Italian All-in-One For Dummies (157 page)

To know who is doing the actual missing, you plug in the appropriate indirect object pronoun. For example:

Mi mancate.
(
I miss you
[plural].)

Mi manchi.
(
I miss you.
)

Gli mancano i bambini.
(
He misses the kids.
)

Ci manca la spiaggia; ti mancano le montagne.
(
We miss the beach; you miss the mountains.
)

Admittedly, this verb takes some getting used to. Just keep in mind that the indirect object pronoun, which precedes the verb, reveals who the subject is.

Chapter 5

The Future Tense and the Conditional Mood

In This Chapter

Using regular and irregular forms of the future tense

Checking out the conditional

I
n this chapter, you discover two verb forms — the future tense and the conditional mood — to help you speak about what's in the near future as well as in the far future. You'll be able to make plans for next weekend or dream about the rest of your life.

Focusing on the Future

The Italian future tense in its current form is not a direct legacy of classical Latin, as other Italian tenses are. In fact, Latin used a variant of the future completely different from what's used today. This form resembled the forms of the indicative imperfect tense and with time has fallen into disuse.

Only the imperative and indicative moods have this tense. The future indicates present situations and present and future events that are somewhat uncertain. This section shows you how to form the regular future tense and spells out
-are
exceptions; then, you work with irregular roots and find out how to talk about the future with some handy expressions.

Forming the regular future tense

The regular future tense is one of the easiest tenses to form. (Later in this chapter, you can see how to form some irregular future tense stems.) To form the regular future tense, follow these simple steps:

1. Take the infinitive of an
-are,
-ere,
or
-ire
verb.

2. Drop the final
e
only to form the future tense stem.

3. Add the future tense ending.

Okay, you have to pay attention to one exception:
-are
verbs require a slight modification — you change the
a
in the stem to an
e.
(The next section presents greater detail on the spelling changes for
-are
verbs.) The following list provides a few examples of the modified future tense stems:

-are:
The stem for
parl
a
re
(
to speak
) is
parl
e
r-
(because you change the
a
to an
e
).

-ere:
The stem for
prendere
(
to have; to take
) is
prender-.

-ire:
The stem for
partire
(
to leave
) is
partir-.

Note:
The stems you create are the same stems you use for the conditional mood, discussed later in this chapter.

The following list shows the endings that you attach to these stems. The future tense endings are the same for
-are,
-ere,
and
-ire
verbs.

io:
-ò

tu:
-ai

lui, lei, Lei:
-à

noi:
-emo

voi:
-ete