by Carolyn Henry

Created on: October 19, 2009

The Italian conditional verb tense corresponds to the English verb tense which uses the helping verb would followed a verb. For example, I would go is the conditional tense in English. In Italian, the conditional tense if formed by adding one of six conditional tense endings to the future verb stem, which is formed from the infinitive form of the verb.

Fortunately, the majority of Italian verbs are regular in the conditional tense. That is, the conditional stem (which is the same as the future stem) for most verbs is formed according to whether their infinitive ends in -are, -ere or -ire, and the pattern is the same for all regular verbs.

Most Italian verbs end in -are, and this is the trickiest group of regular verbs to put into the future tense. The conditional stem of -are verbs is formed by changing the -are ending to -er. For example, cantare means to sing, and the future tense stem is thus canter-. Ascoltare, meaning to speak, has the future stem ascolter-.

Remember, though, that these are only stems. In order to form the conditional tense, a series of conjugational endings must be added to these stems.

One thing to be careful of with those verbs ending with -care and -gare is that these verbs have the hard sound of c and g, which must be retained in the conditional tense. Therefore, to keep the sound hard, after the -are is removed, an additional h must be inserted before the -er. For example, giocare meaning to play, has the hard c sound, and therefore requires an additional h. The conditional tense stem is therefore giocher-. In a similar way, pagare, meaning to pay, has the conditional stem pagher-. This is only the case with verbs ending in -care and -gare, however. Apart from these, the regular formation of the conditional tense is very straightforward.

It is very easy to form the conditional tense stem of regular verbs ending in -ere are iire by simply removing the final -e. For example, leggere means to read, and the conditional stem is legger-. And the verb dormire, meaning to sleep, has dormir- as its conditional stem.

Once the stem is formed, a set of six conditional tense endings must be added to the stem to form the future tense. These endings agree with the subject of the verb. Subject pronouns with their corresponding future tense verb endings are as follows:

Io (I) takes the future ending -ei.

Tu (you, singular informal) takes the ending -esti.

Lui (he) and lei (you, singular formal, and she) takes the ending -ebbe.

Noi (we) has

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