Italian Gone Sexy (IGS)

Lezione 28-Past tense

AH... Buongiooooooorno!

Come ci sentiamo oggi?

I just asked you: 'How are we feeling today?'

Oggi si studia il participio passato, ovvero 'past participle' in inglese.

(Si studia: We are going to be studying; Ovvero: 'Which is'-synonym of 'cioè')

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Ok so in the last lesson I taught you how to say that you went somewhere, nowhere, to do what etc. Therefore ho accennato the topic on past tense (Can you guess what those two words mean based on the context of the sentence? It means 'I touched on'. Well done if you got it right or were close!)

Accennare: to touch on (a topic, question)

io accenno noi accenniamo

tu accenni voi accennate

egli accenna loro acCENnano

How do I say I did something? Like, 'I ate', 'I did', 'I had', 'I read'?

This is one of my favourite lessons (and spero che it will be for you too!)

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Take the verb mangiare-to eat.

If I want to say that 'I ate' recently (today, yesterday, even last week), take off -re, leaving you with:

mangia-

next, add 'to':

mangiato. This corresponds to the English past participle form of 'eat': eaten.

So it isn't finished yet! You'll need an auxiliary verb, vero? (right?)

Sì, conjugate avere beforehand:

ho/hai/ha/abbiamo/avete/hanno mangiato

(I/you/he/we/you/they have eaten/ate).

Example:

Oggi ho mangiato la pizza. Today I ate/had pizza.

Ieri Andrea ha mangiato il mais. Yesterday Andrea ate sweetcorn. (Mais=sweetcorn)

Non avete mangiato niente! You (pl.) haven't had anything! (to eat)

How about asking someone what they ate? Use 'Cosa' (what/thing):

Cosa hai mangiato oggi? What did you eat today?

Cosa hanno mangiato per pranzo? What did they eat for lunch?

Non lo so! I don't know!

(HINT: In casual Italian-written and spoken-you will often find the expression 'Cos'hai...? or Cos'ha..., Cos'hanno...? to speed things up a little. It's not rude, just not ultra polite).

The same rule applies for basically every other verb. The regular ones, at least:

Fare-fatto. (Cosa hai fatto oggi? What did you do today?)

Amare-amato. (Chi ha amato? Whom did he/she love? Ha amato te. She loved you. ME? MA COME? Me? But how?)

Lanciare-lanciato (to throw-threw/thrown). (Cosa hanno lanciato? What did they throw?)