Basic Italian: A Grammar and Workbook

As the examples confirm, the ‘passato prossimo’ may correspond to either the
simple past or the present perfect in English. But there are also other differ-
ences between the Italian and English structures: there is only one auxiliary
verb in English (‘to have’), but in Italian there is a choice of two, avere and
essere; when essere is used, the past participle has to agree in gender and
number with the subject; finally, whether to use avere or essere is not usually a
free choice. We will look at all these differences in detail, but first we need to
look at the forms of the Italian past participle.

Forms of the past participle

3 The regular forms of the past participle are obtained by changing the
ending of the infinitive as follows:

• Verbs ending in -cere (or -scere) keep the ‘soft’ sound of c (or sc) and
  therefore add an i before the -uto ending (-iuto).

The past participle of verbs in -urre ends in -otto:

Infinitive in -are

-ato

Infinitive in -ere

-uto

Infinitive in -ire

-ito

Infinitive

parlare

mangiare

cadere

volere

piacere

conoscere

partire

capire

Past participle

parlato

mangiato

caduto

voluto

piaciuto*

conosciuto*

partito

capito

(to speak) spoken

(to eat) eaten

(to fall) fallen

(to want) wanted

(to like) liked

(to know/meet for the first time) known/met

(to leave) left

(to understand) understood

Infinitive

condurre

tradurre

produrre

Past participle

condotto

tradotto

prodotto

(to lead/drive/manage) led/driven/managed

(to translate) translated

(to produce) produced