Lesson 7: Regular -ARE verbs

Part 1: What -ARE conjugation is

The infinitive of a regular first-conjugation verb ends in -are: parlare (to speak), lavorare (to work), mangiare (to eat), abitare (to live, to dwell), comprare (to buy).

To conjugate, chop off -are (you get the stem: parl-, lavor-, mangi-) and add six endings:

Person	Ending	parlare	lavorare
io (I)	-o	parlo	lavoro
tu (you sg.)	-i	parli	lavori
lui/lei (he/she)	-a	parla	lavora
noi (we)	-iamo	parliamo	lavoriamo
voi (you pl.)	-ate	parlate	lavorate
loro (they)	-ano	parlano	lavorano

Memorise the six endings as a chant: -o, -i, -a, -iamo, -ate, -ano.

The English-speaker windfall: English barely conjugates at all — "I speak, you speak, he speaks, we speak, they speak" — one tiny -s on third-person singular and that's it. Italian gives each person its own ending. Good news: that means the ending tells you who's doing the action, so the pronoun is normally dropped (see Part 2). Bad news: you have to drill six forms instead of two. Worth it — six endings unlock thousands of verbs.

Stress — where the weight of the word sits

Stress in -are verbs doesn't follow English intuition: it stays where it was in the infinitive, and in the loro form it lands three syllables from the end:

• PARlo, PARli, PARla, parLIAmo, parLAte, PARlano
• laVOro, laVOri, laVOra, lavoRIAmo, lavoRAte, laVOrano

Watch out: the loro form (parlano, lavorano) has stress far from the end, on the third-to-last syllable — the "double-tail" effect. The classic English-speaker trap is to say parlAno — but the right pronunciation is PARlano. (Compare: TElephono-style three-from-end stress you met in L1.)

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Part 2: Pro-drop — the pronoun gets dropped

In Italian the subject pronoun is normally unnecessary — the verb ending has already said it:

With pronoun (allowed)	Without pronoun (usual)
Io parlo italiano.	Parlo italiano.
Tu lavori a Roma.	Lavori a Roma.
Lei lavora qui?	Lavora qui?

For English speakers this is the opposite of your native habit. English forces a subject: "speak Italian" alone is wrong. "Parlo italiano" alone is the normal way to say "I speak Italian". Don't bolt io onto the front out of habit — sounds clunky.

When you do still use the pronoun: for contrast ("I work, she studies" = Io lavoro, lei studia) or for emphasis. In neutral speech — drop it.

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Part 3: Question and negation — no auxiliary verbs

Unlike English, Italian does not use an auxiliary for questions and negatives:

Question — just intonation

Statement	Question
Parli italiano.	Parli italiano?
Anna lavora a Roma.	Anna lavora a Roma?
Mangiate la pizza.	Mangiate la pizza?

No do/does. No word-order inversion. Just a question mark in writing and a rising voice in speech.

The English speaker's gift: you can throw away the whole do/does machine. "Do you speak Italian?" — for English it's natural, for Italian it would feel weirdly elaborate. Parli italiano? — done. This shortcut alone makes Italian questions 30% lighter than English ones.

Negation — the word non before the verb

Statement	Negation
Parlo italiano.	Non parlo italiano.
Lavora a Roma.	Non lavora a Roma.
Mangiamo carne.	Non mangiamo carne.

Again, nothing "auxiliary": just non before the conjugated verb. (More detail in L9.)

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Part 4: Spelling adjustments

This isn't new grammar — it's spelling. But if you ignore it, words come out wrong.

Verbs in -care and -gare — add h before e or i

Take cercare (to look for): the stem is cerc-. To keep the hard "k" sound where the ending starts with e or i (i.e. in tu and noi), you insert an h:

Person	cercare	pagare
io	cerco	pago
tu	cerchi ← h!	paghi ← h!
lui/lei	cerca	paga
noi	cerchiamo ← h!	paghiamo ← h!
voi	cercate	pagate
loro	cercano	pagano

Why: without the h, cerci, cerciamo would read "cher-chee, cher-chee-AH-mo" (soft c) — but the verb needs "ker-kee, ker-kee-AH-mo" (hard c). Back to L1: ce/ci is soft, che/chi is hard.

Verbs in -ciare and -giare — drop the extra i

Take mangiare (to eat): the stem is mangi-. The tu ending is -i; the noi ending is -iamo. Italian doesn't write two is in a row:

Person	mangiare	cominciare
io	mangio	comincio
tu	mangi (not mangii)	cominci
lui/lei	mangia	comincia
noi	mangiamo (not mangiiamo)	cominciamo
voi	mangiate	cominciate
loro	mangiano	cominciano

Notice: the i of the stem is already keeping the g or c soft — nothing else for that i to do. So it gets "swallowed" by the ending.

Verbs in -iare without a soft consonant — same behaviour

studiare (to study): studio, studi, studia, studiamo, studiate, studiano — one i, never two.

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Part 5: Full set of forms — three working verbs

parlare (to speak)

Person	Statement	Negation	Question
io	parlo	non parlo	parlo?
tu	parli	non parli	parli?
lui/lei	parla	non parla	parla?
noi	parliamo	non parliamo	parliamo?
voi	parlate	non parlate	parlate?
loro	parlano	non parlano	parlano?

mangiare (to eat)

mangio, mangi, mangia, mangiamo, mangiate, mangiano

cercare (to look for)

cerco, cerchi, cerca, cerchiamo, cercate, cercano

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