Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to form the passato prossimo (compound past tense) for verbs that take “avere” as their auxiliary.

Lesson Explanation

Unlike Spanish, which has a simple one-word preterite for completed past actions, Italian’s most common everyday past tense is a compound tense: avere (Part 1, Lesson 5) or essere (next lesson) in the present, plus the past participle of the main verb.

Regular past participles: -are verbs end in -ato, -ere verbs end in -uto, -ire verbs end in -ito:

parlare → parlato credere → creduto dormire → dormito

Most verbs use avere as the auxiliary, and — genuinely important — the past participle does NOT change to agree with the subject when avere is used:

Ho parlato. — I have spoken. / I spoke.
Hai mangiato? — Have you eaten? / Did you eat?
Abbiamo dormito bene. — We slept well.

A genuinely important set of irregular past participles must be memorized: fare → fatto (done/made), dire → detto (said), scrivere → scritto (written), leggere → letto (read), vedere → visto (seen), prendere → preso (taken).

Object pronouns from Part 3, Lessons 1-2 go before the entire avere + participle unit: L’ho fatto. (I did it.)

Practice Questions