How to Use the Verb Mancare

Weilà weilà raga! In today’s post, we’re going to discuss the verb Mancare - a beautiful verb in Italian that behaves a bit differently from your average verb.

This post correlates to my video on this verb, you can watch that video by clicking here.

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Now let’s get to work!

I’d like to begin this post by sharing a long sentence showing how we can use the verb Mancare in context. In my video I was standing next to the Arco della Pace in Milan. I mentioned how I’d miss things like that when I’d leave Italy.

Mi mancheranno sicuramente posti come quello o piazze come queste.

• I will surely miss places like that or piazzas like these.

How could I tell someone, “I miss you” ? - Mi manchi

How about for a group of people as in, “I miss you guys” ? - Mi mancate, ragazzi

How could I ask you, “do you miss me?” - Ti manco?

And “do you guys miss me?” - Vi manco?

Now let’s back into this and see what the rules are

Mancare - to miss/lack

io manco - I am missing

tu manchi - you are missing

lui/lei manca - he/she is missing

noi manchiamo - we are missing

voi mancate - you all are missing

loro mancano - they are missing

You may have noticed that Mancare works similarly to verbs like Piacere and Servire. This is how this verb is different from your average verb.

When we say “mi piace” we are saying “to me it is pleasing” or in other words “it is pleasing to me.” Similarly, when we say “mi manca” we are saying “to me it is missing” or in other words, “it is missing to me.”

If it helps you to see it written differently, we can also say “piace a me” and “manca a me.”

Getting the hang of it yet?

With Mancare, when you conjugate it, that is indicating who or what is being missed. The Indirect Object Pronoun you place before the verb tells you who misses it.

So “mi manchi” means this “to me you are missing.”

• Ti manco = to you I am missing / You miss me

• Mi manco = to myself I am missing / I miss myself

• Ti manchi = to you you are missing / You miss yourself

Sometimes it helps to see a larger contextual example:

“Mi manchi davvero tanto amico mio!” - I really miss you my friend

I bet slowly but surely you’re starting to get this. It may take a few times for you to work it out, but don’t give up! You will get it.

How about different verb tenses?

“Mi mancherà l’Italia quanto partirò” - I will miss Italy when I leave

In Italian you can use the future tense twice in a sentence to indicate that you will be feeling a particular way when something else also happens in the future.

Mancare is a regular verb and follows similar conjugation patterns to other verbs in Italian. You will often add an H after the C in order to maintain the hard K sound, this is normal and found in several other verbs in Italian.

“Mi mancheranno tutti i cibi qua in Italia” - I will miss all of the food here in Italy

(Here we are using mancheranno to refer to “the things that will be missed”)

Mancare in the Passato Prossimo

Mancare takes Essere as its helping verb, which means we need to be mindful of gender and number agreement.

The conjugation of Essere will coincide/agree with who or what is being missed.

Omitting the Indirect Object Pronoun for a moment, if you say “sei mancato” that means “you have been missed”. Now if we put the Indirect Object Pronoun “mi” before it, it will mean that “you have been missed by me” or “to (by) me you have been missed” = mi sei mancato. See how it works? This is how you’d say “I missed you.”

I’ll breakdown all conjugations just with Mi so you can see how it works (I did not do this in the video):

• mi sono mancato/a - I missed myself

• mi sei mancato/a - I missed you

• mi è mancato/a - I missed he/she/it

• mi siamo mancati/e - I missed us

• mi siete mancati/e - I missed you all

• mi sono mancati/e - I missed them

“Mi siete mancati davvero tanto ragazzi!” - I’ve really missed you guys!

“Mi sono mancate tutte le cose qua in Italia, ma per fortuna sono qui!” - I’ve missed all of the things here in Italy, but fortunately I’m here!

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Keep up the great work with your Italian and always remember to spread the love!