What does Conjugation mean?
Conjugation is the way the end of a verb changes depending on who is doing the action and when that action takes place.
Look at the verb To Live in English.
To live is an infinitive which means it has not been conjugated or changed in any way. It is in its original form.
In the present tense the English verb To live has two forms:
- live – (I live, you live, we live, they live) and
- lives – (he lives, she lives, it lives)
This change from the infinitive To Live to either live or lives is called conjugation. Notice how we add an -S to the end of the verb when the person, animal or thing doing the action is he, she or it.
We cannot say ‘he live‘ (without the final S) because it is not conjugated correctly. We must say ‘he lives‘.
Verb Conjugation in Italian
In Italian, the same thing happens. Verbs are also conjugated (or are changed) depending on who is doing the action.
HOWEVER we don’t just add an S like in English. There are actually SIX different endings for each verb depending on who is doing the action (and the tense it happens).
Let’s look at the regular Italian verb Parlare (to speak) in the present tense.
- io parlo
- tu parli
- lui/lei/ parla
- noi parliamo
- voi parlate
- loro parlano
You will notice that the last part of the infinitive -are (Parlare) is removed and replaced with one of six different endings for this verb: -o, -i, -a, -iamo, -ate and -ano.
The verb ending depends on who is doing the action. If it is noi (we) doing the action, then the verb ends in -iamo (= parliamo).
Good News
The good news is that you don’t need to use the subject pronoun (io, tu, lei etc.) in Italian. Why?
Because the ending of the verb lets us know who is doing the action.
If I say parliamo italiano, we know that because of the ending (-iamo) that WE are doing the action (we speak Italian).
I don’t need to say noi parliamo italiano. The noi is redundant.
But wait! There’s more…
There are three types of infinitives in Italian.
- Verbs that end in -are (like parlare – to speak)
- Verbs that end in -ere (like credere – to believe)
- Verbs that end in -ire (like dormire – to sleep)
They each have a slightly different ending for some of the pronouns though they are easy to recognize.
In Italian these three groups are called:
- -ARE: prima coniugazione (first conjugation)
- -ERE: seconda coniugazione (second conjugation)
- -IRE: terza coniugazione (third conjugation)
We will see more about this in the next lessons.