Italian Verbs Conjugations plus some Irregular Infinitives

In this post we will discuss about the Italian Verbs Conjugations and about some Italian Irregular Infinitives with special regard to the Latin origin and the English equivalent verb.

Here below a descriptive video.

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Italian Verbs Conjugations

All the Italian Verbs are divided in three classes. Each of this class is defined by the Infinitive termination: the First Class ends in ARE, the Second Class ends in ERE, the Third Class ends in IRE.
Here following you have a list of some of the most common Italian Verbs for these three classes.

ARE	ERE	IRE
ANDARE to go	CREDERE to believe	DORMIRE to sleep
AMARE to love	DOVERE to have to	SENTIRE to feel
SOGNARE to dream	SAPERE to know	MORIRE to die
SPERARE to hope	VOLERE to want	VENIRE to come
CANTARE to sing	POTERE can	FINIRE to finish

Each Class difines and provides the rules for the regular Italian Verbs. Instead if the verbs does not follow all the endings provided by its class or changes its root, it is an Irregular Verbs.

You have here an example of the REGULAR PRESENT (1st Conjugation) and of one IRREGULAR PRESENT (1st Conjugation)

	SPERARE (Regular, TO HOPE)	ANDARE (Irregular, TO GO)
IO	SPER – O	VADO
TU	SPER – I	VAI
LUI / LEI	SAPER – A	VA
NOI	SPER – IAMO	ANDIAMO
VOI	SPER – ATE	ANDATE
LORO	SPER – ANO	VANNO

You can see that in order to conjugate SPERARE, that is a regular verb, you must drop the infinitive ending ARE, and then to attach the 1st class regular engings: – O, – I, – A, – IAMO, – ATE, – ANO.

By the other side the irregular Verb ANDARE not only changes its root but also changes the regular terminations for the first conjugation (for example VANNO).

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Italian Irregular Infinitives

Finally we can speak about some interesting irregular infinitives. They are irregular from the Second Class (ERE), you can understand why looking at the Latin origin of these verbs: these Latin infinitives are all ending in ERE.

There are three possible endings for these Italian Irregular Infinitives: ORRE, URRE, ARRE. You will see that there is often an interesting simmetry between the Italian Infinitives and the equivalent in English regarding:

the root of the verb
the Englih terminations.

See below for more details:

ITALIAN	LATIN	ENGLISH
DED-URRE	DEDUC-ERE	TO DED-UCE
IND-URRE	INDUC-ERE	TO IND-UCE
PROD-URRE	PRODUC-ERE	TO PROD-UCE
RID-URRE	REDUC-ERE	TO RED-UCE
COMP-ORRE	COMPON-ERE	TO COMP-OSE
DEP-ORRE	DEPON-ERE	TO DEP-OSE
DISP-ORRE	DISPON-ERE	TO DISP-OSE
ESP-ORRE	ESPON-ERE	TO EXP-OSE
PROP-ORRE	PROPON-ERE	TO PROP-OSE
ESTR-ARRE	EX-TRAH-ERE	TO EX – TRACT
ATR-ARRE	AB-TRAH-ERE	TO ABS – TRACT
DISTR-ARRE	DIS-TRAH-ERE	TO DIS – TRACT
CONTR-ARRE	CON-TRAH-ERE	TO CON – TRACT