Practice conjugating verbs in the imperfect tense
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| Do you know how to describe past habits or continuous situations in Italian? |
| Welcome to Three Step Italian Practice by ItalianPod101.com. In this lesson, you will practice conjugating verbs in the imperfect tense. |
| Let's look at the main dialogue. |
| Two people are having a conversation. |
| Questo sei tu da giovane? Che bel ragazzo! |
| "Is this you when you were young? What a handsome guy!" |
| Eh sì, ero molto bello. Avevo ventidue anni. Ero uno studente dell'università. Andavo tutti i giorni in palestra. |
| "Oh yes, I was very handsome. I was twenty-two years old. I was a university student. I used to go to the gym every day." |
| Ero, avevo, Ero, Andavo |
| In the dialogue, we heard several verbs in the imperfetto tense — like ero, avevo, and andavo. |
| The imperfetto is used to describe how things were in the past: habits, age, feelings, and ongoing situations. |
| It's often translated as "used to" or "was or were doing" in English. |
| To form the imperfetto, we take the stem of the verb and add specific endings that match the subject. These endings help show who was doing the action and give a sense of continuity or repetition in the past. |
| Let's take a look at a few examples. All of these verbs are in the first-person singular form. |
| andavo comes from andare — the stem and- plus -avo gives "I used to go." |
| avevo comes from avere — the stem av- plus -evo gives "I used to have." |
| ero comes from essere, which is irregular. Even though it doesn't follow the regular pattern, ero still marks the first-person singular form — "I was." |
| These conjugations allow us to describe experiences, routines, and conditions that lasted over time. |
| Let's now take a closer look at how those endings work! |
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