Imperfetto means “imperfect”, not finished. It’s an Italian past tense. A complete guide, quiz and audio examples

Imperfetto “non perfetto”, is an important Italian past tense. It’s part of the indicativo mood, a group of tenses that describe real facts, objects, events.

The imperfetto describes a situation or a frequent action in the past. It always needs a context in order to make sense, as it is incomplete (imperfect!) by itself. For example, if you simply say to an Italian speaker …

• Ero stanco.

… he or she will wait for you to put it in context, in the past, and ask “Quando”?

• Ieri ero stanco.

It means that yesterday I was tired. It’s a situation in the past.

The imperfetto is often studied with the passato prossimo, a perfect past tense, which instead describes complete actions.

•  Ieri ho lavorato.

Let’s see a complete overview of the imperfetto

to be, to have and regular verbs.

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