Basic Italian: A Grammar and Workbook

5 Anyone who wants to go to university must be able to read and write. 6 Paolo, who’s lost his mobile, is not happy. 7 I like th ...

UNIT SIXTEEN The imperfect tense 1 The imperfect is, together with the present perfect, one of the most used past tenses in Ital ...

Regular verbs ending in -are are conjugated as follows: Regular verbs ending in -ere are conjugated as follows: The verb avere a ...

3 Not many verbs are irregular in the imperfect. Essere is one: Like the present, the imperfect of essere can be used with the p ...

All verbs ending in -urre have the following pattern: Negative form 4 The negative is formed, as usual, by putting non before th ...

Use of the imperfect 5 The imperfect is used for descriptions of situations in the past, when it is not necessary (or important) ...

8 When a sentence refers to two or more events which happened in the past, it is helpful to think in terms of ‘foreground’ and ‘ ...

Exercise 1 Supply the imperfect of the verb in brackets. Example: Silvio (lavorare) molto: lavorava Exercise 2 Supply the correc ...

Exercise 3 Supply the correct tense (present perfect or imperfect) of the verbs in brackets. Example: Mentre (noi guardare) la t ...

4 Gemma’s father was a sailor. 5 Claudia and Monica didn’t come on holiday with us this time. 6 My parents usually went out at e ...

UNIT SEVENTEEN The pronouns ne and ci The pronoun ne 1 The pronoun ne is used to refer to a part of a whole, corresponding to ‘o ...

2 The pronoun ne is invariable, and can thus replace any noun, whether masculine, feminine, singular or plural: 3 As we have see ...

As these examples show, the negative is formed by putting non before ne. Agreement of the past participle When ne is used with a ...

6 When the quantity is expressed by an adverb or an adjective, the past participle agrees with the noun replaced by ne: 7 When t ...

However, if ne is not attached to the infinitive, the past participle must agree, in the same way as in the rules given in parag ...

The pronoun ci 10 The pronoun ci is used to replace a noun denoting a place; it corresponds to the English ‘there’. We have alre ...

3 ‘Hai fatto i compiti?’ ‘—— ho fatt—— la metà.’ 4 ‘Quante persone sono venute?’ ‘—— sono venut—— poch——.’ 5 ‘Quanti errori hai ...

14 Era un argomento interessante e —— abbiamo parlato molto. 15 Il film era noioso e —— abbiamo visto solo metà. 16 Carla parte: ...

Exercise 5 Identify the words that can be replaced by the pronoun ci, and rewrite the sentences with ci in the right place. Exam ...

UNIT EIGHTEEN The future tense Use of the future 1 The future tense is, of course, used to refer to events which will happen in ...