4

Learning Objectives
  • Understand and practice the role of subjects and pronouns.
  • Memorize Italian subject pronouns.
  • Acquire some basic information on the origins of the Italian language.

What is a subject?

The subject in a simple English sentence such as John runs, John is a teacher, or John was ran over by a car is the person or thing about whom the statement is made, in this case ‘John’. The subject is the word or phrase which controls the verb in the clause, that is to say with which the verb agrees. You can find the subject of a sentence if you can find the verb. Ask the question, “Who or what ‘verbs’ or ‘verbed’?” and the answer to that question is the subject.

What is a pronoun?

A pronoun (from Latin pro = in place of, and nomen = name) is a word that substitutes a noun. Pronouns can do everything nouns can do: they can be subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, and more (e.g. he, him, someone, who).

Egli, ella and essi are subject pronouns that today Italians tend to use only in formal contexts, mostly in the written language.

Subject pronouns Pronomi personali
Singular 1st person I io
2nd person you tu
3rd person (masculine) he lui (egli)
3rd person (feminine) she lei (ella)
3rd person (neutral) it —
Plural 1st person we noi
2nd person you voi
3rd person they loro (essi)

Esercizio 8

Circle all the subjects you can find in this reading.

A Brief History Of The Italian Language

Italian, like Spanish, French, Romanian and Portuguese, is a Romance language rooted in Vulgar (“Common”) Latin. The first documents that were written in some form of Italian are from the 10th century, but Standard Italian didn’t begin developing until the 13th and 14th centuries. It began as a dialect in Florence, and it gained in popularity because of a combination of factors: Tuscany’s central location, the importance of Florence as a key city of baking and commerce, the similarities between the Tuscan dialect and Latin, but most of all because of the diffusion of local literature by Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Francesco Petrarca.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Tuscan dialect of the 14th century was codified as classical Italian. The local dialects still reigned supreme until the unification of Italy in 1861, when the modern form of Tuscan became the official language.

Se io, se lei, Biagio Antonacci (1994)
Listen to the song and fill the gaps with the missing subject pronouns.
Se ___, fossi stato un po’ meno distante
un po’ meno orgoglioso, un po meno che?
se ___ fosse stata un po’ meno gelosa
un po’ meno nervosa un po’ meno e…
ma se ___ se ___ se ___ se ___
se ___ avessimo dato all’amore la giusta importanza
l’impegno e il valore se ___
amare vuol dire anche a volte annullarsi per dare qualcosa in più,
ma se ___ se ___ se ___ se ___,
Se ___, se ___
adesso dove sei?
sotto quale cielo pensi al tuo domani?
sotto quale caldo lenzuolo
stai facendo bene l’amore?
sono contento ama….ama e non fermarti
e non aver nessuna paura
e non cercarmi dentro a nessuno
se ___…. se ___
Se ___… quando tutto finisce c’è sempre chi chiude la porta
e chi invece sta male,
se ___… chi ha sbagliato alla fine non conta…
conta solo che adesso non so’ più chi sei
se ___, se ___
sono contento ama
ama e non fermarti
e non cercarmi dentro a nessuno
e non aver nessuna paura
se ___ se ___
adesso dove sei?
con chi sei?
Play this Kahoot! to review what you’ve learned so far.

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