Basic Italian: A Grammar and Workbook

Present perfect of avere and essere

7 Avere forms the present perfect with the auxiliary avere:

Essere forms the present perfect with the auxiliary essere:

8 Like the present, the present perfect of essere can be used with the pronoun
ci (see Unit 4): c’è stato/stata (there was/has been), ci sono stati/state (there
were/have been):

Essere or avere?

9 Deciding whether to use essere or avere can be a bit of a problem. The only
firm rules are those governing transitive verbs (i.e. verbs which can have a
direct object) and reflexive verbs (see Unit 20). Transitive verbs always use
avere; reflexive verbs always use essere.
As for intransitive verbs, some use avere and others essere. In general, it can
be said that verbs of movement (such as andare (to go), venire (to come),
partire (to leave), uscire (to go out), entrare (to go in/come in)) or non-
movement (such as rimanere (to remain), restare (to stay/remain)), and verbs
of state (such as essere, diventare (to become), cambiare (to change), crescere
(to grow)) use the auxiliary essere. However, this is not a hard and fast rule:
there are intransitive verbs which take avere.

ho avuto

hai avuto

ha avuto

abbiamo avuto

avete avuto

hanno avuto

I had/have had

you had/have had

he/she/it had/has had

we had/have had

you had/have had

they had/have had

sono stato/stata

sei stato/stata

è stato/stata

siamo stati/state

siete stati/state

sono stati/state

I was/have been

you were/have been

he/she/it was/has been

we were/have been

you were/have been

they were/have been

La settimana scorsa abbiamo avuto ospiti.

Tanya ha avuto la varicella.

Nina è stata malata.

Des è stato mio studente.

Last week we had guests.

Tanya has had chickenpox.

Nina has been ill.

Des was a student of mine.

C’è stata un’alluvione.

Ci sono stati troppo incidenti.

There was/has been a flood.

There were/have been too many accidents.