PRESENT TENSE
In English this tense looks like "he runs", "they live", "she is working", "we are talking"
These four examples all have pronouns — he, they, she, we, but in Italian the pronouns are not necessary because the verb always has an ending to indicate what personal pronoun we want. the four English examples above would each be one single word in Italian.
Italian does have personal pronouns; you won't see them very often, but here they are:
| io | I | noi | we |
| tu | you | voi | you |
| lui | he | loro | they |
| lei | she | | |
| Lei | you | | |
The pronoun Lei (with a capital L) means you. It is different from the pronoun tu because Lei is formal: you would use it when politely addressing a stranger; if you speak to someone using a formal title like signore/signorina you should use Lei and even if you don't use the pronoun, the verb should be in the 3rd person singular.
Italian verbs fall into 3 types, depending on the vowel in the infinitive. The grammatical name is not type but conjugation and that's the name I'm going to use.
• Conjugation 1 contains verbs with an infinitive ending in -ARE
• Conjugation 2 contains verbs with an infinitive ending in -ERE
• Conjugation 3 contains verbs with an infinitive ending in -IRE
| |1 PARLARE |2 SCRIVERE | |3 CAPIRE |
| | | |3 DORMIRE | |
|1st pers. sing. I | parlo | scrivo...