Exploring the Passato Remoto in Italian: A Journey into the Past

The Passato Remoto is an Italian past tense of the modo indicativo.

The Passato Remoto (io mangiai, “I ate” in a distant past) indicates an event considered outside of its duration and concluded in the past, with no connections to the present.

Discussions revolve around the Passato Remoto and its classification as a linguistic “endangered species.” In recent decades, the prevalence of this tense in spoken and written Italian has diminished. The shift towards less formal and intricate Italian, especially in Northern Italy, has played a role in its decline.

The Passato Prossimo steps forward with immediacy, making it a preferred linguistic tool of television and other media. The realms of spoken and written word — social media, news, movies, radio — favour this tense. Newspapers, tuned to contemporary events, relegate the Passato Remoto to the archives and narrative.

Yet, the Passato Remoto thrives in literary usage. Novels crafted with this tense flourish in detailed narratives.

For me, the elegance of the Passato Remoto is undeniable. However, as a Northern Italian, I confess to a comfortable existence without it for most of my adult life.

The foundations of local Italian dialects—on which standard Italian stands—lack the Passato Remoto. Thus, Northern Italians apply ignore it. Some Southern Italy’s dialects, in contrast, embrace it as their past tense of choice, into daily dialogue.

Occasionally, we Milanese stumble in the past, misplacing the tense when using the Passato Prossimo for distant actions:

• Mio nonno ha combattuto la guerra. —> Mio nonno combatté la guerra.

Some Southern Italians, however, move in the opposite direction, employing the Passato Remoto incorrectly:

• Ieri andai al mercato. —> Ieri sono andato al mercato.

Both are deviations.

Tuscans and Central Italians strike a balance in their usage, while Neapolitan voices suggest a lighter reliance compared, for example, to the beautiful Southern Italian of Sicily and Calabria.

While the use of the passato remoto instead of the passato prossimo is still strongly regional in the South, the use of the passato prossimo in place of the passato remoto is becoming increasingly widespread, even outside Northern Italy and in higher registers of language.

However, both in writing and speaking, it is always better to make use of all the resources the language offers, and thus take advantage of the various nuances provided by the complex interplay of verb tenses.

Although in decline, the Passato Remoto thrives within the pages of books. A learning necessity? Yes. Study it, appreciate its beauty, and embrace its expressive power for conveying past events!

Let’s start from the basic grammar rules.

Passato Remoto dei Verbi Regolari

Please notice how –ere regular verbs have two possible conjugations with the Passato Remoto. Both are correct.

Passato Remoto of Essere & Avere

The Passato Remoto is the most irregular tense in Italian. The vast majority of irregular verbs belong to the -ere conjugation. This is likely one of the main reasons why people tend to favour using the Passato Prossimo.

The following is a very basic list of irregular verbs. You can start here and build up some vocabulary.

Passato Remoto dei Verbi Irregolari

In the following examples, here are some sentences with the passato remoto irregular, including verbs that are not included in the list. Listen carefully to the correct pronunciation.

With the imperfetto

The passato remoto and imperfetto tenses serve different functions when expressing actions in the past. The imperfetto emphasizes the duration or continuity of an action, focusing on what was happening over a period of time.

For instance, “La pioggia cadeva incessante durante tutta la notte” suggests that the rain was continuously falling throughout the night. On the other hand, the passato remoto highlights actions that are momentary or punctual, expressing events that occur at a specific point in time. In the sentence “La pioggia cadde improvvisamente durante il giorno,” the rain is seen as a single, completed event that happened at a particular moment.

“L’uomo guardò fuori dalla finestra” and “L’uomo guardava fuori dalla finestra,” but they convey different nuances. The passato remoto (guardò) presents the action as something that happened at a particular moment in the past and is now complete. It gives the sense of a one-time, punctual event. The imperfetto(guardava), however, suggests the action was ongoing or repeated in the past, showing that the man was continuously or repeatedly looking out the window.

Therefore, while both tenses locate the action in the past, the imperfetto focuses on its durative aspect, while the passato remoto presents it as a momentary occurrence.

Trapassato Remoto

A few final words about the trapassato remoto (e.g., io ebbi visto, io fui andato) which indicates an event that took place and was definitively completed in the past, before another past event. It is a relative tense, typically found in dependent clauses introduced by words like quando, dopo che, non appena, and similar expressions.

For example: Quando ebbe finito il lavoro, andò a casa (When he had finished the work, he went home). However, the trapassato remoto is now rarely used, particularly in spoken language, and is increasingly being replaced by the passato remoto itself in common speech. This shift shows the trend in contemporary Italian towards simplifying verb tenses in informal contexts.

Thanks for reading. Please solve the quiz and listen to the correct pronunciation in the answer.

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Andrea del Sarto  – Ritratto maschile – 1528