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matteo tironi.
User deleted
Hi guys, how have you been doing lately?
You know, today on the train I was thinking about the past, about how many things I could have done if it hadn't rained like in Amazon this summer, about how I could have studied German harder and about lots of other things..... you know, the past is always a mess.
And Italian is no exception
unlike English, Italian has three tenses to express the past, and unlike some other languages, most f the time they are not interchangeable.
Let's have a brief look at English first, and then let's face the daunting ways Italian has to express the past.
In English, there are basically two main verbs, the past simple and the present perfect.
Now, don't get me started by saying shit like “hey man the present is not a past,it is a present with a perfective aspect... blah blah blah.” It is a past. It is a past that still has influences on the present, which is used in a number of set phrases (like when counting times), and when we want to give the feeling that a certain action still has some sort of relevancy on the present.
Of course there are other structures like present perfect continuous and used to that are just meant to make foreigners give up on Eng...... to let us express to our fullest
Well, you gotta admit that most of the time the border between past simple and present perfect are a bit (euphemistically) blurry.
Well, in Italian this is not the case, as the "perfective" aspect.... well, we kind of don't have it I guess.
Each of the three verbs has a specific role, and even when exchanging the past simple and the past historical is possible, if you make a mistake it would sound very weird.
So, let's start with the imperfect, which is most likely the clearest of the three.
The imperfect kind of means used to, but it is broader. Used to in English is only used to express past habits (and not always past habits are expressed this way, one could do it with the past simple provided certain conditions), while imperfect is used for every verb that had a time frame in the past.
Hence something like
Last week I was in Milan
would be
settimana scorsa ero a Milano
because I had been there for a certain amount of time. It is not a momentary action.
Or even a sentence like this
when I was a kid I had a dog named Sally.
Quando ero piccolo avevo un cane di nome Sally.
State of being. The dog was there for a certain time frame.
This verb is the most used with verbs such as essere, avere, stare (to stay), indossare (to wear), studiare (to study)
So, are the other tenses not feasible with these verbs? Nope, but the meaning changes.
Settimana scorsa ero a Milano
means that I had been there for a while, maybe I've spent my whole week there, and most likely I have done something noteworthy there. Maybe I'm still there.
On the other hand
settimana scorsa sono stato a Milano
Definitely tells me that I'm not there any longer. Moreover, it implies that I have been there not for long, and it sounds like a tour of some sort. Heck, I could as well just have passed by car and I would “sono stato” there anyway.
On the other hand, sometimes only the imperfect is possible, for instance in the dog sentence.
Quando ero piccolo ho avuto un cane.
this doesn't mean anything. Really, nothing at all. of course we would understand what you meant, but it is wrong. Moreover, I would somehow suppose that your dog has died in a tragic way or something like that, because the avere's recent past often implies a sense of loss.
eg.
ho avuto fortuna
I was lucky (but now I may as well not be so any longer)
moreover, the imperfect covers the past continuous tense in English. I mean, this meaning can be covered by both the imperfect and the let's call it imperfect continuous (stare in the imperfect tense+gerund)
eg.
ballava
stava ballando
both mean he/she was dancing, but ballava has more meanings, so although they can both mean he was dancing, I would rather use the latter to make sure I'm conveying this precise meaning, because in English ballava can either be she used to dance, she danced and she was dancing, depending on the context.
Let's make a few more examples before leaving the "easy" one behind us
mentre lei cantava, lui ballava
while she was dancing, he was dancing.
Ti piaceva andare al parco.
You used to like going to the park
cosa stavi facendo?
What were you doing?
Mentre stavo cantando/cantavo lei non mi ascoltava/non mi stava ascoltando (weird)
while I was singing, she didn't pay attention.
Nel 1992 stavo ancora sulla luna.
In 1992 I still was on the moon (an Italian way to say that I hadn't been born yet back then, yeah, it is somewhat poetic, isn't it?)
So let's recap this part
the imperfect tense covers
1)habits in the past (used to is 100% imperfect, and whenever used to is even barely possible, that's imperfect for sure)
2) things that have been going on for a certain time frame.
3) the past continuous, either using the imperfect or the “imperfect continuous” which is preferred.
4) state of being with verbs like to be, to have and similar
5)(just like the past continuous) things that happen during, before or after other things. (here the imperfect continuous is either impossible or weird though, especially in the main clause)
basically, whenever something has been going on for more than a short time frame.
let's move on to the recent past.
This one is quite clear too, but the border between it and the historical past can be a bit blurry, and often its usage really depends on the speaker rather than on what he's trying to convey.
Many say that the difference is simply that the recent past is the spoken past, while the historical past is the written one. Well, this could work 70% of the times but we do use historical past in certain spoken contexts and conversely the recent past in some written contexts.
Anyway, as a general rule, the recent past is used to talk about recent actions. Easy
of course the action CAN'T be the sort of action that is expressed by the imperfect tense (remember, imperfect and the other two never (or almost never) overlap).
So, if I talk about what I ate yesterday, that's definitely recent past, because yesterday is close to now.
Some may wonder how far in time has a certain action to be to be expressed with the historical past rather than the recent one.
Well, as I said, the boundary is rather blurry, but I'd esteem about 10 years.
So translating
I met my wife twenty years ago
as
ho incontrato (rather than incontrai) mia moglie 20 anni fa
sounds wrongish to me. Maybe feasible, but definitely I wouldn't say that.
Moreover, there is another factor to be taken into account, in cases like the previous example: the speaker's relation with the fact. If I am talking about how I met my wife, well, then the recent past, although weird and clunky, is somewhat correct.
But if I am talking about how George Clooney met his first girlfriend twenty years ago, well, then that's definitely historical past, without any further thought.
eg.
George Clooney met his first girlfriend twenty years ago
George Clooney ha incontrato la sua prima ragazza vent'anni fa WRONG, very WRONG
because neither me nor you are George Clooney, and most likely we don't even know him.
So we have to take into account both the time distance and the distance to the speaker, (when talking about something that happened more than 10 years ago)
lastly, the historical past.
Well, as you've already understood it refers to facts far from the speaker (both time and space wise).
Ah, while the recent past can replace the historical past when talking about something that happened more than 10 years ago but that is closely related to the speaker, the opposite never occurs, at least in spoken language.
You'll NEVER hear someone saying stuff like
ieri George Clooney si sposò.
Yesterday George Clooney got married.
Never. It sounds soooo weird, more than misusing the recent past as I did in a previous example.
Ok, this is it. In the end it is quite simple, isn't it?
Everything basically boils down to a couple of simple concepts.
1) if the action somewhat prolonged in time, no matter how, then it is imperfect
2)if the action is recent in time and close to the speaker, then it is recent past
3) if the action is far in both time and space from the speaker, then it is historical past.
Ok, today I didn't feel like making silly jokes, so the article turned out a bit shorter than I imagined, and fortunately now is past.... ahahah, come on, let's pretend that was fun..... ok I'll leave now
as always, feel free to pm or post a comment in case you need further elucidations
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imperfect vs recent past vs historical past. level3a clash of titans, the nightmarish Italian past tenses. |
