il passato prossimo in italiano
il passato prossimo in italian, like the french passé composé, has two parts: the auxiliary verb (avere - to have and essere - to be) and the past participle.
the past participle, for regular verbs, is formed by taking the infinitive and replacing the ending with the appropriate past participle one.
for verbs ending in -are, this is -ato. for -ere verbs, this is -uto. for -ire verbs, this is -ito.
e.g. mangiare —> mangiato. credere —> creduto. finire —> finito.
so, to form the passato prossimo, conjugate the auxiliary and add the past participle. when avere is the auxiliary, it’s as simple as that.
for example, to say ‘i have eaten’ in italian, you conjugate avere in the first person (ho) and then add the past participle of ‘to eat’ (mangiare): ‘mangiato’.
so, ‘i have eaten’ = ho mangiato.
with avere, the past participle does not change to agree with the subject.
with essere, it’s a little different. similar to french, you use essere as the auxiliary for reflexive verbs and intransitive verbs — verbs that do not have a direct object, such as andare (to go) or partire (to leave).
you can also think of it in terms of verbs of movement (e.g. andare, uscire), verbs describing one’s state (e.g. rimanere, essere) and, of course, reflexive verbs (e.g. svegliarsi).
in this case, to form the passato prossimo, you conjugate essere, and then add the past participle — but here, the past participle must agree with the subject.
for example, to say ‘i went’ if you are female, you will need to conjugate essere in the first person (sono) and then take the feminine past participle (andata).
so, ‘i went’ (feminine) = sono andata.
the past participle changes as such:
for a masculine singular subject: andato
so, to say ‘we (a group of females) left’, you would say siamo partite.
irregular past participles that take essere (remember, only the intransitive verbs!) work the same way — e.g. for essere, the p.p. is stato, which if used for the masculine plural, for example, it will become stati.
you just have to learn the past participles themselves, since they do not follow the -ato/-uto/-ito pattern.
examples include scrivere (‘to write’) —> scritto, dire (‘to say’) —> detto, fare (to do) —> fatto.
happy passato prossimo-ing!
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