Essere and Avere: The Two Verbs Italian Is Built On

Q: How do you conjugate essere in Italian?

sono, sei, e, siamo, siete, sono. Note that the first person singular and the third person plural are identical, so context does the work: sono io means I am and sono loro means they are. There is no shortcut here. This verb is irregular in every single person and has to be memorised.

If Italian has a foundation, this is it. Two verbs, both irregular, both unavoidable, and between them they hold up most of the language.

Learn these two tables and stop negotiating

, to be:

person	form


/	`e`

, to have:

person	form
	ho

/	ha

Two things to notice. appears twice, for I am and they are, and Italian is perfectly comfortable letting context sort it out. And every form of that starts with an h is silent - the h is there to keep ho and hanno apart from other words on the page, not to be pronounced.

There is no pattern to derive here. These are the two most-used verbs in Italian and they have been worn smooth by centuries of use, which is exactly why they are irregular. Memorise them.

The split that actually trips people

Italian builds its compound past out of one of these two plus a participle. Which one you pick is not free:

ho . - I saw the house.
e uscita. - She went out.

takes . takes . And is correct where ho is simply wrong - not a regional variant, not informal, wrong.

The pattern underneath is worth knowing even though it leaks:

goes with verbs of motion and change of state: going, coming, arriving, leaving, being born, becoming, staying. The subject is undergoing something rather than doing it to something else.
goes with most of the rest, and especially with verbs that take a direct object.

That gets you a long way and then abandons you at the edges, which is why every good Italian course teaches the auxiliary with the verb rather than as a rule to apply afterwards. Learn as an verb, the way you would learn a noun with its gender.

The giveaway: the ending moves

Here is how you can hear the split rather than just memorise it. With , the participle agrees with the subject:

e andato. - He went.
e andata. - She went.

With , it normally does not move at all, whoever is speaking. So when you hear an Italian past-tense ending shift between -o and -a depending on who is talking, you are listening to an verb, and the agreement is telling you which family the verb belongs to.

What this buys you

Once these two are automatic, an enormous amount of Italian opens up at once, because the compound past, the passive and several other constructions are all assembled from the same parts. It is genuinely the highest-leverage hour in beginner Italian, and it is unglamorous rote work. Do it early and the rest of the language stops feeling like a series of exceptions.

Practise: test yourself

Pick the right one

0/5

Which auxiliary does the verb take in the compound past?

andare (to go)
fare (to do, to make)
uscire (to go out)
dire (to say)
vedere (to see)

Matching

0/4

Match the person to the form of essere.

Translation drill

0/3

Two verbs, two jobs.

Io sono qui.
Noi abbiamo tempo.
Lei e uscita.

Frequently asked questions

Why does Italian have two auxiliary verbs?

Because it kept a distinction Latin was already making and English has largely lost. Broadly, essere goes with verbs where the subject undergoes something (arriving, going, being born, becoming) and avere with verbs where the subject does something to something else. English once did the same thing - he is come is older English for he has come - and simplified to one auxiliary.

How do you conjugate essere in Italian?

sono, sei, e, siamo, siete, sono. Note that the first person singular and the third person plural are identical, so context does the work: sono io means I am and sono loro means they are. There is no shortcut here. This verb is irregular in every single person and has to be memorised.

How do you know whether to use essere or avere in the past?

The reliable method is learning the auxiliary with the verb, the same way you learn a German noun with its article. The pattern that helps is that verbs of movement and change of state take essere - going, arriving, leaving, being born, dying, becoming - and most others take avere. The boundary has enough exceptions that a rule alone will not carry you.

Does the ending change when a verb takes essere?

Yes, and this is the visible consequence of the split. With essere the participle agrees with the subject in gender and number, so a woman says sono andata and a man says sono andato. With avere the participle normally does not change at all. If you hear the ending shifting, an essere verb is in play.

Which should I learn first?

Both, together, immediately. They are the two commonest verbs in the language, they are the machinery every other tense is assembled from, and no amount of vocabulary compensates for not having them. This is the one place in beginner Italian where rote learning genuinely is the right tool.