Italian Grammar

The grammar in Italian varies from English grammar significantly in two arenas, noun/adjective agreement and verb conjugation. The sentence structures are fairly similar and the tenses that exist are not exactly the same, but extremely close.

The noun/adjective agreement has two factors that differ from English, primarily the fact that all nouns have gender. Secondly the adjective must agree with the noun in gender (also in singular vs. plural) so where in English you would have “the red car” or “the red cars” in Italian you have either “la macchina rossa” or “le macchine rosse” with the article, the noun and the adjective all changing their ending to indicate the plural. This greatly expands the number of articles beyond the a, an and the of English. While a great deal of the masculine/feminine nouns are instinctive, a girl is a feminine noun and a boy is a masculine noun most simply must be memorized. Luckily, virtually all feminine nouns end in -a and virtually all masculine nouns end in -o but there are, of course, exceptions. Another thing you most like noticed is the word order, many times the adjective follows the noun in Italian, but it also can precede the noun, this, unfortunately is also just a matter of practice rather than there being a simple rule.

Verb conjugation is quite different in Italian. While the essential first, second and third person in both singular and plural are set-up the same as in English the manner in which the verbs are conjugated is quite different. You have three different groupings of verbs, the largest group being the first conjugation ending in -are, followed by second conjugation ending in -ere, and third conjugation ending in -ire. One immense difference is in the use of pronouns to designate person:

While conjugating verbs in English it is necessary to always use the pronoun, in Italian the endings of the verbs indicate the person and are generally only used when there is ambiguity or one wants to make an emphasis. The endings for present tense verb conjugation are as follows:

First conjugation: inviare - to send

Second conjugation: leggere - to read

Third conjugation: sentire - to hear

There are of course many irregular verbs, but not nearly so many as in English if that is any consolation. And as one can see there is not a great amount of difference between the endings for the different conjugations and luckily this aspect is consistent through all the tenses.

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