Die ganze Grammatik

Two verbs carry the first weeks: essere and avere. Both are entirely irregular, both turn up later as the auxiliary in every past tense, and both have to be known by heart before any rule is worth learning. The one thing that catches English speakers everywhere is which verb goes with what. Age, hunger, thirst, cold and fear all belong to avere in Italian, where English uses to be: ho vent'anni is literally I have twenty years. And how you are is a third verb again, stare, which is neither of the first two.

An English verb has one ending in the whole present tense, the -s of he speaks, and everything else is carried by the pronoun. An Italian verb has six, all of them different and all of them audible, and that single fact reorganises the sentence: parlo already says who is speaking, so the pronoun is not needed and is left out. Which six endings a verb takes depends on its last three letters — -are, -ere or -ire — a piece of information English infinitives simply do not carry, since to speak, to believe and to sleep are built alike. One thing has to be accepted rather than understood: the -ire family has two patterns, dormo and capisco, and nothing in the verb says which.

English has one definite article and Italian has seven, and the choice between them is not about meaning at all. It depends on the *sound the next word starts with*: il libro, but lo studente and l'amico. That will feel arbitrary for about a day, until you notice that English does exactly the same thing with a and an. Nobody says a apple, and nobody could explain why beyond the fact that it is hard to say — il studente is wrong for precisely that reason and no other. The second surprise is that the article turns up far more often than in English: in front of countries, languages, the time of day and your own hands.

An Italian noun almost always ends in a vowel, and that vowel says two things at once: the gender and the number. -o is masculine, -a is feminine, and in the plural they become -i and -e. Nothing is ever added — which is the one habit English has to give up here, because the English plural is an added -s and nothing else. Two things blur the picture: nouns in -e say nothing at all about their gender, and a handful of words look like one thing and are the other.

An English adjective never changes: red is red in front of one book or twenty houses. An Italian adjective matches its noun in gender and number, and it does so with either four forms (rosso, rossa, rossi, rosse) or two (grande, grandi), according to its own final vowel. That is one new idea and then a second layer on top of it. The other surprise is the position: unlike English, the adjective normally stands *after* the noun — una macchina rossa, a car red. A handful of common ones go in front, and with two of them the position changes the meaning outright.

An Italian object pronoun stands *before* the conjugated verb: lo vedo, I see him. English puts it after, without exception, so this is the first thing to rebuild. The second is that there are two sets — one for the direct object (lo, la, li, le) and one for the indirect (gli, le, loro) — and which one applies is decided by the Italian verb rather than by the meaning, so the English verb is no guide. Then come two small words English has no equivalent for at all: ne for of it and ci for there. And when two pronouns meet they change shape: mi lo becomes me lo.

Both of these are simpler in Italian than in English, and the reason is the same in each case: there is no auxiliary. English cannot ask a question without do — do you speak, does he live — and cannot negate a verb without it either: I do not know. Italian has nothing of the kind. A question looks exactly like a statement, Parli italiano?, and is recognised by the voice alone; a negative takes one word, non, in front of the verb. The catch comes afterwards: two negatives do not cancel here, they belong together. Non ho niente is I have nothing — and without the non the sentence would be wrong.

English makes you choose between « I ate » and « I have eaten », and a time word settles it: « yesterday I have eaten » is not English. Italian has one form for both, and that rule has to be switched off — ieri ho mangiato is correct. In its place come two choices English never makes. Every compound past begins with avere or essere, and after essere the participle says whether the person speaking is a man or a woman: sono andata. Beside all that stands the imperfetto, which does the work of « was doing » and « used to » with a single ending, and a second completed past, the passato remoto, chosen by the kind of text and by where in Italy you are.

English divides the future four ways — the timetable present, « I'm leaving tomorrow », « going to » and « will » — and choosing between them is most of what an English speaker knows about the future. Very little of that survives the crossing. Italian has one future tense and no « going to » box at all: stare per covers the next few minutes and nothing wider, and everything else is said with the plain present plus a time word — domani parto. What is left for the futuro is the distant, the uncertain and the promised, and one job that is not about the future at all: a guess about now. Saranno le otto is « it must be eight ». Beside it stands the condizionale, which carries the politeness — vorrei rather than voglio is the difference between a request and an order.

English has one imperative and it is the bare verb — « wait » — to one person or a hundred, to a friend or to a police officer. Nothing in the form says who is being addressed, so English carries the politeness on the outside: « please », « could you », « would you mind ». Italian carries it inside. There is a form for a friend, one for a group, one for « let us », and one for a stranger — and that last one is not an imperative at all but a subjunctive: Scusi!, Senta!, Aspetti! Picking the wrong one is not a grammatical slip; it says something about the relationship, and it is heard. On top of that the verb changes shape when a pronoun joins it: « tell me » is two words in English and one here, dimmi, with the consonant doubled.

The three verbs themselves are the easy part: potere, dovere and volere are ordinary verbs, irregular but complete, and the bare infinitive follows — posso venire. sapere joins them, because « can » is one word in English and two here: potere for the opportunity, sapere for the learned skill. The work is elsewhere. English keeps a subject in front of every verb — I need, you must, it takes two hours — and a good half of this chapter has none. Bisogna prenotare names nobody at all. Ci vogliono due ore agrees with the hours, not with the traveller. Mi serve una penna turns the sentence round and makes the pen the subject. And in the past the auxiliary of a modal comes from the verb behind it: sono dovuto andare.

Prepositions cannot be translated; they are learnt attached to the word they hang on, and English speakers already do that with « proud of » and « good at ». Two habits have to go. English lets a preposition drift to the end of a sentence — « the man I spoke to », « what is it for » — and Italian never does: the preposition stays in front of its word and the sentence is built around it, l'uomo con cui ho parlato. And five of them melt into the definite article — a + il = al, di + la = della, in + gli = negli — which, with seven articles, makes a table of thirty-five words to read rather than to memorise. Beyond that stands da, the one preposition with no English counterpart at all: from, since, at somebody's house, and for.

English has one « you » for a child, a friend, a stranger and a judge, and carries the social difference in the words around it: « sir », « please », « would you mind ». Italian carries it in the verb. There is tu for anyone you are on those terms with, and Lei for everybody else — and Lei is grammatically the third person singular, feminine, even to a man. Lei è tedesco? is « are you German? », built like « is she German? ». So this is not a translation problem but a distinction to install from scratch, and the harder half is not the form but knowing when it is wanted — which in Italian is a narrower set of occasions than a first guess suggests.

English has « myself » and « himself », and they are heavy words: they turn up when the point really is that somebody did something to themselves, and nowhere else. Italian's si weighs nothing and is everywhere, and most of the time it is not reflexive in meaning. Mi chiamo Anna is « my name is Anna », not « I call myself Anna »; mi sveglio is « I wake up ». The same two letters then build two other things that look identical: Qui si parla italiano is « Italian is spoken here », the impersonal si; and a third group has no si at all and still belongs here, because it turns the sentence round — mi piace il caffè is « coffee pleases me », and anybody who does not rebuild that sentence says the wrong thing for years.

The passive is essere plus a participle that agrees: la lettera è stata scritta. Whoever did it comes in with da, which is « by ». Beyond that there are three things English has nothing for: venire instead of essere when an event is meant rather than a state; the construction with si that stands on every sign; and andare plus a participle, which is a passive with « must » already inside it. But the first thing to unlearn is wider than any of them. English will promote almost anything to subject — « I was given a book », « he was told to wait », « the bed was slept in » — and Italian promotes only a direct object. Every one of those sentences has to be rebuilt around a different word.

English has one surviving subjunctive that everybody still uses — « if I were you » — and a second that sounds formal, « I suggest he go ». Everything else went over to the indicative centuries ago. Italian did not, and the congiuntivo is not a way of sounding doubtful: it is what a list of words in front of it requires. Penso che, voglio che, benché, prima che — after any of those it stands, whatever the speaker feels. Two things are worth knowing before the forms. Che can never be left out, where English drops « that » without a thought. And the three singular forms are identical, so the pronoun is written far more often here than elsewhere.

A conditional sentence has two halves and the tense of one settles the tense of the other. There are exactly three pairs, and English has the same three: « if it rains, I stay in », « if I had time, I would come », « if I had known, I would have come ». Even the prohibition is shared — « if I would have time » is as wrong in English as se avrei tempo is here. Two things are not shared. Italian allows the future after se, where English does not: se pioverà, resterò a casa is correct. And English has a verb for the wish — « I wish I knew » — which Italian does not: the wish is carried by magari and by vorrei che, each with its own required tense.

English chooses between « who », « whom », « which » and « that » according to what the thing is and what it does in the clause, and then very often leaves the word out altogether: « the book I read », « the man I saw ». Italian does neither. There is one word, che, for subject and object, for people and things, for singular and plural — and it is never omitted. Il libro che leggo has no shorter form. Only after a preposition does a second word appear, cui, and the preposition then travels to the front with it: la persona con cui parlo. Beyond that the clause keeps ordinary word order, subject and verb and the rest, with nothing pushed to the end.

The backshift itself is English. « He said he was tired » moves the tense back one step, and ha detto che era stanco does exactly the same; with a present reporting verb nothing moves at all. What is new sits on either side of that. Che can never be dropped, where English leaves out « that » almost by default. And the reporting verb decides the mood of what follows: dice che è tardi takes the indicative, crede che sia tardi takes the congiuntivo, and English changes nothing after either. One of those verbs is a trap worth meeting early: pretendere does not mean « to pretend ». It means to demand.

English already sorts its verbs into two groups: « stop smoking » takes the -ing form and « decide to go » takes the infinitive, and getting it wrong is the first thing anybody notices. Italian sorts them into three, and never with an -ing: the second verb is always an infinitive, and what changes is the little word in front of it — nothing, a, or di. Voglio partire, comincio a partire, decido di partire. The lists are not translations of the English ones: « stop smoking » is smettere di fumare, with the group English marks by an -ing landing in the di box, while « begin to rain » lands in the a box. Both languages ask the same question and answer it with different machinery.

None of this decides a sentence and all of it decides the impression. molto is an adjective one moment and an adverb the next, and changes its ending accordingly or not at all; the accent on a final vowel separates words that would otherwise look identical, which is why e and è are two different entries in a dictionary; and the apostrophe follows rules that are not English rules — it owns nothing here, it only marks a vowel that fell out. Two things on this page change an amount rather than an impression, and both look harmless: 3,5 and 12.000. The rest is the distance between a correct sentence and one an Italian would have written.