Italian All-in-One For Dummies (137 page)

Verbs ending in -care and -gare

To maintain the sound of the
-are
infinitives in their conjugated forms, you find a few verbs, specifically, those ending in
-care
and
-gare,
that require some spelling changes.

Instead of simply adding subject endings to the stems of the
tu
and
noi
forms, you need to insert the letter
h
to keep the hard
c
or
g
sound. The following tables show conjugations of
-care
and
-gare
verbs that have spelling changes.

Other verbs with the
-care
and
-gare
endings include
comunicare
(
to communicate
),
giocare
(
to play a game or sport
),
indicare
(
to indicate; to point out
),
criticare
(
to criticize
),
negare
(
to deny
), and
spiegare
(
to explain
).

Verbs ending in -iare

As with
-care
and
-gare
verbs, you make some spelling changes to verbs that end in
-iare.
These changes make the conjugated forms sound the way the infinitive does.

Some of the more common verbs ending in
-iare
include
cominciare
(
to begin
),
mangiare
(
to eat
),
abbracciare
(
to hug
),
baciare
(
to kiss
), and
studiare
(
to study
).

Dropping the
-are
from the infinitive leaves you with the letter
i
on the end of the stem. You don't want a double
i
in your conjugation, so the
tu
and
voi
forms drop the
i
from the stem. All the other forms keep it.

The following tables show the conjugated forms of
-iare
verbs.

Although you usually drop the
i
from the
tu
and
noi
stems of
-iare
verbs, in some cases, you keep it when the
i
in the
io
form is stressed: For example,
[io] invío
and
[io] scío
become
[tu] invìi
and
[tu] scìi.
But for the
noi
form of these verbs, you drop the
i
because the stress is on
inviàmo
and
sciàmo.

Along these same lines, some
-are
verbs undergo a pronunciation change and use the
accento sdrucciolo.
So instead of stressing the second-to-last syllable on the singular conjugations, or the third-to-last syllable on the third person plural, you back the stress up by one syllable. Thus,
abito
has a stressed
a.
Following is a sample conjugation of such a verb, with the stressed syllable in bold. The
noi
and
voi
forms follow regular rules of pronunciation and stress the second-to-last syllable.

Common verbs that carry this particular stress include
telefonare
(
to call
),
terminare
(
to end
),
preoccupare
(
to worry
),
partecipare
(
to participate
),
desiderare
(
to want
),
significare
(
to mean
), and
ordinare
(
to order
). You can't predict which verbs use this stress — it's something you pick up as you go.

Conjugating -ere verbs

The second largest category of Italian verb conjugations is as dependable as the first. The
-ere
verbs strictly follow the path of removing
-ere
from the infinitive and adding the subject endings specific to the conjugation. You have no spelling changes to remember here because only the
-are
verbs maintain the pronunciation of the infinitive. The following tables show the various endings for
-ere
verbs.

Notice that
leggere
in its conjugations has different sounds, some of which are
not
true to the sound of the infinitive. The
io
and
loro
forms both have a hard
g
sound, while all the other forms keep the soft
g
of the infinitive. Because
-ere
verbs derive from two Latin conjugations, the infinitives may not follow the general Italian rule of placing stress on the next-to-last syllable. Compare the following infinitives' pronunciations. Accents indicate where the stress falls. Many
-ere
verbs use the
accento sdrucciolo,
so the accent falls on the third-to-last syllable.