossimo

To the right is a conjugation chart example for -are, -ere and -ire verbs.

Notice that the conjugation of avere changes depending on the subject in the sentence, but the past participle (mangiato, ripetuto and finito) never changes.

Multiple Choice

Giocare means "to play". If I were using it in the past, which conjugations would be correct.

• io ho giocato, tu hai giocata, lui ha giocati

• io ho giocato, tu hai giocato, lui ha giocato

Multiple Choice

Capire means "to understand". If I were using it in the past, which conjugations would be correct.

• noi avere capito, voi avere capito, loro avere capito

• noi abbiamo capito, voi avete capito, loro hanno capito

Ripasso (recap)

• We learned that the past tense is formed with two verbs. The present tense of avere and the past tense form of the action in the sentence.

• We learned that to form the past tense we drop the are, ere and ire and add ato, uto and ito

• We learned that when writing in the past tense, the present tense conjugation of avere changes to agree with the subject but the past participle never changes