Il Passato Remoto

The Passato Remoto is a beautiful verb tense in Italian full of irregular verbs and is used in a way that I find particularly poetic.

I would classify this tense as Advanced Italian for that very reason and due to the fact that you could very easily spend an extended period of time in Italy not using this tense all that often and get around just fine.

Like always, this blog post corresponds to my video on this very topic. You can click here to watch that video.

Let us now begin this lesson with taking a look at how we conjugate Regular Verbs in the Passato Remoto:

Parlare - to talk

io parlai

tu parlasti

lui/lei parlò

noi parlammo

voi parlaste

loro parlarono

Credere - to believe

io credetti / credei

tu credesti

lui/lei credette / credé

noi credemmo

voi credeste

loro credettero / crederono

Note: I did not go over the variations of -ERE conjugations in the video lesson, but I’ve included them here for reference.

Dormire - to sleep

io dormii

tu dormisti

lui/lei dormì

noi dormimmo

voi dormiste

loro dormirono

Here are now some Irregular Verbs conjugated in the Passato Remoto:

Essere - to be

io fui

tu fosti

lui/lei fu

noi fummo

voi foste

loro furono

Avere - to have

io ebbi

tu avesti

lui/lei ebbe

noi avemmo

voi aveste

loro ebbero

Fare - to do/make

io feci

tu facesti

lui/lei fece

noi facemmo

voi faceste

loro fecero

Dire - to tell

io dissi

tu dicesti

lui/lei disse

noi dicemmo

voi diceste

loro dissero

To help give you a feel for how this tense is used, I’ll now share this longer text with you with a few verbs in the Passato Remoto. This story is of an event that took place over 10 years ago, was a one-time event, and happened at a specified point in time.

Durante la mia prima lezione di italiano, la prof SCRISSE sulla lavagna il verbo parlare. Poi ci CHIESE, “qualcuno sa che significa?” Nessuno ALZÒ la mano. Io sapevo la risposta, quindi ALZAI la mano e DISSI “significa to talk?” La prof mi DISSE, “ma bravo Tom!”

In English:

During my first Italian lesson, the teacher wrote on the verb parlare on the board. She then asked us, “does anyone know what this means?” No one raised their (his/her) hand. I knew the answer, so I rose my hand and said “does it mean to talk?” The teacher said, “very good, Tom!”

To sum it all up, this beautiful tense is simply used to talk about the distant past. You can think of it being the equivalent to the English Simple Past if only the Passato Prossimo didn’t come around and take it’s place in modern-day Italian.