Italian Present Tense (part 2) - Beginner Italian Course: Lesson 26

Conjugating verbs in Italian can be tricky, but since you've been following this 30-day series for beginner Italian, you already know how to conjugate are verbs, the group of verbs that ends with are, but today we're looking at another group which is a bunch of groups that end in ere. So it's going to be actually fairly easy because it's very similar to are verbs. So how does it work? Well, we have to go back to are verbs because it works the same way. So we're going to look at the infinitive, that's the dictionary entry of a verb, the word that expresses the concept of the action that you're thinking, the verb that you're thinking, and we remove are because that are doesn't really give you any information specific to the verb other than it's an infinitive. So we get rid of it, like in English, we get rid of to remember all of that. So when we do that, we're left with the stem of the verb and then we attach a bunch of endings that are specific to the subject that we are trying to, you know, conjugate the verb for. And voila, we have a verb that is conjugated in Italian. You've hopefully gained so much experience and practice by studying more Italian. Hopefully you're enrolled in our courses and you have all the resources, but otherwise there are so many resources to practice your verbs. So I'm sure that you've been doing that. So are verbs have certain endings and I'm going to bring them all up. So an Arabic verb adds the vowel O to the stem when the speaker, when the verb is myself, like the speaker. So parlo is I speak. We put E at the end of the stem when we are addressing somebody casually in front of us, like a friend, family member, parli. We use the A ending to talk about he or she or it, or you sir, you ma'am, like a formal level. And it's A. So parla means he speaks, she speaks, you sir speak, you ma'am speak. Then we have iamo ending for noi. Just quick review because I know you know this stuff. Noi parliamo, we speak. Ate for you guys, voi parlate, you guys speak. And ano, which is never stressed, for loro, loro parlano. So that was are verbs. If you don't know them, go back to look it up. Ere verbs work very similar. They have very similar endings. So the ending for io verbs, for ere verbs, it's the same. It's still O. You will find that all verbs use O when you, when the subject is speaking about themselves. So easy one, always O. When you address somebody with an ere verb, your ending is still going to be E, just like for are verbs. When we address a third person, like he, she, it, or you sir, you ma'am, we attach the vowel E. For are verbs, we attach the vowel A. For ere verbs, we attach the vowel E. That's important because that's a distinction. Noi, we're still using iamo, so nothing has changed here. For voi, we use the ending ete. And for loro, we use the ending ono. Now I want to show you are verbs so that you can see how they are similar. For io, tu, and noi, always the same. And I'll go as far as saying that this is true for all the verbs that you conjugate in Italian, in the present tense, obviously. With the O ending, tu, the person you're talking to, always conjugated with E. And we, as in all of us, it always ends with iamo. So those three are three stable things that will never change. But what changes is the third person, the lei, lui, and so on, that's E ending. The voi, which is ete, it used to be ate, it is ate for are verbs, and then ono, that it's different from ano. So let's have a look at a verb, prendere. Io prendo means I take, I'll get, I'm having, I'm taking. Io prendo. Tu prendi, you're taking, you'll take. Lei o lui prende, he or she takes. Noi prendiamo, we'll have, we'll take, we'll get. Voi prendete, you guys take. Loro prendono. Look at what we've done, we've taken prendere, removed ere, because that means kind of nothing, so we're left with prend. We attach the endings, O prendo, I prendi, E prende, Iamo prendiamo, Ete prendete, Ono prendono. Remember the stress is never on the ono part, so it's not prendono, it's something else, prendono. So since you are learning a whole new kind of conjugation, because these are different endings, I hope you're taking notes, but drill, drill, drill. I don't like rote drills because I don't think they're very useful, it's very old school, there's so many better ways of becoming good at Italian, immersion, immersion, immersion, like watch stuff in Italian, it's going to help. But when you're learning a new concept that is quite difficult, drilling is actually useful, so I do recommend that you drill it down and you kind of conjugate a bunch of verbs. The ending for io is always o, the ending for tu is always i, the ending for noi is always iamo. Remember for the third person for are verbs, we said that the ending for the third person, for lei and lui, is a, which is already in infinitive, like parlare, lei parla, it's the same vowel. It happens here as well, prendere, lei prende. So the e is already in the infinitive, prendere. So this is going to help you a lot. And for voi, remember we did it for are, we said that the infinitive parlare, you switch the t, the r for t, parlate, and you have the you guys version, parlate, you guys speak. So again, that's an easy one to conjugate. It happens with ere verbs as well. So prendere, prendete. The stress of the word is different, but the r is swapped by the t and you have the voi conjugation. And like I said, ono is never stressed. The stress of the word must be somewhere before. I'll give you some homework. Spend 15-30 minutes right now drilling verbs. But what verbs? Well, you need to go and find verbs. That's the homework. I want you to find regular ere verbs that you can conjugate. But there's a problem. Many ere verbs, especially the ones that you would think to find, they are irregular. So what we learned today doesn't apply to those verbs because they are irregular, they have their own conjugation. So I'm going to give you one that you can start with, but then you do need to go and find more. And I'm going to give you vedere. Vedere means to see, vedere. So you can pause the video, conjugate vedere in all six subjects, and then I'll say. All right, fatto? Fatto? You done? Io vedo, tu vedi, lei vede, noi vediamo, voi vedete, loro vedono. And that was it for conjugating ere verbs. In tomorrow's lesson, we're looking at some irregular verbs and I will explain how they are irregular and help you kind of get it, you know, as much as I can help you in a quick YouTube video. All right, a dopo.