Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to conjugate regular verbs in the imperfetto and understand its core use for ongoing or habitual past actions.

Lesson Explanation

Like Spanish’s imperfect, the Italian imperfetto describes ongoing, habitual, or background past actions — genuinely closer to English “used to” or “was …ing” — in contrast to the completed-action passato prossimo (previous two lessons).

All three verb groups share one set of endings, attached to the infinitive stem:

-are (parlare): parlavo, parlavi, parlava, parlavamo, parlavate, parlavano
-ere (credere): credevo, credevi, credeva, credevamo, credevate, credevano
-ire (dormire): dormivo, dormivi, dormiva, dormivamo, dormivate, dormivano

A genuinely rare and useful fact, similar to Spanish: the imperfetto has very few irregular verbs. The most important is essere:

ero, eri, era, eravamo, eravate, erano

Also mildly irregular: fare (building on its Latin root facere): facevo, facevi, faceva, facevamo, facevate, facevano.

Examples: Quando ero bambino, giocavo nel parco ogni giorno. (When I was a child, I used to play in the park every day.) — note both verbs are imperfetto, describing an ongoing state and a habitual action, structurally identical to the Spanish example from an earlier-built Gabal course.

Practice Questions