Italian Essentials: Congiuntivo Imperfetto (Imperfective Subjunctive)

avatarMille Larsen
2 mins read

It’s subjunctive week. We've already looked at exactly what the subjunctive mood is, and how it is used, and yesterday we took our first look at using the subjunctive in Italian with il congiuntivo presente. Today, we're going to look at il congiuntivo imperfetto.

Il congiuntivo imperfetto

The congiuntivo imperfetto, or imperfect subjunctive, describes an uncertain verb action that was ongoing in the past. It is formed with the following endings:

  -are -ere -ire
che io -assi -essi -issi
che tu -assi -essi -issi
che lui/lei -asse -esse -isse
che noi -assimo -essimo -issimo
che voi -aste -este -iste
che loro -assero -essero -issero

This is one of the easiest conjugations yet. You really only have four endings: -assi, -assimo, -aste, and -assero. The only other detail is to make sure to swap the a for an e or an i according to the verb's ending.

Examples

avere:

Credevo che avessero ragione.

I thought they were right.

capire:

Non c'era nessuno che ci capisse.

There wasn't anyone who could understand us.

potere:

Era un peccato che tu non potessi venire.

It was a shame you weren't able to come.

smettere:

Vorrei che tu smettessi di furmare.

I would like you to stop smoking.

The -ss in the endings is significantly different from any other verb forms we've encountered, so it should be easy to remember that this is a special form of the verb. If you have trouble remembering which special form, just think of the s as standing for "subjunctive", and there are two of them because it is ongoing!

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the perfective counterpart, the congiuntivo passato.

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