Basic Italian: A Grammar and Workbook

Negative form 4 The negative is formed by putting non (i.e. ‘not’) before the verb: Formal form 5 In Italian there is a formal w ...

Use of essere and avere 7 The verbs essere and avere are normally used as the verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to have’ are used in English. E ...

9 Avere is also used in Italian to express age: C’è and ci sono 10 The verb essere is used in the expressions c’è (there is) fol ...

In Italian the double negative is used: non + nessuno. 14 Note that in negative sentences giving general information, it is mo ...

Exercise 3 Taking the words in the two columns below, write negative and interrogative sentences using the verb avere. Example: ...

Exercise 5 Imagine the things in the office; using all the words in the list, write sentences using c’è or ci sono. Examples: un ...

UNIT FIVE The present tense of regular (and some irregular) verbs Use of the present tense 1 The present tense (or simply ‘the p ...

The forms of the present tense 4 Italian verbs are divided into three main groups, the conjugations. The conjugation a verb belo ...

6 Verbs ending in -care and -gare (first conjugation) add h before the endings of the second person singular (-i) and the first ...

9 Verbs ending in -cere (or -scere) and -gere (or -ggere) change the sound of c (or sc) and g (or -gg), which become ‘hard’ befo ...

10 Regular verbs in -ire are conjugated as follows: 11 Many verbs in -ire (e.g. capire (to understand), costruire (to build), fi ...

Negative form 13 The negative is formed by putting non (not) before the verb: Formal form 14 As we saw in Unit 4, the pronouns u ...

The verb riuscire (to succeed/manage/be able to) follows the same pattern as uscire. It is important not to confuse sapere and ...

16 Dovere, potere and volere usually need to be followed by another verb in the infinitive: 17 The verb sapere is another that i ...

Exercise 2 Supply the present tense of the verb in brackets. Example: (io bere) molta acqua: bevo Exercise 3 Translate into Ital ...

9 They often go out in the evening. 10 The boys are playing football tomorrow. Exercise 4 Translate into Italian: 1 Are you goin ...

UNIT SIX Adverbs 1 English adverbs are usually formed by adding ‘-ly’ to an adjective (e.g. ‘thinly’, ‘cleverly’). Italian adver ...

Note that with non... ancora and non... mai, non is always placed before the verb and ancora/mai after it. 3 Adverbs can quali ...

Adverbial expressions 5 Having a lot of words ending in -mente can often sound heavy. To avoid this, Italian sometimes uses adve ...

There are also a number of adverbial expressions that use other prepositions than con. Here are some of the most common: Another ...