Italian grammar

Italian grammar is the body of rules describing the properties of the Italian language. Italian words can be divided into the following lexical categories: articles, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.

Articles

Italian articles vary according to definiteness, number, gender, and the initial sound of the subsequent word. Partitive articles compound the preposition ' with the corresponding definite article, to express uncertain quantity. In the plural, they typically translate into English as "few"; in the singular, typically as "some".
Gender Number Article Usage
Masculine Singular ' Standard masculine singular definite article, used in all cases other than those detailed below.
Foreign words beginning with, pronounced or, take il and not lo: il West , il whisky, il Watt, etc.
Masculine Singular ' Used before words with certain initial sounds:
before pronounced as,, or followed by another consonant
before self-geminating consonants:, pronounced as or ; ; ; pronounced as
before complex consonant clusters, pronounced as or ; as or ; as or, as or, etc., mostly foreign words
before or pronounced as semivowel,
Masculine Singular ' Used before words that begin with a vowel or .
Masculine Plural ' Standard masculine plural definite article, used for plurals that take il in the singular: i cani.
Masculine Plural ' Corresponds to lo and l' in the singular, i.e. before the consonants listed above for lo and before vowels: gli zii, gli amici.Il has the irregular plural gli .
Feminine Singular ' Standard form of the feminine singular definite article, used before consonants and before when pronounced as semivowel, e.g. la .
Feminine Singular ' As with l', used before any word that begins with a vowel, not including when pronounced as the semivowel.
Feminine Plural ' Standard form of the feminine plural definite article, never elided.

Gender Article Usage
Masculine ' Standard masculine singular indefinite article, used before vowels and simple consonants.
Masculine ' Used instead of un before "impure s", self-geminating consonants, and complex consonant clusters, following the same rules as lo vs. il above, for example: uno .
Feminine ' Standard feminine singular indefinite article.
Feminine ' Used before any word that starts with a vowel, not including when used as semivowel.

Gender Number Article Contraction of
Masculine Singular ' di + il
Masculine Singular ' di + l
Masculine Singular ' di + lo
Masculine Plural ' di + i
Masculine Plural ' di + gli
Feminine Singular ' di + la
Feminine Singular ' di + l
Feminine Plural di + le
Inflection of nouns and adjectives
Nouns have gender and inflect in number. When a noun refers to people or animals with natural gender, grammatical gender typically corresponds. For all other nouns the gender is essentially arbitrary. As in most other Romance languages, the historical neuter has merged with the masculine. A subgroup of these deriving from Latin's second declension are considered feminine in the plural. Subclauses and infinitives are masculine.
Adjectives inflect for gender and number in patterns broadly simular to nouns.
In the last two examples, only the article carries information about gender and number.
Most masculine words that end in -io pronounced as drop the -o and thus end in -i in the plural: vecchio / vecchi, funzionario / funzionari, esempio / esempi, etc.
The Italian hard and soft C and G phenomenon leads to certain spelling / pronunciation peculiarities:
Words in -cio and -gio form plurals in -ci and -gi, e.g. bacio / baci
Words in -cia and -gia have been a point of contention; according to a commonly employed rule, they:
* form plurals in -cie and -gie if the final letter before the suffix is a vowel: camicia, camicie ; ciliegia, ciliegie.
* form plurals in -ce and -ge if the final letter before the suffix is a consonant: frangia, frange ; faccia, facce.
* when the i is stressed, it always remains in plural: farmacia / farmacie, nevralgia / nevralgie.
Words in -co and -go behave quite irregularly: "the grammarians are skeptical of any attempt at giving a ruling about this area". There are only partial, empirical rules of thumb:
* plurals are formed with -chi and -ghi if the last letter before the suffix is a consonant or a stressed vowel: fungo / funghi, stecco / stecchi, mago / maghi, fuoco / fuochi
* plurals are formed with -ci and -gi if the last letter before the suffix is an unstressed vowel: comico / comici, medico / medici
* in words ending with -logo suffix, the plural is usually in -gi when -logo means "expert" or "student", corresponding to English -logist, while it is in -ghi when it means "speech" or "reasoning", corresponding often to English -logue/-log.
* there are exceptions such as amico / amici, greco / greci, valico / valichi, carico / carichi.
Nouns
Most nouns are derived from Latin. Many of these are themselves borrowed from Greek :
Latin declension Masculine Feminine
1st poeta / poeti "poet" rosa / rose "rose"
2nd carro / carri "truck"
vezzo / vezzi "habit"
3rd cane / cani "dog" parete / pareti "wall"
3rd cittade / cittadi "town "
4th passo / passi "step" mano / mani "hand"
5th fede / fedi "faith"

Any other noun, both those from Latin with an unusual ending and those derived from languages other than Latin or Greek, are usually not Latinized, and nouns ending with a stressed vowel are not inflected; thus:
il re / i re
il caffè / i caffè
il film / i film
There are certain words that are masculine in the singular and feminine or masculine in the plural:
il braccio / le braccia or i bracci
l'uovo / le uova
il ginocchio / le ginocchia or i ginocchi
il sopracciglio / le sopracciglia or i sopraccigli
These nouns' endings derive regularly from the Latin neuter endings of the second declension, but there are some from the third declension as well: e.g. il gregge / le greggi ; the tradition of calling them "irregular" or "mobile gender" would come from the paradigm that there are so few nouns of this kind that the existence of neuter can be considered vestigial. The choice of plural is sometimes left to the user, while in some cases there are differences of meaning:
Sometimes, for body parts, the feminine/neuter plural denotes the literal meaning while the masculine one denotes a figurative meaning: il braccio / le braccia / i bracci ; il corno / le corna / i corni
Sometimes, especially in poetic and old-fashioned Italian, the masculine plural acts as a count noun, while the neuter/feminine plural acts as a mass noun: il cervello / due cervelli / le cervella ; l'anello / due anelli / le anella ; furthermore, il dito / le dita and also due dita / but i diti indici
Irregular plurals
There are a few genuine irregular plurals in Italian. Most of these were introduced in Vulgar Latin, but some derive from irregular Latin plurals. Examples include:
uomo / uomini
il dio / gli dei
bue / buoi
tempio / templi
Alteration
In Italian, altered nouns are nouns with particular shades of meaning. They are divided into diminutives, "vezzeggiativi", augmentatives and pejoratives.
Many other alterations can be built, sometimes with more than one suffix: for example, libro can become libretto, libricino, libercolo, libraccio, libraccione.
Uomo, coming from Latin homo, becomes om- in altered forms: omino/ometto, omone, omaccio, omaccione.
Adjectives
In Italian, an adjective can be placed before or after the noun. The unmarked placement for most adjectives is after the noun, but this is reversed for a few common classes of adjective — those denoting beauty, age, goodness, and size are placed before the noun in the unmarked case, and after the noun for emphasis.
Placing the adjective after the noun can alter its meaning or indicate restrictiveness of reference. If a noun has many adjectives, usually no more than one will be before the noun.
un libro rosso = a red book
un rosso libro = a book that is red
un buon uomo = a good man
un uomo buono = a man who is good
Adjectives are inflected for gender and number:
Gender Grammatical number Case 1 Case 2
Masculine Singular -o -e
Masculine Plural -i -i
Feminine Singular -a -e
Feminine Plural -e -i
Degrees of comparison
Italian has three degrees of comparison: comparative, relative superlative and absolute superlative.
The comparative and relative superlative are formed with più ; for instance:
sono più alto di te
sono il più alto fra gli uomini
Vice versa, inverting the order of the words, it's required to replace più with meno ; for instance:
sono il meno forte del campionato
tu sei meno alto di me
Another comparative form is made with the word come ; for instance:
sono alto come te
The absolute comparative is formed by placing troppo before the adjective; for instance:
sei troppo buono.
The absolute superlative, derived from the Latin synthetic superlative in -issimus, is formed by adding -issimo to an adjective: intelligente, intelligentissimo ; sporco sporchissimo. If the two letters before the last vowel are pr or br, the r is removed and -errimo is the suffix used .
Another way to form the absolute superlative is to place either molto or assai before the adjective. For instance sporchissimo and molto sporco are the same, although the form ending in issimo is usually perceived as more emphatic; that is, sporchissimo is dirtier than molto sporco.
Some adjectives have irregular comparatives, like
buono, migliore / più buono, migliore / ottimo / buonissimo
cattivo, peggiore / più cattivo, pessimo / cattivissimo
grande, maggiore / più grande, massimo / grandissimo
piccolo, minore / più piccolo, minimo / piccolissimo
Possessive adjectives
With the exception of 3rd person plural loro 'their', possessive adjectives, like articles, must agree with the gender and number of the noun they modify. Hence, mio zio, but mia zia. So depending on what is being modified, the possessive adjectives are:
In most cases the possessive adjective is used with an article, usually the definite article:
And sometimes with the indefinite article:
The only exception is when the possessive refers to an individual family member :
Mamma and papà, however, are usually used with the article.
For emphasis, however, possessive adjectives are sometimes placed after the noun. This is usually after words like 'colpa' ; 'casa' ; 'merito' ; 'piacere' ; or in vocative expressions.
If the antecedent of a third person possessive is the subject of the sentence, proprio can be used instead of suo, though the usage of proprio is declining in spoken language:
The first sentence is unambiguous and states that Marco took his own point of view, whereas the second sentence is ambiguous because it may mean that Marco took either his own or Maria's point of view.
Demonstrative adjectives
Italian originally had three degrees of demonstrative adjectives: questo, quello, and codesto. The usage has undergone a simplification, including the meaning of codesto in quello, and only Tuscan speakers still use codesto. Its use is very rare in modern language, and the word has acquired a rather pejorative connotation.
Pronouns
Italian features a sizeable set of pronouns. Personal pronouns are inflected for person, number, case, and, in the third person, gender. Literary subject pronouns also have a distinction between animate and inanimate antecedents, although this is lost in colloquial usage, where lui, lei and loro are the most used forms for animate subjects, while no specific pronoun is employed for inanimate subjects. There is also the uninflected pronoun ciò, which is only used with abstract antecedents.
Personal pronouns are normally omitted in the subject, as the conjugation is usually enough to determine the grammatical person. They are used when some emphasis is needed, e.g. sono italiano vs. io sono italiano.
The words ci, vi and ne act both as personal pronouns and clitic pro-forms for "there" and "from there".
Notes:
Clitic pronouns
Though objects come after the verb as a rule, this is often not the case with a class of unstressed clitic pro-forms.
Clitic pronouns are replaced with the stressed form for emphatic reasons. A somewhat similar situation is represented by the dative shift in English ditransitive verbs. Compare, for example, "John gave a book to her" with "John gave her a book". In Italian these two different emphases map respectively to "John diede un libro a lei" and "John le diede un libro". Compared to English, Italian presents a richer set of cases.
Clitic pronouns generally come before the verb, but in certain types of constructions, such as lo devo fare, they can also appear as enclitics – in this case, devo farlo. In the infinitive, gerund and, except with third-person courtesy forms, imperative moods clitic pronouns must always be compound to the suffix as enclitics.
Italian English
Genitive Non vedo Francesca, ma ne vedo la bicicletta. I don't see Francesca, but I see her bike.
Dative Gli parlai per un'ora intera. I spoke to him for a whole hour.
Accusative La vedo. I see her.
Instrumental Sì! Lo conosco! Una volta ci giocai a pallacanestro! Yes! I know him! Long ago I played basketball with him!

Other examples:
Finally, in the imperative mood, the objective pronouns come once again after the verb, but this time as a suffix:
Stressed forms of all four non-subject cases are used when emphasized, dallo a lei, lo farò con lui.
In colloquial speech, form I. of the dative is often associated with the emphasized form of the dative in such a way: a me mi danno un libro, a loro gli hanno venduto una casa. Though widely used, this redundant usage is considered non-standard.
Combinations of clitics
In Italian it is possible to append more than one clitic to a single verb. In normal usage, two is the usual limit, although clusters of three can occasionally arise for some speakers, especially with impersonal constructs. Any two cases can be used together, except for accusative + genitive, and word order is strictly determined according to one of the following two patterns:
When one clitic is third-person non-reflexive accusative or genitive, form II. of the other clitic is used. Thus:
1 2 3
me, te, glie-, se, ce, ve lo, la, li, le ne si

For example:
Ve lo dico già da ora: io non verrò! = "I already told you : I'm not coming!"
Ce li ha già dati = "He/she/you already gave them to us"
Ecco l'uomo di cui mi innamorai! Te ne ho portato la foto! = "Here's the man I fell in love with! I brought the picture !"
Vedresti Carla con una gonna lunga e un cappello? - Sì, ce la vedrei = "Could you imagine Carla with a long skirt and a hat? - Yes, I could imagine her with that"
Riuscirai a trasportare abbastanza mele con quel piccolo furgoncino? - Uomo di poca fede! Ce ne trasporterò quintali! = "Will you be able to transport enough apples with such a small van? - Man of little faith! I'll transport quintals of them !"
Otherwise, form I. is used for both clitics:
1 2 3 4 5 6
mi gli, le vi ti ci si

Thus:
Mi ti mostro senza veli = "I'm showing myself without veils to you"
Ti si fece incontro = "He/she approached you "
li ti darò nelle mani, perché in pezzi ti faccia come tu meriti = "I will deliver you to him, so that he will tear you to pieces as you deserve"
Marco ha vinto! Che farà con tutti quei soldi? - Ci si pagherà l'Università = "Marco won! What's he going to do with all that money? - He'll pay for college "
Metti via quella pistola! Ti ci ammazzi! = "Put away that pistol! You'll use it to kill yourself !"
Alliterated forms
Clitic forms before of a verbal form beginning by vowel can be alliterated, alliterations are more common before verbal forms "è", "ho", "hai", "ha", "hanno", "abbia", and "abbiano" of verbs "essere" and "avere", then while they are before verbal forms of other verbs, which are more rare, also allitarations of "che" are rare, while alliteration of "cui" is avoided due to phonetic ambiguities with words such as "qua".
Alliteration is not mandatory.
Ci is graphically alliterated only in front of "e" and "i", but the "i" is graphically kept in front of other vowels, although in all cases it is pronounced /t͡ʃ/ ; similarly gli is graphically alliterated only in front of "i" but not in front of other vowels, although in all cases the "i" is never pronounced. The alliterated form of che is always pronounced /k/, also when otherwise common phonetic rules switch their pronunciations.
clitic form è ho hai ha abbiamo avete hanno
mi m'è m'ho m'hai m'ha — m'avete m'hanno
ci c'è ci ho ci hai ci ha ci abbiamo ci avete ci hanno
ti t'è t'ho t'hai t'ha t'abbiamo — t'hanno
vi v'è v'ho v'hai v'ha v'abbiamo v'avete v'hanno
la/le/li/lo l'è l'ho l'hai l'ha l'abbiamo l'avete l'hanno
gli gli è gli ho gli hai gli ha gli abbiamo gli avete gli hanno
gliela/gliele/glieli/glielo gliel'è gliel'ho gliel'hai gliel'ha gliel'abbiamo gliel'avete gliel'hanno
si s'è — — s'ha — — s'hanno
che ch'è ch'ho ch'hai ch'ha ch'abbiamo ch'avete ch'hanno
T–V distinction
Italian makes use of the T–V distinction in second-person address. The second-person nominative pronoun is tu for informal use, and for formal use, the third-person form Lei has been used since the Renaissance. It is used like "Sie" in German, "usted" in Spanish, and "vous" in French. Lei was originally an object form of ella, which in turn referred to an honorific of the feminine gender such as la magnificenza tua/vostra or Vossignoria, and by analogy, Loro came to be used as the formal plural. Previously, and in some Italian regions today, voi was used as the formal singular, like French "vous". The pronouns lei, Lei, loro, and Loro are pronounced the same but written as shown, and formal Lei and Loro take third-person conjugations. Formal Lei is invariable for gender, but adjectives that modify it are not: one would say to a man La conosco but Lei è alto. Formal Loro is variable for gender: Li conosco vs. Le conosco, etc. The formal plural is very rarely used in modern Italian; the unmarked form is widely used instead. For example: Gino, Lei è un bravo ingegnere. Marco, Lei è un bravo architetto. Insieme, voi sarete una gran bella squadra.
Verbs
Italian infiniti presenti may end in one of these three endings, either -are, -ere, or -ire. Exceptions are also possible: fare "to do/make" ; and verbs ending in -urre or -arre, most notably tradurre "to translate". Italian grammar does not have distinct forms to indicate specifically verbal aspect, though different verbal inflections and periphrases do render different aspects, in particular the perfective and imperfective aspects and the perfect tense–aspect combination. While the various inflected verbal forms convey a combination of tense, aspect, and mood, language-specific discussions generally refer to these inflectional forms as "tempi", for this reason it is impossible to make comparisons between the tenses of English verbs and the tempi of Italian verbs as there is no correspondence at all.
Tenses
Simple tenses
Compound tenses
Impersonal forms
s other than the imperfective and aorist and perfect are rendered in Italian through periphrastical forms that aren't recognized by canonical Italian grammar as proper tenses.
;Examples
Present tense, indicative mood, progressive aspect: io sto facendo
Present tense, indicative mood, prospective aspect: io sto per fare
;Notes
Compound tense auxiliary verbs
In Italian, compound tenses are formed with either auxiliary verb ' or '.
All transitive verbs use avere as their auxiliary verb. Verbs in the passive voice use ' or ', with different meanings:
La porta è stata aperta.
La porta viene aperta.
For intransitive verbs a reliable rule cannot be given, although a useful rule of thumb is that if a verb's past participle can take on adjectival value, essere is used, otherwise avere. Also, reflexive verbs and unaccusative verbs use essere or ' ).
The distinction between the two auxiliary verbs is important for the correct formation of the compound tenses and is essential to the agreement of the past participle. Some verbs use can both, though, like ' : Io ho vissuto can alternatively be expressed as, Io sono vissuto.
Past participle
The past participle is used in Italian as both an adjective and to form many of the compound tenses of the language. There are regular endings for the past participle, based on the conjugation class. There are, however, many irregular forms as not all verbs follow the pattern, particularly the -ere verbs. Some of the more common irregular past participles include: essere → stato ; fare → fatto; dire → detto; aprire → aperto; chiedere → chiesto; chiudere → chiuso; leggere → letto; mettere → messo; perdere → perso; prendere → preso; rispondere → risposto; scrivere → scritto; vedere → visto.
For the intransitive verbs taking essere, the past participle always agrees with the subject—that is, it follows the usual adjective agreement rules: egli è partito; ella è partita. This is also true for reflexive verbs, the impersonal si construction, and the passive voice, which also use essere.
The past participle when used with avere never changes to agree with the subject. It must agree with the object, though, in sentences where this is expressed by a third person clitic pronoun. When the object is expressed by a first or second person clitic pronoun instead, the agreement is optional: Maria! Ti ha chiamato / chiamata Giovanni? - No, non mi ha chiamato / chiamata.
In all the other cases where the object is not expressed by a clitic pronoun, the agreement with the object is obsolescent in modern Italian : La storia che avete raccontata / raccontato non mi convince ; or compare Manzoni's Lucia aveva avute due buone ragioni with the more modern Lucia aveva avuto due buone ragioni.
Tense relationship in subordinate sentences
Italian inherits consecutio temporum, a grammar rule from Latin that governs the relationship between the tenses in principal and subordinate clauses. Consecutio temporum has very rigid rules. These rules require the subjunctive tense in order to express contemporaneity, posteriority and anteriority in relation with the principal clause.
To express contemporaneity when the principal clause is in a simple tense the subordinate clause uses the present subjunctive, to express contemporaneity in the present.
* Penso che Davide sia intelligente. I think David is smart.
When the principal clause has a past imperfect or perfect, the subordinate clause uses the imperfect subjunctive, expressing contemporaneity in the past.
* Pensavo che Davide fosse intelligente. I thought David was smart.
To express anteriority when the principal clause is in a simple tense the subordinate clause uses the past subjunctive.
* Penso che Davide sia stato intelligente. I think David has been smart.
To express anteriority when the principal clause has a past imperfect or perfect, the subjunctive has to be pluperfect.
* Pensavo che Davide fosse stato intelligente. I thought David had been smart.
To express posteriority the subordinate clause uses the future tense in the indicative mood, not the subjunctive, because the subjunctive has no future tense.
* Penso che Davide sarà intelligente. I think David will be smart.
To express posteriority with respect to a past event, the subordinate clause uses the past conditional, whereas in other European languages the present conditional is used.
* Pensavo che Davide sarebbe stato intelligente. I thought that David would have been smart.
Regular conjugation
The infinitive of first conjugation verbs ends in -are, that of second conjugation verbs in -ere, and that of third conjugation verbs in -ire. In the following examples for different moods, the first conjugation verb is parlare, the second conjugation verb is temere and the third conjugation verb is partire
Indicative mood
Some third conjugation verbs such as capire insert -isc- between the stem and the endings in the first, second, and third persons singular and third person plural of the present, e.g., capire -> capisco, capisci, capisce, capiamo, capite, capiscono. It is impossible to tell from the infinitive form which verbs exhibit this phenomenon, which often originated in Latin verbs denoting the "inchoative" aspect of an action, that is, verbs describing the beginning of an action. There are some 500 verbs like this, the first ones in alphabetic order being abbellire, abolire, agire, alleggerire, ammattire and so forth. In some grammatical systems, "isco" verbs are considered a fourth conjugation, often labelled 3b. There are also certain verbs that end in -rre, namely trarre, porre, durre and derived verbs with different prefixes. They are derived from earlier trahere, ponere, ducere and are conjugated as such.
Subjunctive mood
The Italian subjunctive mood is used to indicate cases of desire, express doubt, make impersonal emotional statements, and to talk about impeding events.
Third conjugation verbs like capire mentioned above insert -isc- in the first, second, and third persons singular and third person plural of the present.
Compound forms are made by adding the past participle to the corresponding auxiliary form in the present and imperfect.
Conditional mood
As the table shows, verbs each take their own root from their class of verb: -are becomes -er-, -ere becomes -er-, and -ire becomes -ir-, the same roots as used in the future indicative tense. All verbs add the same ending to this root.
Some verbs do not follow this pattern, but take irregular roots, these include:
Andare ~ Andr-, Avere ~ Avr-, Bere ~ Berr-,
Dare ~ Dar-, Dovere ~ Dovr-, Essere ~ Sar-,
Fare ~ Far-, Godere ~ Godr-, Potere ~ Potr-,
Rimanere ~ Rimarr-, Sapere ~ Sapr-, Sedere ~ Sedr-,
Stare ~ Star-, Tenere ~ Terr-, Vedere ~ Vedr-,
Venire ~ Verr-, Vivere ~ Vivr-, Volere ~ Vorr- etc.
The Italian conditional mood is a mood that refers to an action that is possible or likely, but is dependent upon a condition. Example:
It can be used in two tenses, the present, by conjugation of the appropriate noun, or the past, using the auxiliary conjugated in the conditional, with the past participle of the appropriate noun:
Many Italian speakers often use the imperfect instead of the conditional and subjunctive. Prescriptivists usually view this as incorrect, but it is frequent in colloquial speech and tolerated in all but high registers and in most writing:
The conditional can also be used in Italian to express "could", with the conjugated forms of potere, "should", with the conjugated forms of dovere, or "would like", with the conjugated forms of "volere" :
Imperative mood
1st Conj. 2nd Conj. 3rd Conj.
parla! temi! parti!
parli! tema! parta!
parliamo! temiamo! partiamo!
parlate! temete! partite!
parlino! temano! partano!

Verbs like capire insert -isc- in all except the noi and voi forms. Technically, the only real imperative forms are the second-person singular and plural, with the other persons being borrowed from the present subjunctive.
Non-finite forms
Infinitive: present: -are, -ere, -ire; past: avere/essere + past participle
Gerund: present: -ando, -endo, -endo; past: avendo/essendo + past participle
Participle: present: -ante -ente -ente; past: -ato, -uto "cotto" ), -ito
Irregular verbs
While the majority of Italian verbs are regular, many of the most commonly used ones are irregular. In particular, the auxiliary verbs essere and avere, and the common modal verbs potere, dovere, sapere and volere are all irregular. Many of the irregularities are accounted for by the substance of Latin grammar; in Latin the verb had four principal parts, of which the third and fourth were formed regularly from the present stem only in the first and second conjugations, whereas in the third and fourth the presence of the i on the stem caused a mutation of the following consonants and made irregularities at a very early stage of the language.
The first conjugation has the majority of regular verbs, "fare", "dare" and "stare". Almost every new verb enters in first conjugation and is perfectly regular.
The second conjugation is usually irregular. The few regulars are from Latin second conjugation: like "temere", "godere"... The majority is from Latin third conjugation. Most of these have developed irregularities in Italian.
The third conjugation has two different ways: Greek one with insertion of -sc-, "capire", "io capisco", and Latin one with no insertion, "sentire", "io sento". There are some irregulars, but not too many: example, "morire", "io muoio". The verb "dire" derives from Latin third conjugation, and is strongly irregular.
Most verbs of the second conjugation are irregular in the passato remoto tense, which resembles the Latin perfect.
Adverbs
An adjective can be made into a modal adverb by adding -mente to the ending of the feminine singular form of the adjective. E.g. lenta "slow " becomes lentamente "slowly". Adjectives ending in -re or -le lose their e before adding -mente.
These adverbs can also be derived from the absolute superlative form of adjectives, e.g. lentissimamente, facilissimamente.
There is also a plethora of temporal, local, modal and interrogative adverbs, mostly derived from Latin, e.g. quando, dove, come, perché, mai, sempre, etc.
Prepositions
Italian has a closed class of basic prepositions, to which a number of adverbs can be added that also double as prepositions, e.g.: sopra il tavolo, prima di adesso.
In modern Italian the prepositions tra and fra are interchangeable, and often chosen on the basis of euphony: tra fratelli vs. fra i tralicci.
In modern Italian, all the basic prepositions except tra, fra, con and per have to be combined with an article placed next to them. Of these, con and per have optional combining forms: col, collo, colla, coll', coi, cogli, colle; pel, pello, pella, pell', pei, pegli, pelle; except for col and coi, which are occasionally used, however, these are archaic and very rare.
Italian English Preposition + article
di of, from del, dello, della, dell', dei, degli, delle
a to, at al, allo, alla, all', ai, agli, alle
da from, by, since dal, dallo, dalla, dall', dai, dagli, dalle
in in nel, nello, nella, nell', nei, negli, nelle
con with con il or col, con lo, con la, con l', con i or coi, con gli, con le
su on, about sul, sullo, sulla, sull', sui, sugli, sulle
per for, through per il, per lo, per la, per l', per i, per gli, per le
tra/fra between, among tra il, tra lo, tra la, tra l', tra i, tra gli, tra le
Syntax
Italian is an SVO language. Nevertheless, the SVO sequence is sometimes replaced by one of the other arrangements, especially for reasons of emphasis and, in literature, for reasons of style and metre: Italian has relatively free word order.
The subject is usually omitted when it is a pronoun – distinctive verb conjugations make it redundant. Subject pronouns are considered emphatic when used at all.
Questions are formed by a rising intonation at the end of the sentence. There is usually no other special marker, although wh-movement does usually occur. In general, intonation and context are important to recognize questions from affirmative statements.
In general, adjectives come after the noun they modify, adverbs after the verb. But: as with French, adjectives coming before the noun indicate essential quality of the noun. Demonstratives come before the noun, and a few particular adjectives may be inflected like demonstratives and placed before the noun.
Disputed points in Italian grammar
Among sometimes proscribed Italian forms are:
The usage of an indicative form where a subjunctive one is traditional; for instance: credo che Giorgio ieri fosse a casa is considered proper, while credo che Giorgio ieri era a casa may not be; se Maria fosse stata a casa, le avrei telefonato is preferred, se Maria era a casa le telefonavo is often proscribed, despite being found in classic Italian writers
The use of the object forms of third person pronouns instead of the subject forms, which are employed in formal language
Ma però, despite being widespread in spoken language, is proscribed in formal usage because it is redundant.
Italian grammar books
The first Italian grammar was printed by Giovanni Francesco Fortunio in 1516 with the title Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua. Ever since, several Italian and foreign scholars have published works devoted to its description. Among others may be mentioned the famous Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti written by the philologist Gerhard Rohlfs, published at the end of the 1960s.
Among the most modern publications are those by Luca Serianni, in collaboration with Alberto Castelvecchi, Grammatica italiana. Suoni, forme, costrutti ; and by Lorenzo Renzi, Giampaolo Salvi and Anna Cardinaletti, Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione. The most complete and accurate grammar in English is A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian by Martin Maiden and Cecilia Robustelli.

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Gender	Number	Article	Usage
Masculine	Singular	'	Standard masculine singular definite article, used in all cases other than those detailed below. Foreign words beginning with, pronounced or, take il and not lo: il West , il whisky, il Watt, etc.
Masculine	Singular	'	Used before words with certain initial sounds: before pronounced as,, or followed by another consonant before self-geminating consonants:, pronounced as or ; ; ; pronounced as before complex consonant clusters, pronounced as or ; as or ; as or, as or, etc., mostly foreign words before or pronounced as semivowel,
Masculine	Singular	'	Used before words that begin with a vowel or .
Masculine	Plural	'	Standard masculine plural definite article, used for plurals that take il in the singular: i cani.
Masculine	Plural	'	Corresponds to lo and l' in the singular, i.e. before the consonants listed above for lo and before vowels: gli zii, gli amici.Il has the irregular plural gli .
Feminine	Singular	'	Standard form of the feminine singular definite article, used before consonants and before when pronounced as semivowel, e.g. la .
Feminine	Singular	'	As with l', used before any word that begins with a vowel, not including when pronounced as the semivowel.
Feminine	Plural	'	Standard form of the feminine plural definite article, never elided.

Latin declension	Masculine	Feminine
1st	poeta / poeti "poet"	rosa / rose "rose"
2nd	carro / carri "truck" vezzo / vezzi "habit"
3rd	cane / cani "dog"	parete / pareti "wall"
3rd		cittade / cittadi "town "
4th	passo / passi "step"	mano / mani "hand"
5th		fede / fedi "faith"

Gender	Grammatical number	Case 1	Case 2
Masculine	Singular	-o	-e
Masculine	Plural	-i	-i
Feminine	Singular	-a	-e
Feminine	Plural	-e	-i

	Italian	English
Genitive	Non vedo Francesca, ma ne vedo la bicicletta.	I don't see Francesca, but I see her bike.
Dative	Gli parlai per un'ora intera.	I spoke to him for a whole hour.
Accusative	La vedo.	I see her.
Instrumental	Sì! Lo conosco! Una volta ci giocai a pallacanestro!	Yes! I know him! Long ago I played basketball with him!

clitic form	è	ho	hai	ha	abbiamo	avete	hanno
mi	m'è	m'ho	m'hai	m'ha	—	m'avete	m'hanno
ci	c'è	ci ho	ci hai	ci ha	ci abbiamo	ci avete	ci hanno
ti	t'è	t'ho	t'hai	t'ha	t'abbiamo	—	t'hanno
vi	v'è	v'ho	v'hai	v'ha	v'abbiamo	v'avete	v'hanno
la/le/li/lo	l'è	l'ho	l'hai	l'ha	l'abbiamo	l'avete	l'hanno
gli	gli è	gli ho	gli hai	gli ha	gli abbiamo	gli avete	gli hanno
gliela/gliele/glieli/glielo	gliel'è	gliel'ho	gliel'hai	gliel'ha	gliel'abbiamo	gliel'avete	gliel'hanno
si	s'è	—	—	s'ha	—	—	s'hanno
che	ch'è	ch'ho	ch'hai	ch'ha	ch'abbiamo	ch'avete	ch'hanno

1st Conj.	2nd Conj.	3rd Conj.
parla!	temi!	parti!
parli!	tema!	parta!
parliamo!	temiamo!	partiamo!
parlate!	temete!	partite!
parlino!	temano!	partano!

Italian	English	Preposition + article
di	of, from	del, dello, della, dell', dei, degli, delle
a	to, at	al, allo, alla, all', ai, agli, alle
da	from, by, since	dal, dallo, dalla, dall', dai, dagli, dalle
in	in	nel, nello, nella, nell', nei, negli, nelle
con	with	con il or col, con lo, con la, con l', con i or coi, con gli, con le
su	on, about	sul, sullo, sulla, sull', sui, sugli, sulle
per	for, through	per il, per lo, per la, per l', per i, per gli, per le
tra/fra	between, among	tra il, tra lo, tra la, tra l', tra i, tra gli, tra le