Talk:Italian grammar

message: Good evening to everybody. I am italian and I would like to say something about preterite. It isn't true that this tense is becoming obsolete as in French; French people don't use it in spoken language, but in Tuscany it is common and in Southern Italy it is used instead of the present perfect too. If you use this tense when you are speaking with a French one, he will wonder about it, but for Italian people it is much more natural, even if it is less common than present perfect.
Thank you and sorry if my english is not so good.
Stefano    — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.12.90.89 (talk) 17:22, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Preterite

message: You sure?
This doesn't look like a stub to me.  Looks like you've done a reasonably comprehensive job.
Quintucket 02:00, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Stub?

message: I liked your work on subordinate clauses, Philx, and I've cleaned up the English and the formatting.   You have given me hope that I can contribute to the Italian wikipedia now and perhaps someone will clean up my work too.  Steve Rapaport 08:11, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nice work, Philx 

message: To the people who wrote this page, might you consider adding a subordinate clauses section.  IE  the use of che/chi/cui/di.  "Non so la persona con cui esca" "Non so con chi esca" "Spero di uscire con Michele" "So che esco con Michele"  --Xtreambar 13:00, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Subordinate Clauses

message: The article is missing a section on prepositions.
: articles and prepositions are different things! Articles are "il, lo, la, i, gli, le, un, un', una, uno", prepositions are "di, a, da, in, con, su, per, tra, fra" and "del, dello, della, dei, degli, delle, al, allo, alla, ai, agli, alle, dal, dallo, dalla, dai, dagli, dalle etc..."
I noticed this also.  I'm learning Italian right now, and a section on prepositions (especially articulate ones) would be extremely helpful.  LupoGrigio146 14:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prepositions 

message: Is the plural of capuccino capuccini?Cameron Nedland 02:43, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  CapPuccino and capPuccini 

message: Are these online grammar activities any good to go on the page - feedback please
Italian Grammar
:The problem with the site is that all content is Flash-based (I don't have an application to view flash content, so I can't evaluate it). Wikipedia has a policy about not linking to Flash sites unless there are no other options; see the external links policy for details. I've added a link to the Open Directory project, so you may want to get the site added there instead. Mindmatrix 15:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Online italian grammar activities 

message: Is this General Italian (I´ve heard some people call General Italian ´´Tuscan´´ and some ´´Roman´´?) or some other local dialect?
It's General Italian. There are no such defined rules for local languages. Of course, also in General Italian, there are small differences related to the areas. For example in the south it's much more used the Preterite. --Stefano 16:17, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Italian Standar is local dialect "TUSCAN", but each REGIONE have a local dialect.
 Es.: Chair is "sedia" (STANDAR) but in Veneto is "carega"
Wrong! Tuscan dialet is different from scholastic italian.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.23.90.220 (talk) 22:02, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dialect 

message: I have always wondered where 'ci' comes from. In the other romance languages, the first person plural object pronouns start with an 'n.' Spanish and Portuguese have 'nos', French has 'nous', and Romanian has 'ne.' So why in Italian is there a 'c' instead of 'n' like its sister languages? BrandonGagliardo 10:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: According to the Devoto-Oli Italian dictionary, 'ci' comes from the truncated form (ce) of a late Latin word, 'hicce', which in turn comes from Latin 'hic', that is 'here'. In fact, in modern Italian 'ci' is used not only as first person plural object pronoun, but also as an adverb meaning more or less 'here' or 'there': ci siamo = here we are, we have arrived, or c'era una volta = once upon a time, literally there was, once, .... Hope this helps, Goochelaar 14:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: also, ci has many other uses. it can in many ways mean "to it" or "on it" or "at it" for example take the sentence, "credi ai fantasmi" ("do you believe in ghosts", or more literally, "do you believe to ghosts?" the answer would be "ci credo"  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.252.204.239 (talk) 12:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Object Pronoun Ci 

message: Don't you think this article is becoming too much "informal"?
Here is the real trouble about Italian language! Because there is not a real rule. [...] So: why vàlico-vàlichi and mànico-mànici? Dio solo lo sa! You can get it as an un-stricted rule [...]
::agreed. the most difficult thing about this language (for non speakers to learn) is that none of the rules really work all the time or make sense.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.252.204.239 (talk) 12:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Last changes 

message: Does Italian have relative pronouns?
: yes, they are: IL QUALE, I QUALI, LA QUALE, LE QUALI but you can use always CHE.
  Es.: Marco, who is 20 years old, is my friend.
       Marco, il quale/che ha 20 anni, è mio amico.
the preterite of temere is temetti, but also temei! temette is temè too, temettero is also temerono! (like all regular verbs in ere). for example. vendere: (io)vendetti or vendei, (egli)vendette or vendè, (essi)vendettero or venderono!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.84.164.123 (talk) 19:52, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relative pronouns 

message: i speak italian (im italian american, so its a little archaic and not QUITE perfect, but i speak it 'natively' in other words i didnt learn it from a textbook) and i noticed that the description of the workings of the verbs is very strange. it doesnt really explain to an outsider how the verbs work. there is a chart, but the chart does not explain how the verbs work. also, an entire set of pronouns seems to be missing from the pronoun chart. they have the disconnected pronouns (such as io tu egli ella etc.) but thier widely used (and necessary) connected counterparts arent there. why is this? i'm guessing because there are so many of them (the verb and tense tend to mutate them), but we could provide the general o, i, a, mo, te, and no.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.177.177.89 (talk) 21:06, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: verbs (and pronouns)

message: I have one question: isn't it possible to have a regular verb in the example of tenses, instead of the irregular fare? A chi mi può capire: sono italiano e il mio inglese scritto è un po' arrugginito... It would be easier to understand for non-Italian speaking... --79.33.210.133 (talk) 22:39, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: i agree. it would make a lot more sense that way (parli inglese molto bene:)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.37.164.205 (talk) 15:29, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tenses examples 

message: Online Italian Help is an extremely good resource for learning Italian online. I think it should be added to the list. Will anyone second that motion?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adjwilli (talk • contribs) 14:40, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible Link Inclusion 

message: First declension and others are not defined either.  This made putting the data into a table difficult.24.65.69.8 (talk) 00:32, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  *Defined 

message: I have an new resource I would like to add to the external links. It's called Online Italian Help. It's basically an Italian-English dictionary, but it also has games, flash cards, grammar explanations, etc. It's really very good. WIll someone second this? --Adjwilli (talk) 17:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Online Italian Help 

message: I'm Italian and I have a degree in Humanities. I'm disappointed by the part treating the word order. Although in Italian the most common word order is SVO, the Italian syntax and word order are relatively free.
You wrote that the SVO order happens "normally [I disagree with the choose of this word: I would rather say that order is just more common than the other ones: in fact the adjective "normal" is related with "correct"], except for certain situations (such as the introduction of an accusative or dative pronoun) or unless some change of order is to be, for some stylistical matter". 
This is wrong. Even in the spoken language of Standard Italian the SVO arrangement is often replaced by other ones  (and of course the same happens within the Standard written language), not only for some stylistical matters and not only thanks to the intoduction of an accusative or dative pronuon.
For example, all these arrangements are grammatically correct and they are not unusual at all: 
Mangia le lasagne Maria (VOS) "*She eats lasagne Maria"
Maria mangia le lasagne (SVO)  "Maria eats lasagne"
Le lasagne mangia Maria  (OVS)  "*Lasagne Maria mangia"
Also they are possible and grammatically correct the arrangements OSV, VSO and SOV. All the arrangements are possible, and this is something that you have to state.
Not only the explanation about the cases where the SVO order doesn't happen is incomplete and wrong, but also the tone of your synthetic explanation seems to emply that the choose of other arrangements is something very rare among the speakers (and writers), even in the case you've pointed out: the introduction of an accusative pronoun after or before the accusative noun (i.e, "Le mangia Maria le lasagne", "Le lasagne le mangia Maria"). 
But such a speech is indeed typical:
1 (SVO): Io mangerei un primo (“I would like to eat a first course”)
2 (OSV): La pastasciutta Franco la prende sempre qui (*“Pasta, Franco it orders always here”. “Franco always orders pasta here”)
3 (VSO): “Allora, mangio anche io la pastasciutta” (*“Well then, am eating also I pasta”, “Well then, I’m also eating pasta”)
4 (VOS): “Ha consigliato la lasagna Franco, no?” (*"Has recommended the lasagna, Franco, right?”, “It’s lasagna that Franco recommended here, right?”)
5) (OVS): “No, la lasagna l’ha consigliata Elisabetta” (*“No, the lasagna it has recommended Elizabeth”, “No, Elizabeth recommended the lasagna”)
6) (SOV): “Allora, io gli spaghetti prendo” (*“In that case, I the spaghetti am having”, “In that case, I’m having spaghetti”).
I advise you to change radically that part.
“It is well-known that Italian has a relatively free word order” (Giuliana Giusti, "Italian", in Joachim Jacobs, “Syntax”, p.1347) 
P.S. In the same section you put an example of Italian questions, and you introduced it by saying "Note how in the following examples the Italian word order remains relatively fixed while the English varies somewhat".. It's better you to delete such a statement: who doesn't know Italian enough can think you want to show the English word order is freer than the Italian one! While, as I said, the Italian word order and syntax are relatively free, they're much freer than the English, the German and the French ones, for example.. Also within the questions.
Vittuone (talk) 05:20, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Word Order!

message: I hope this article will NOT be  split up. The browser's search function (Ctrl-F) couldn't be used any more as it can now, and the links in the contents section offer quite enough and comfortable navigation possibilities. I appreciate this article very much as it is now.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.96.64.25 (talk) 06:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split up this article? 

message: Nowadays the pronouns egli/ella are not used anymore, except for grammar books. In the 99% of cases lui/lei are used instead. Even language courses for foreigners only teach lui/lei! Moreover lui/lei can always be used, whereas egli/ella have limited use. Modern (>2000) grammars acknowledge the fact, http://forum.accademiadellacrusca.it/forum_12/interventi/5239.shtml  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.65.156.37 (talk) 19:19, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Written Italian almost exclusively uses egli/ella. We can say that egli/ella is formal while lui/lei is informal: discourses in parliamentary debates always use Ella instead of Lei (e.g. "Ella, signor presidente, ..." "You, mister president, ...") ecc.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.222.239.177 (talk) 18:10, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Egli/Ella vs. Lui/Lei 

message: The article states: "cifra - meaning "digit" - and ragazzo/ragazza - meaning "boy/girl" - are from Hebrew and Arabic respectively", but cifra is certainly Arabic (cifr), while ragazzo is quite obscure. Hebrew words in Italian are Pasqua (Easter), Sabato (Saturday), cabala (kabala)
84.222.239.177 (talk) 19:37, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nouns - cifra and ragazzo 

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thread_title:  Blacklisted Links Found on the Main Page 

message: The pronouns are confusing. Is this table correct?
Person	Person   	Person   	Singular  	Singular	Plural    	Plural
Person	Person   	Person   	Non-formal	Formal  	Non-formal	Formal
First 	First    	First    	io        	io      	noi       	noi
Second	Second   	Second   	tu        	Lei     	voi       	Voi
Third 	Masculine	Human    	lui       	egli    	loro      	essi
Third 	Masculine	Non-human	esso      	esso    	loro      	essi
Third 	Feminine 	Human    	lei       	ella    	loro      	esse
Third 	Feminine 	Non-human	essa      	essa    	loro      	esse
Torneira (talk) 15:08, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table of pronouns 

message: cifra - meaning "digit" - and ragazzo/ragazza - meaning "boy/girl" - are from Hebrew and Arabic respectively, but they are Latinized Are you sure? To the best of my knowledge the first word cifra comes from the Arabic word ṣifr This word has a Hebrew counterpart ספר / sefer with a different meaning though (sefer means "book" i.e. a volume recounting or enumerating facts).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.237.63.103 (talk) 01:53, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a native Hebrew speaker. Sifra/ספרה is digit in Hebrew but this is certainly not an ancient word, I'm not sure if medieval writers used it. My guess is that it comes either from the Arabic ṣifr (does it mean digit in Arabic? I know it as 'zero'), or from the biblical mispar/מספר, which is 'counting' (while in modern Hebrew its a noun-"number"). As those examples are very shaky and not really relevant I'm removing them for now.--Nngnna (talk) 13:10, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: from here; My Translation: "The Arabic name used by al-Khawarizmi for the digit Zero - ṣifr - entered Latin as cifra, and from there into German as ziffer. In 1912, following the German, the Hebrew Languge Committee neologized the word סִפרה". Anyway I don't think  this case is notable. As far as I know any word that entered European languages in this period was Latinized, Germanized and so forth in some form. Saying 'usually' is sufficient.--Nngnna (talk) 13:04, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  ṣifr 

message: Nice to include the prospective alongside the progressive, but some knowledgeable massaging is needed here, beginning the with the label impersonal, which may not make sense to naive readers in light of sto mangiando, stavo mangiando, etc., very much personalized. The table of forms included appears to suggest that the intention was to collect non-finite verb forms, but then the exposition got sidetracked into mainly the progressives. 
On that note, the notion that progressives, for example, aren't recognized by canonical Italian grammar as proper tenses, that the present progressive is not considered a tense per se (similar repeated for past progressive) needs repair. First off, it's not at all clear what not recognized as proper tenses might mean. And in any case, if sto (stai, sta, etc) and stavo (stavi, stava, etc) -- e.g. sto male, stavo male -- are "tenses", so are sto (stai, sta, etc.) + gerund or stavo (stavi, stava, etc.) + gerund. What may have been meant is that stare + gerund is totally productive, thus there's no reason to view forms other than conjugations of stare itself as paradigmatic, but to some extent that can be argued for complex verbs in general. 
The salient distinction with regard to Italian present progressive and what formally looks to be its equivalent in English is not frequency itself, but meaning/usage; frequency is epiphenomenal of the fact that they are not equivalents in that English bare present is not used for present-focused progressive (Hi, Mark! What are you doing? I'm eating! not *Hi, Mark! What do you do? *I eat!) whereas both work in Italian (Ciao Marco! Che fai? Mangio! / Ciao Marco! Che stai facendo? Sto mangiando!). 
The claim preterite is becoming obsolete in spoken Italian is at least misleading. In slow retreat, perhaps, but millions of Italians, depending on their geolinguistic origins, use it daily, very naturally. Likewise, If there is no reference to the present, as when speaking of the dead, the perfect is proscribed and the preterite must be used, while a valiant attempt to account for usage such as Dante nacque..., is actually not true as a blanket statement (just now, searching "Dante nacque" vs. "Dante è nato" in Italian Google, the first turned up 5,050 hits, the second 12,100; "Churchill nacque" found 619, "Churchill è nato" 1920). 
Not clear what happened in this section, but some of it appears to be the result of falling victim to an especially virulent strain of quixotic prescriptivism. 96.42.57.164 (talk) 19:44, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Impersonal forms 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Does the extent to which individual personal pronouns are elided vary considerably?  I know lo and la are virtually always elided, but I’ve read that ne rarely is. Esszet (talk) 18:45, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Elision of personal pronouns