if you want to say anything in italian you need to know how to conjugate italian verbs now it might sound or even look overwhelming at first but once you learn a few simple patterns conjugating italian verbs is a farcila easy hi my name is michelle i'm the intrepid guide your guide to language learning for travel now if you're new to my channel make sure you hit that subscribe button and click on the bell notification so you get an alert when i post more videos like this one today i'm going to be sharing with you how to conjugate italian verbs dacapo meaning from the very beginning now i'm going to go back to basics because when it comes to language learning assuming anything is a big mistake and i don't want to assume that you know anything about conjugating verbs just yet now when i first started learning italian before i could even learn how to conjugate a verb first i had to understand what it was what is a verb so let's talk about verbs now just looking at the word may conjure up negative feelings from boring grammar lessons at school and you may have even gone your whole adult life and you still don't know what they are don't worry i didn't know what they were either that is not until i studied italian my first foreign language i'm going to break down this seemingly scary grammatical term and make it super easy for you to understand and remember what verbs are why well because as you learn italian you will see similar looking words but very often they can seem slightly different with slightly different endings and also have different meanings without a doubt learning how to conjugate verbs in italian is one of the most important and powerful steps in the learning process so come in shamu let's get started so what are verbs well a verb is whether you can place two in front of so in english we have to travel which in italian is viajar there's also the verb to eat which is manjar in italiano now these are examples of verbs in their full form in which they're called the infinitive so the infinitive form is a verb that hasn't been conjugated so it's the unconjugated verb but what is an unconjugated verb well it's when the verb doesn't tell you who is doing the action so every time we speak you change the verb to reflect the subject of the verb so who is doing it and this process of changing verbs is called conjugating for example if you say she's eating a pizza then she is the subject she is the person conducting the action she's the one who's eating the pizza so therefore in italian you couldn't just say manjare una pizza because on its own this just means eating a pizza instead you have to conjugate the verb manjare to say lei manja una pizza she's eating a pizza it's important to be able to recognize verbs in the infinitive form as this is how they are organized in your common dictionary so how do you conjugate italian verbs well let's take a look at how you conjugate italian verbs in the present tense now in grammatical terms this is called the present indicative tense now i know it's a little bit scary sounding but try not to focus on that too much it just means that it's used to express or indicate facts now the indicative tense is the most commonly used mood in everyday conversation and this is what we'll be focusing on in this video now the present indicative or as its name applies is used to form statements and questions in the present tense in other words things that are happening now now in english the present tense can be expressed in three different ways we have the simple present which is i eat for example the present progressive which is i am eating so i'm currently doing it and the emphatic present which is i do eat in italian you can express all three of these meanings just by saying manjo i eat now that's right you get three for the price of one in italian there is no ambiguing or ironing that you need to worry about so ever notice when some native italians speak english and they will say things like i go tomorrow or i go now instead of saying i'm going tomorrow or i'm going now now this is because they don't use the ing endings to describe what they are doing now in the present tense or what they are going to do in the future now it sounds like broken english to our ears but it's 100 correct in italian so try and remember this when you speak italian next up we have subject pronouns now what are subject pronouns well in order to conjugate italian verbs we must first familiarize ourselves with subject pronouns now subject pronouns in english are i you singular he she it we you plural or you all or yo and they now here they are in italian we have i to you informal luis in italian subject pronouns come before the conjugated verb but their use differs from english subject pronouns in italian are only used to add emphasis to the subject or for clarification to add a similar emphasis in english we simply stress the pronoun by increasing our voice slightly perhaps now as you will learn in the examples i'm about to share the subject is already part of the conjugated verb and is represented by the final letters now this is worth repeating the subject which is the thing or the person who is doing the action is represented by the final letters of the verb in italian in italian we have verb families and most of the time italian verbs follow certain rules and we call these regular verbs now the ones that don't follow the rules are called irregular verbs and we'll cover those a little bit later all verbs in italian belong to one of three families which can be easily identified by their endings so we have e-r-e endings ire endings and a-r-e so ere now these three endings represent the two part of the verb as they are always found in the infinitive so manjare to eat to travel now this is how you'll be able to identify the infinitive just look out for these final three letter endings and then you'll know that you have the infinitive now the rules are the same for each family so after you've learned the pattern for one verb you'll know how to conjugate all the verbs in that particular family as if by magical magic the first type of conjugation is the are family a-r-e which is the largest and has the most regular verbs for example there's the verb palare to speak the second type of conjugation is the ere family which has its own set of rules for example the verb perendere to take the third type of conjugation is the ire family which has two methods of conjugation one example is kapira to understand next we're going to learn how to use the stem to conjugate verbs now if are ere and ere are called the infinitive ending then what is left is called the stem in other words the first part of the verb now by using the stamps of that first part you can start to conjugate verbs now to conjugate any irregular italian verb in the present tense all you need to do is follow three steps first keep the stem second drop the infinitive ending and third replace the ending with the appropriate conjugation so here's how to obtain the stem and we'll look at the three different families so we've got the ara family kia mare which is to call so we drop the ari at the end and we keep the c-h-i-a-m for q-dere which is to close we drop the e-r-e we keep the c-h-i-u-d at the beginning and for servire the ire family which means to need we drop the ire and we keep the s-e-r-v at the beginning and once you have found your stem you can finally start to add the conjugated endings appropriate to that verb family so verbs ending in a-r-e will have the endings with these endings you can now conjugate the verb palade which means to speak and this is a verb that you use a lot so parlo tu parli now the endings for era verbs are very similar we've got o now with these endings you can now conjugate the verb venderev to sell so vendo tu vendi lui lei vende noi vendiamo as i mentioned before the endings of ire verbs can be conjugated in two different ways the endings of the first form follow a very similar pattern to what we've already seen now these are o e amo no now with these endings you can now conjugate the verb partire which is to depart or to leave so we have ioparto to now the second form takes a different set of endings and these are isco ishii ishe now with these endings we can now conjugate the verb finide which is to finish so you finish now with these two different ways of conjugating ire verbs how do you know which set of endings to use well a good dictionary should give you a good indication if the verb goes like finide or partire other than that as with everything else you learn as you go along and you learn by context as you learn italian take note of the endings of the verbs and spot the similarities between each verb family now can you spot any other patterns for example i always ends in o so parto i depart finisco i finish and then we have we which always finishes in an iamo so we finish italian also has irregular verbs which means the stem may change form once it's been conjugated and this is called a stem-changing verb as with the verb bere meaning to drink whose stem changes to bev b-e-v when conjugated now each conjugation has its own set of endings that replaces the ending of the infinitive a few common irregular italian verbs are conjugated as follows so from the are verb family we have andare andare is to go now we have yo vado tu vai lui lei then we have fare which is to do or to make so it's iowa to fight louis lay then we have stare which is to be or to stay and remain we have eosto then we have the irregular verbs from the ere family now the two most important verbs from this family are the auxiliary verbs essere which means to be and avere to have so let's look at these two first so avere means to have so we have io to i then we have the verb estere which means to be so first we have iosono to say louis then we have bere which we touched on earlier which is to drink so we have iobevo to bevi then we have the verb sapere which means to know so we have eoso tu sai lui lei sa then we have the verb poter which is to be able to or can so yo poso to poi lui next up we have the ire verb endings now the irregular verbs that fall into this group are dire which is to say or to tell so first we have iodico tu dici lui lei dice di ciamo voi dite l'oro di cono then we have the verb venire which means to come so yo vengo tu vieni lui le viene noi veniamo voi venita loro vengono so that's how you conjugate verbs in italian and once you know how to master this in the present tense you'll be able to apply the same principles to the other tenses including the past tense and the future tense now my top tip for becoming more confident and quicker at conjugating verbs in italian is with practice now write out short sentences about people in your life and use a verb conjugation app like konju that allows you to practice each verb family individually and in different tenses now if you're serious about learning a 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