taught many people over the years, ranging from those who know no Italian at all, through to those who may have studied Italian for several years at school. Yet whether they have studied the language before or not, almost none of them tend to be able to construct a basic sentence like this when I first meet them.
Admittedly, they might know how to say other far less useful things, like: “I’m 37 years old and have two sisters and a goldfish” – an unusual conversation opener from my perspective – but they can’t say what they did at the weekend.
Well, in just a few minutes’ time, you will be able to do this – even if you’ve never learnt any Italian before.
Just remember though: don’t skip anything, don’t waste your time trying to memorise anything but do use your bookmark to cover up anything green you find on each page.
Okay now, let’s begin!
“I have” in Italian is:
Ho
(pronounced “o”1)
And the word for “visited” in Italian is:
visitato
With this in mind, how would you say “I have visited”?
| Ho visitato(o visit-art-oh) |
|
Did you remember to cover up the green words while you worked out the answer? |
“Naples” in Italian is:
Napoli
(nap-oh-lee)
So, with this in mind, how would you say “I have visited Naples”?
Ho visitato Napoli.
(o visit-art-oh nap-oh-lee)
The word for “Rome” in Italian is:
Roma
(roam-er)
So how would you say “I have visited Rome”?
Ho visitato Roma.
(o visit-art-oh roam-er)
Now, if I were to ask you how you would say simply “I visited Rome” rather than “I have visited Rome” you might not think you knew how to say that yet. However, you will be glad to hear that I would disagree with you because, in Italian, talking about what has happened in the past is far easier than it is in English. This is because “I visited Rome” and “I have visited Rome” are said in exactly the same way in Italian. I’ll show you what I mean.
Again, how would you say “I have visited Rome”?
Ho visitato Roma.
(o visit-art-oh roam-er)
I want you to now try to say “I visited Rome” bearing in mind that what you’re going to say is exactly the same as what you just said for “I have visited Rome”. So, “I visited Rome” will be:
Ho visitato Roma.
(o visit-art-oh roam-er)
As you can see, it is exactly the same. Italians do not make a distinction between the two. Effectively, you have got two English past tenses for the price of one. And actually it is even better than that.
You can now already correctly say “I have visited Rome” and “I visited Rome” because they are exactly the same in Italian. With this in mind, do you think you can make a lucky guess about how you might say “I did visit Rome”? Just take a wild guess!
Ho visitato Roma.
(o visit-art-oh roam-er)
Once again, it is exactly the same in Italian. “I have visited Rome”, “I visited Rome” and “I did visit Rome” are all said in precisely the same way. In fact this is one of the many wonderful things about Italian: you get three English tenses for the price of one Italian one! “I have visited Rome”, “I visited Rome” and “I did visit Rome” are all simply:
Ho visitato Roma.
(o visit-art-oh roam-er)
Let’s try this 3 For the Price of 1 Special Offer again now but this time with a different example.
To say “I have spent” in Italian, you will literally say “I have passed”, which in Italian is:
Ho passato
(o pass-art-oh)
“The weekend” in Italian is:
il weekend
(eel weekend)
So how would you say “I have spent the weekend” (literally “I have passed the weekend”)?
Ho passato il weekend
(o pass-art-oh eel weekend)
And how would you say simply “I spent the weekend” / “I passed the weekend”?
Ho passato il weekend
(o pass-art-oh eel weekend)
Just as “I visited Rome” and “I have visited Rome” are no different from one another in Italian, so “I spent the weekend” and “I have spent the weekend” are also no different from one another.
How do you think you would you say “I did spend the weekend”?
Ho passato il weekend
(o pass-art-oh eel weekend)
Again, you have three English past tenses for the price of one in Italian.
“I spent the weekend”, “I have spent the weekend”, “I did spend the weekend” – it’s all the same in Italian: “Ho passato il weekend”.
