The present perfect and simple past

The passato prossimo is the tense Italians use to talk about anything that happened in the past, whether yesterday (ieri) or two years ago (due anni fa). Ho ordinato un caffè means both I have ordered a coffee and I ordered a coffee.

The passato prossimo is made up of two words – (1) the present tense of avere or essere and (2) the past participle of the verb, as in the examples:

Ho comprato una casa

Sono andato a casa

How do you form the past participles of verbs?

• For verbs in –are: –are turns into –ato, as in comprare > comprato.
• For verbs in –ere: –ere turns into –uto, as in ricevere > ricevuto.
• For verbs in –ire: –ire turns into –ito, as in preferire > preferito.

How do you know whether to use avere or essere?

• You use avere with all verbs, except with those verbs that require essere.  Avere is basically always used when a direct object follows an action, as in Ho ordinato un caffè [I ordered a coffee]. In this case, caffè is the direct object. A direct object can also be a person, as in Ho conosciuto Federico [I met Federico]. The direct object may not be explicit, as in Ho ordinato.
• You use essere with verbs that express moving from a place to another (i.e. andare), verbs that express states of being (i.e. essere) and reflexive verbs. Essere is basically always used when there is no direct object, but rather the action of moving to or from a place, as you can see in La storia di Rosa:

Picture taken from pinterest.com

Verbs expressing states of being like nascere [to be born], crescere [to grow], diventare [to become], morire [to die], rimanere/restare/stare [to stay] and essere also take essere. Stare and essere share the same past participle: sono stato/a means I have been, I was and I stayed.

Study the following conjugations:

As you notice, comprato never changes.

As you notice, partito takes the same form of an adjective: partito, partita, partiti, partite. It depends on who the subject is: a woman will say sono partita alle nove, but a group of friends will say siamo partiti alle nove.

In the passato prossimo, all reflexive verbs take essere as the auxiliary. As for all verbs that take essere in the passato prossimo, a woman will say mi sono persa a Venezia, but a group of friends will say ci siamo persi a Venezia, etc.

Many verbs, especially in –ere and –ire, have irregular past participles, which you need to memorize:

* A very few verbs can take either avere or essere, depending on the nuance of the situation. Don’t worry about it now.