Il passato prossimo - A Comprehensive Overview for Beginners

A Complete Guide to Using Passato Prossimo for Expressing Past Actions in Italian

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👆🏻 Links to Sections

What is the Passato Prossimo?
When to Use Essere or Avere
Exceptions and Special Cases
Audio: Examples of Passato Prossimo
Listening Task: Il fine settimana di Anna e Marco
FAQ’s

Exercise
Assignment

Today, we will dive deep into the passato prossimo, a key Italian past tense that allows us to express completed actions with precision and nuance. We will explore its formation, usage, and intricacies, offering rich examples to clarify each point.

This is a lesson written for the course Pronti – A1 for English speakers. Please visit the introductory page.

What is the Passato Prossimo?

The passato prossimo is an essential tense in Italian, used to describe actions or events that have already been completed in the past. While it shares some similarities with the English present perfect tense (e.g., “I have eaten”), it functions more like the simple past tense in many cases (e.g., “I ate”), as it often expresses a completed action in the past that is not necessarily linked to the present.

This tense is a compound tense, which means it consists of two parts: an auxiliary verb and a past participle. The auxiliary verb, either the present tense of essere (to be) or avere (to have), helps form the tense, while the past participle shows what action was completed in the past.

Auxiliary Verb + Past Participle

For example, in English, you say, “I have eaten.” In Italian, this would be “Ho mangiato.” Here, “ho” (I have) is the auxiliary verb, and “mangiato” (eaten) is the past participle.

However, the sentence often translates better into English as “I ate” with no connection with the present. Let’s look at some more sentences:

Ho finito il libro che mi avevi consigliato. – I have finished the book you recommended. (Can also mean “I finished the book you recommended.”)
Sono andati in vacanza alle Maldive. – They went on holiday to the Maldives.
Abbiamo visto un bellissimo tramonto ieri sera. – We saw a beautiful sunset last night.
Sono tornata a casa dopo un lungo viaggio. – I returned home after a long journey. (Note: tornata agrees in gender with the subject. The speaker is a female.)

When to Use Essere or Avere

The selection between essere and avere as auxiliary verbs is fundamental in Italian and can alter the meaning of the sentence.

Passato Prossimo with Essere and Avere

Pronoun	Essere + Andato/a/i/e	Avere + Mangiato
Io	Sono andato/a	Ho mangiato
Tu	Sei andato/a	Hai mangiato
Lui/Lei	È andato/a	Ha mangiato
Noi	Siamo andati/e	Abbiamo mangiato
Voi	Siete andati/e	Avete mangiato
Loro	Sono andati/e	Hanno mangiato

Here’s a detailed guide on when to use each:

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