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matteo tironi.
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The verb to be in Italian.
Essere o non essere, questo è il dilemma
welcome to the first lesson about verbs here on Easy Peasy Italian. Now that we've left behind us the tricky pronouns, it is about time we gave a look to the verbs, which most likely are the core of any language.
And the core of the core is most likely the verb to be.
Essere is the Italian verb for to be, fair and square.
So why should I write an article about it? Because it is used slightly differently in Italian.
But let's start with the heavy grammar part, which fortunately is rather brief.
Essere, like to be, is a very irregular verb.
Io sono = I am
Tu sei= you (sing.) are
lui/lei è= he/she is
noi siamo= we are
voi siete= you (plur.) are
loro sono= they are
beware to the third person singular. It is NOT e. it is è, with the accent.you have to type ALT+0232 to write this character on a non-italian keyboard.
as for the other tenses, essere is very irregular and it would take ages to write donw all the conjugation, so I'll just give you the past participle (stato, which also means state).
As I said before, essere is used a bit differntly from to be, because the very common it is.... construction in English often cannot exist in Italian.
For instance, it's hot/ cold does not use essere, but Fare.
Fa caldo
it's hot (referred to the weather)
there certainly are more situations in which English goes for to be while Italian doesn't, but I'll explain them as we come across them.
For now, try at least remembering this one.
So, is it all? Nope. If you have read the pronoun3 article, which most likely you haven't read, you'll have read about the so-called pronominal verbs, that involve ci and ne adding extra info to the verb.
Well, essere is not ecception, and the pronominal verbs esserci is VERY important.
Because esserci means to be there.
C'è un gatto
There is a cat.
Ci sei?
Are you there?
Moreover, esserci has a “special version”, in which ne is added to the mix to make the monst.... verb essercene.
Essercene means, as you could guess if you have read the pronouns3 part, there is some of it.
WHAT? Let's say your mother has baked a cake (yeah, my mother alway does, if you were wondering), and your sister has already slurped it all (yep, this one is true too XD).
In English my mother would say something like this:
there's no more left.
In Italian, on the other hand, she would say
non ce n'è più.
As you can see, ci did that fancy vowel lifting too. You know, it saw the other pronouns doing it and he felt like quite the loner not having done it
ok, this is it. This article was rather brief and easy in comparison to the next one (about avere, to have), so enjoy the calm before the squall as long as you can
till next time, see ya
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essere, level1the most important verb in every language that has it, to be. |
