I hear this question quite often from my students. How is “piacere” different compared to other Italian verbs? Well, it is quite different. And other important verbs follow the same rules of “piacere”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember I wrote a blog about that a few years ago, but I believe it’s time to put together a more comprehensive guide with a final exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since “piacere” is one of the first verbs our students see as beginners in their textbooks, I’m going to write this in English. Please feel free to correct my errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This lesson though is not just for beginners, since verbs change according to structures of a higher complexity. We’ll see some examples in a minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the sake of simplicity, I will take “piacere” as an example and you can apply the same rules to other verbs on the list later on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m sure you read a sentence like that when you started to learn Italian. Obviously, you just translated it into your head and put this “mi piace, mi piacciono” somewhere, following your rules, as we all do when we learn a foreign language. Let’s have a second look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is the subject here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beer and books are subjects of respectively piace and piacciono, not “io”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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What we like or dislike is the subject and the person who likes or dislikes is an indirect object<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n (mi, ti, gli\/le, ci, vi, gli\/a loro).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Often times in class, the use of “piacere” is limited to single pronouns, with little attention to plural indirect objects, because we tend to talk about ourselves or about other individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A sentence like “We like you (plural).” translates into:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Capito? <\/p>\n\n\n\n If we break down the pronoun and “stretch” the sentence to a more articulate version, we can reveal the subject and the object:<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, there’s a way to turn the sentence and make it look like a normal, linear phrase, but we (almost) never say it in real life. “Ci piacete” is easier than “(voi) Piacete a noi”, which becomes, by the way, a rather different sentence if we use a stressed pronoun (we like you, and no one else).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes we really need to clarify who likes what or who, so instead of using a pronoun, we can say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can try all different matches of subjects and objects. Of course, native Italian speakers use this model of sentence without realising how complex this sounds to your ears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before proceeding further and see other verbs behave like piacere<\/em>, it’s important to point out that this set of rules has nothing to do with reflexive verbs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I always hear \u00a0sentences like “Lui si piace”, which doesn’t mean “he likes”, but rather “he likes himself”. Funny, common, and incorrect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s try with a compound tense, for example the passato prossimo. We have a safe rule in this case. The auxiliary verb is always essere<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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