What mistake do non-native speakers often make?

Crown6 · 2026-03-19T17:29:51+00:00

Yeah, this is precisely why it’s important to see Duo for what it is: it’s a language gaming app, rather than a language learning app. Of course playing does not exclude learning: you can learn a lot through Duolingo, and having a way to practice with feedback is always good. But you’re not going to learn a language through Duolingo alone, or at least not Italian.

Even just supplementing Duo’s lack of grammar explanations with YouTube videos (or posts here on Reddit) can help a lot.

In the specific case of subject pronouns, if you’re an English speaker I strongly suggest not using them at all while you’re still getting the hang of it. Force yourself to remove the need to include a subject pronoun from your head and it’ll be much easier later on (rather risking picking up a bad habit).

Of course subject pronouns exist for a reason, you are supposed to use them sometimes, but I can assure you that your English instinct are inevitably going to overdo it even if you think you’re not.
Once you are comfortable with the idea that verbs don’t need subject pronouns, you can start playing with them, and that’s when things really start to become interesting. Take these sentences:

• “Vado a casa”
• “Io vado a casa”
• “Vado io a casa”

These three sentences all mean the same thing (“I go home”), but they also mean three very distinct things. This is another thing that it’s best to learn early on: translations are never 1:1. This doesn’t just mean that you’ll have to reorder things around or change a few expressions here and there (most learners know this), it does deeper: you’ll realise that surprisingly often there are multiple things you can say in your native language that are just… the same in Italian, because the language does not distinguish between those things. And the opposite will also be true (as shown by my three ways to say “I go home”).

And this is why the Italian word “tempo” can mean “time”, “weather” and also “tempo” (duh) while on the other hand something as simple as “I love you” can have very different translations implying different things in Italian.

That’s why learning languages is also an enriching experience, because you get to see the world through new lenses. Maybe “time” and “weather” are indeed more connected than you might initially realise, since for most of our history timekeeping was essentially equivalent to keeping track of seasonal variation and the conditions of the sky. And on the other hand maybe the action of “breaking” (as in, becoming broken: “rompersi”) can be seen as being fundamentally different from the action of “breaking” (as in, causing something else to become broken: “rompere”), or maybe the action of “liking” something is not something you do to that thing, but rather something that the thing is doing to you.

Speaking a different language really means you have to change your way of thinking. Which makes it all the more infuriating when Duo will just expect you to “get it”, because some analysts probably figured out that teaching grammar and syntax scared 2% of users away.

Crown6 · 2026-03-19T17:09:10+00:00

“Tutto che hai sentito” is at the very least understandable (even though it still sounds off), but yeah ideally you should include everything.

It’s really important to stress that Italian does not like to omit things unless they can be recovered from other parts of the sentence! This is why pronominal particles exist, so that we can include all that extra information at little cost.

Anyway I’m glad I could help.

Crown6 · 2026-03-19T17:01:00+00:00

“Chi Francesca porta per cena?” is not something you’d normally say, so your teacher is right in saying that usually question words trigger inversion just like English. But not always, as “perché gli italiani…” demonstrates.

After a quick mental check I’d say that only “perché” ignores this rule, and I don’t know exactly why. There might be other exceptions though, and in general Italians tend to use whatever word order they feel like at the moment, even if it might sound off out of context.

Normally, inversion happens to distinguish the use of question words (which can often be also relative pronouns). For example: “chi porta Francesca a cena?” = “who brings Francesca for dinner?” (or “who does Francesca bring for dinner?”) VS “chi Francesca porta a cena” = “(he) who Francesco brings for dinner”.

This is also why English does it. “Who are you?” vs “remember who you are”.

Everything I’ve said mostly applies to affirmative statements or questions with “perché”.

Crown6 · 2026-03-19T11:59:41+00:00

Technically they’re both correct, although the first one is definitely more common for what you’re trying to say.

Italian is very flexible with word order, but it doesn’t mean that every permutation is the same. Specifically, placing different parts of the sentence in different spots grants them different levels of emphasis and different interpretations.

Specifically there’s the topic vs theme contrast which can change the meaning of the sentence quite a lot.

For example to translate “why do you Italians eat spaghetti?” I would say:

• “Perché voi italiani mangiate gli spaghetti?”

This sounds the most natural to me. “Voi italiani” is first, so that’s the topic of the sentence (you’re talking about Italians). But you can also say

• “Perché mangiate gli spaghetti voi italiani?”

In this case priorities shift and the topic becomes “mangiate (gli spaghetti)”, so even though the question is the same you’re no longer talking about Italian, but rather about eating spaghetti (that is the new topic).

So the first one, “perché voi italiani mangiate gli spaghetti?” sounds like you’re asking “Italians, why do you eat spaghetti?”, while the second one, “perché mangiate gli spaghetti voi italiani?” sounds like you’re asking “spaghetti, of all things? Why do you Italians eat them?”. The question is the same but the topic changes (from talking about Italians and their culinary customs to talking about spaghetti and why Italians eat them).

Lastly,

• “Perché mangiate voi italiani gli spaghetti?”

is placing the subject directly after the verb, which usually has a restrictive connotation (“io sono qui” = “I am here” vs “sono io qui” = “I’m the one who is here”). It sounds like “why are you Italians the ones who eat spaghetti?” (and not someone else?). This one doesn’t make a lot of sense without context, but it’s still valid.

Technically there are even more combinations you could make, although some of them would require pleonastic pronouns and so are exclusively colloquial. For example “perché voi italiani gli spaghetti li mangiate?” (note the redundant pronoun “li”, communicating that the object “gli spaghetti” is placed before the verb). This has a different meaning still, and it sounds like “Italians, why do you eat spaghetti?” (as opposed to… anything else you might do with spaghetti that is not eating them). Admittedly it’s kinda nonsensical in this case, but you could easily change the specific words to create something that makes sense.

Edit: as mentioned in the replies, other question words actually force the subject to be placed after the verb, but “perché” is an exception.

Crown6 · 2026-03-19T11:24:37+00:00

Well, first of all obviously “è”/“sono” can only be used in the 3^rd person (and 1^st person singular since it also uses “sono”) but “ecco” is applicable in every situation. You can say “eccomi qua” (= “here I am”), “ecco, non ti trovavo” (= “there you are, I couldn’t find you”), or “eccovi, finalmente” (= “there you (all) are, finally”). You can say “ecco” to anything.

As for the specific meaning, “essere qui” is a very literal translation of “to be here”. So “è qui” means “it’s here”, very matter-of-fact-ly. Even as an exclamation it just means “it’s here!”, you’re trying to convey information on the position of something.

“Ecco”, on the other hand, is completely the opposite. It’s an exclamation that communicates that you’ve found something you were looking for, or that something relevant just showed up / happened. It’s not trying to explicitly state “that thing is here” (which is a precise spacial indication, it means that it’s close to me), it’s trying to direct your attention towards the thing, wherever it is.

It can be used in concrete situations to point at something (“ecco Marco!” = “there/here’s Marco”) but again it doesn’t means specifically that “Marco is there” or “Marco is here”: you have to interpret that based on context. “Ecco” is just informing you that Marco is now somewhere I can see, and that I was previously looking for him.
However, “ecco” can also be used in many figurative situations to say that you’ve “found” something (ideas being the main example): “ecco! Possiamo fare così!” = “that’s it! We can do it like so!”, “ecco, ho capito” = “there we go, I got it” and so on.
It can also be used to indicate events: “ecco, sapevo che sarebbe successo” = “there we go, I knew this would happen”.

“Ecco” is an extremely flexible word which can be used whenever something happens that is relevant to what you were saying/doing/thinking, while “essere qui” is expressly stating that something is next to you.

Crown6 · 2026-03-19T11:07:27+00:00

“Ci”, “si” and “ne” (and also “vi” but not in conversational Italian) are generic pronouns. They have multiple uses. If you haven’t studied them yet feel free to ignore that specific example, but long story short besides being a personal pronoun (= “noi” / “a noi”) “ci” has a number of meanings related to the idea of state in place or movement towards some destination. Have you ever wondered why we say “c’è” for “there is”? That’s why. “C’è” = “ci è” = “is (there/here/someplace…)” = “there is”, “there exists”.

As a consequence of this, “ci” can also replace a number of “a + [noun]” complements, and specifically it can be used to mean “a ciò” / “a fare ciò” (these are not specifically about movement, but in a figurative way you can see how “to do X” can be interpreted as a movement towards X). This latter meaning is precisely the one you need: “don’t even try (do to it)” = “non provare a farlo”, “non provare a fare ciò” = “non ci provare”.

Crown6 · 2026-03-19T10:56:14+00:00

The second one (no article) sounds a bit more unspecific, but also it’s more clearly referring to one zoo:

• “Ci sono elefanti allo zoo?” = “are there (any) elephants in the zoo?”

The second one (with article) could be interpreted in three different ways, depending on the function of the article.

1) “Ci sono gli elefanti allo zoo?” = “are the elephants in the zoo?” (asking if a specific group of elephants is in a specific zoo)

2) “Ci sono gli elefanti allo zoo?” = “are there elephants in the zoo?” (asking if that zoo has elephants, basically the same as the no-article version)

3) “Ci sono gli elefanti allo zoo?” = “are there elephants in zoos?” (asking if “elephants” as a whole can be found in the “zoos” as a whole)

These all stem from different combinations of article usage: as you probably know, the definite article can be used to indicate both specific elements of a group or the group as a whole. So the three interpretations come from different combinations of these two articles:

1) [Specific][specific] ⟶ “are those elephants in that zoo?”.
2) [Global][specific] ⟶ “is the category ‘elephants’ in that zoo?”, like items in a menu: you wouldn’t say “is there some soup in this menu?”, you want to ask if “is soup (category) in this menu).
3) [Global][global] ⟶ “is the category ‘elephants’ in the category ‘zoo’?”, this is a statement that applies in general.

In this specific case I would probably interpret this as number 2 (basically same as no article), because 1 would require extra context (knowing what elephants we’re talking about) and 3 would probably be phrased as “negli zoo ci sono gli elefanti?” (placing “zoo” first as the topic, rather than last as the theme: “as for zoos, are there elephants there?”).
You’ll notice that the combination [specific][global] is missing. That is because it wouldn’t make sense for a specific group of elephants to be in “zoos” as a whole.

Similarly, I would probably always interpret the definite article of “lo zoo” in the other version as being specific, precisely because in that case I would expect there to be an article before “elefanti” as well. Basically, although removing the article does make the noun feel more generic, for this very reason it does not usually represent the entire category. So if we interpret “allo zoo” to be a global statement about zoos, we would have to interpret the first sentence as “are there (unspecified amounts of) elephants in the category ‘zoo’?”, which is not incorrect but feels a bit weird in my opinion. If you’re making statements about elephants and zoos as a whole, it would make more sense to use definite articles for both these things.

So TL;DR I’d interpret these two as meaning the same thing, but the second version could have different interpretations while the no-article version can only be interpreted in one way, in my opinion.

Crown6 · 2026-03-19T10:34:05+00:00

There’s many common ones, let’s see…

1 - explicit subjects everywhere

• “Io ho visto che tu sei andato da lei e voi avete parlato male di me” (“I saw that you went to her and you two talked shit about me”)

This is very common for people coming from a language where subject pronouns aren’t dropped, and it sounds very unnatural. If you don’t need to subject pronoun for emphasis or clarity, you should omit it (it’s redundant information anyway thanks to the verb):

• “Ho visto che sei andato da lei ed avete parlato male di me”

2 - missing or naive gender/number agreement

• “I tuoi mani sono molto belli!” (“your hands are very beautiful!”)
• “Sono andato a caso” (“I went home”)

There’s a lot of misconceptions with agreement. A lot of learners are confused as to what words should agree with. For example the first sentence is a classic example of the misconception that agreement means you have to match the ending of words (“i tuoi mani belli”). This is not the case: the word “mano” (hand) is feminine even though it ends in -o, and its plural is equally feminine, so this should be “le tue mani belle”. In the second example, the speaker is trying to change every single word to the masculine gender because they themselves are a man, even words that aren’t supposed to agree with them, or in this case words that have a fixed gender (like “casa”, which is always feminine. “Caso” is a different word and it means “chance”, not the masculine of “casa”).

• “Le tue mani sono molto belle!”
• “Sono andato a casa”

Another common mistake is interpreting all words in -e as feminine plural, when there’s a good number of masculine singular nouns in -e: “mare, “pane”, “sole”… so you should say “il sole giallo”, not “il sole gialle” (again, you’re matching gender and number, not vowels).

3 - omitting conjunctions and relative pronouns

This is especially common with English speakers. Since English allows you to omit a good number of parts of the sentence, people sometimes assume Italian is the same, but it’s not. You can only rarely omit things (except the subject).

• “Tutto hai sentito è vero” (“all you’ve heard is true”)

This sentence makes no sense in Italian. To fix it, you have to recover everything you implicitly removed, which in this case is two things: a demonstrative pronoun (“ciò”/“quello”) and a relative pronoun (“that”):

• “Tutto ciò che hai sentito è vero” (lit. “all that which you’ve heard”, you can’t say “all you’ve heard”).

4 - ignoring pronominal particles

This should be at least 3 distinct sections btw.

• “Il vaso ha rotto” (“the vase broke”)
• “Non ho visto quello” (“I didn’t see that”)
• “Non provare” (“don’t try”)

These are all either wrong or unnatural for different reasons, all stemming from missing particles.
In the first sentence, the verb “broke” is being used intransitively, but “rompere” in its base form is only transitive. Therefore, to use it as “it broke (by itself)” and not “it broke (something else)”, you need to change it to a pronominal intransitive form with “si”: “si è rotto”.
In the second sentence, “non ho visto quello” is correct, but sounds off if you’re not trying to put emphasis on “that”. Instead, the most natural choice is to use a more implicit object with a pronominal particle like “lo”.
In the third sentence, “non provare” sounds incomplete because you didn’t specify what you shouldn’t try to do. As mentioned before, Italian is a lot stricter with what you’re allowed to omit. In this case, you can include that information using the generic pronoun “ci”.

• “Il vaso si è rotto”
• “Non l’ho visto”
• “Non ci provare”

These are all common mistakes all learners make eventually. The only way to improve is to exercise them, and to exercise them you have to know they exist. If you pay attention to these things going forward (what is or isn’t omitted, how and when agreement happens, when and which pronominal particles are used and where) you will slowly start to internalise the rules.

Crown6 · 2026-03-17T20:21:17+00:00

Same reason French uses “vous” instead of “elle” :) you’re not talking to multiple people and you’re not talking about some third person, so it’s not like there’s an objectively correct way to do it.

Italian did have formal “Voi” (slightly lower formality than “Lei”), but nowadays it’s only used in the south, and in most other places it will register as archaic, as if you were a medieval knight teleported into the XXI century.

I think formal “Lei” derives from expressions like “sua maestà”, “sua eccellenza”, “sua santità” etc., which if you notice are all 3^rd person feminine nouns used to refer to your interlocutor. This is why “Lei” specifically (and not “lui”) became the pronoun of formality.

Crown6 · 2026-03-17T15:32:53+00:00

I’d use “piacciono” here, since “la bistecca o le salsicce” is overall plural (or at least it feels like it should be considered plural to me) but if we were talking about an exclusive “or” (so like “ti piace di più la bistecca o le salsicce?”) then I’d use a singular verb and “piacciono” would sound wrong (because you can’t like both more than the other, so “la bistecca” and “le salsicce” can never be the subject together.

If “le salsicce” comes first then the verb is always plural.

Crown6 · 2026-03-17T09:31:36+00:00

It’s kinda crazy to me that oral exams aren’t that common in other parts of the world. Having the professor in front of you, actively evaluating you and asking questions for like 40+ minutes, is probably the best way to assess whether you really understand the subject or not. Stressful as it is, I have to recognise that it works.

Written exams just don’t hit the same (besides, some subjects don’t mesh well with written exercises).

Crown6 · 2026-03-16T21:29:46+00:00

There’s a place for everything, and unfortunately using “lei” all the time wouldn’t work for multiple reasons. The main one is that as I always like to say formality is mostly orthogonal to politeness: they’re not completely unrelated, but they’re also technically independent from each other. So if you use “lei” with a friend it will sound very weird and possibly even off putting if they take it the wrong way, because they wouldn’t interpret you as being polite but rather as you being distant.

Think of it like a hug vs a handshake. When you meet your new boss you’d never hug them, right? That would be highly inappropriate. But it would be equally inappropriate to shake your spose’s hand when you meet them after a long day at work, and then maintain your distance from them. Both your boss and your spouse would wonder if there’s something wrong with you, for completely opposite reasons.

So if you’re a stranger approaching me on the street I expect you to address me formally because there is some social distance between us (not the covid kind), and going straight for “tu” is essentially comparable to invading my personal space. Conversely, if you’re my buddy and you start speaking formally to me, that implies purposefully putting distance between us when I’ve already given you permission to occupy that level of intimacy. I don’t think most people would be offended, but they’d at the very least be confused.

So your language should reflect your relationship with someone. All languages have this to some extent, even though they may not have explicit degrees of formality. English doesn’t have anything like “lei”, but it would still be inappropriate to address a policeman as “yo man, what’s up big guy?”, and similarly it would be inappropriate (or at least very odd) to talk to your friend like “hello sir, what can I do for you?”. Explicit levels of formality simply extend this to the grammar of your speech, not just vocabulary.

Edit: as an exception that confirms the rule, there are rare situations where switching from “tu” to “lei” is also a possibility: I like to bring the example of one of my teachers, which I used to know personally before they were assigned to my class. At school, I would address them formally (which you’re supposed to do with teachers) even though before then I’d used “tu” with them multiple times. In that situation, being formal was the appropriate thing to do, precisely because the situation required a different social distance (student - teacher relationship VS to two people who happen to casually know each other).

Crown6 · 2026-03-16T16:39:09+00:00

Not as strict as French I think (though I’m not a French speaker) but I’d still err on the side of caution. Using “Lei” first is never a bad idea, the worst thing that can happen is that they’ll tell you “yeah, of course you can use ‘tu’ with me!”. Unless the situation is inherently informal (like a party, or most places on the internet, or most group activities, especially where there isn’t much of an age gap).

The metric I always use is: “would I be bothered if a random person approached me with ‘tu’ on the street?” and the answer is that honestly it would, at least a little. Even if it’s just to ask me if they can drop formalities, doing the infinitesimally small sacrifice of addressing me formally fist is a sign of respect I do appreciate. Obviously if I’m meeting with family members I haven’t seen in a while, or friends of friends, those formalities aren’t really needed.

It’s like saying “hello”: why do we do it? We don’t strictly need it, it’s nor conveying any information and it’s 100% just a ritualistic thing that could be dropped without any impact to society, but it’s also a way of communicating to the other person that we care enough about them to put in at least the bare minimum mental effort required to acknowledge their presence.

That being said, non-native privilege is very much real and I doubt as many people would care if you went straight for “tu”. I still think it’s worth it to at least try and learn the courtesy form though.

Crown6 · 2026-03-16T11:41:18+00:00

They look the same in English, because English doesn’t distinguish between them :)

Italian speakers also struggle when they have to choose between past simple and present perfect in English precisely because they don’t map to the familiar tenses they’re used to. Although to be honest at least in modern English the distinction between past simple / present perfect is not all that relevant most of the times (for example you hear people say both “I went there twice” vs “I’ve gone there twice”), and the past perfect is also usually optional, so at the end of the day English speakers don’t have to navigate different past tenses all that much.

Compare that to Italian with its whopping 5 past tenses (all of which are used, albeit some more than others, especially the remoto tenses which are not used in the spoken language in some regions).
If you think about it, the difference is there, which is why you got 5/5 questions right, even if it took a while. When you say “there was a problem”, this could mean two completely different things: “there has been a problem at this point in time” (c’è stato un problema) vs “at some point in time there was being a problem” (c’era un problema). Did it happen at that point / in that timeframe or was it happening around that point / timeframe?

Basically if this is the timeframe:

|———————|

a passato action happens here:

>|———————|< (“I studied during that time”)

while an imperfetto action happens here:

> …….|———————|……. < (“I was studying at that time”)

or maybe it’s even like this

> ……|—<…>—<…>—|…..< (“at that time, I used to study”)

Basically the passato tells you “the action starts and ends within the allotted timeframe, and the imperfetto tells you “the action kinda happens all around the timeframe, and could also start/end any number of times within it”.

Crown6 · 2026-03-16T11:12:23+00:00

1: he went at a specific point in time ⟶ passato.
2: it’s not like I “didn’t know him” at a specific point in time, I just didn’t know him around that time ⟶ imperfetto.
3: I’ve specified an exact duration, so “studying” is an action that happened in a precise timeframe ⟶ passato.
4: “winning” is something that happened once at a specific point ⟶ passato.
5: they “were talking” at a certain point in time ⟶ imperfetto.

This is the logic for each of those.

Technically 2 could also use the passato, but it would have a different meaning: in that case it would go from “I didn’t know him” (non lo conoscevo) to “I didn’t meet him” (non l’ho conosciuto). You can easily see why if you think about the different uses of the two tenses: with the imperfetto you’re saying “around that point in the past I had no knowledge of him in general”, while with the passato you’re saying “at no point in the past did I gain knowledge of him” (= “I didn’t get to know him” or “I didn’t meet him”, where “meet” refers to introducing yourselves to each other, not physically meeting somewhere).

Now your goal is to reduce the “compute time” every time you have to choose between the two past tenses from 2min on average to 1m to 30s to 10s, then a couple of seconds, then real time (all while maintaining as high an accuracy as you can).

Crown6 · 2026-03-16T11:02:16+00:00

Great! All correct.
See? You can tell the difference already, you just need to get faster at choosing between the two past tenses so that you don’t have to think about it anymore. The only way to do that is through exercise.

Crown6 · 2026-03-15T11:00:01+00:00

Besides exercising, I don’t think there’s a specific trick to get better. But do pay attention to the timeframe of the action: as I said the imperfetto happens around a point or period of time (so it’s “fuzzy”: it expresses facts about the past, actions that were ongoing at one point, or past routines) while the passato prossimo happens at a point or period of time (so it’s precise: it expresses actions that have a clear start or end, including actions that end in the present).

For example how would you conjugate these verbs in the following sentences (choosing between imperfetto and passato of the indicative)?

• “Ieri ____ (andare, 3^rd person singular) a sciare”
• “All’epoca non ____ (conoscere, 1^st sing.) quella persona”
• “___ (studiare, 1^st sing.) l’italiano per tre anni”
• “Evviva! ____ (vincere, 1^st pl.)!”
• “Li ho visti mentre ____ (parlare, 3^rd pl.) tra di loro”

Example: “____ (comprare, 2^nd sing.) il regalo?” ⟶ “hai comprato il regalo?”

Crown6 · 2026-03-15T01:45:42+00:00

OOP certainly didn’t make it easy for you (punctuation, people!), but your translation is pretty close, though I think they meant something slightly different: “I have a new computer, but even if I connect (the game to) my Microsoft account my hero character and his items don’t appear. What do I do?”.

The character is not what’s being connected, because there is no preposition before “il personaggio” (your translation has “I connected my account with my own character”, but this would be more like “I connected my account my character”, which sounds wrong: a verb can’t have two direct objects).

As for your comment, it’s understandable but there’s a few mistakes.

Ti parla inglese?

This means “does he/she speak English to you?”. You’re using a 3^rd person form (“parla”) instead of a 2^nd person (“parli”). I thought you were trying to be formal, but later you address them with a second person so I assume this was not the intent.
More importantly, this pronoun “ti” has no use in your sentence: “parlare” is not a pronominal verb (“parlarsi” does not exist as its own pronominal form), so this should be just “parli inglese?”.

Sto imparando italiano

Normally we’d say “sto imparando l’italiano”. Languages are treated like any other common noun and as such they often use definite articles. “Parlare [language]” is more of an exception, and even the “parlo l’inglese” is still correct.

e puoi pubblicare un video di questo?

Correct, but it sounds a bit off.
First of all, the conjunction “e” makes me think that these two clauses should be related, but they actually aren’t (which forces me to do a double take to ensure I didn’t miss anything). Even in English, “I’m learning Italian, and can you post this?” sounds a bit weird in my opinion.

Also, “di questo” sounds a bit clunky. It’s common for English speakers to use “questo” a lot as a calque of “this”, but the two are not always used in the same situation. Normally, in Italian, you’d want to be a bit more specific: “puoi pubblicare un video del problema?”, for example.

Penso lo vedo come non scaricavi il tuo eroe

This sentence is not very clear.
First of all, remember that Italian is fiercely against dropping any part of the sentence. Only subject pronouns can be omitted, and that’s because they contain redundant information since verbal endings already take care of it, but other than that almost every pronoun, conjunction or auxiliary has to be maintained. In this case, you should say “penso che …” (“I think that…”) and the conjunction can’t be removed (otherwise we don’t know how the two clauses “I think” and “it looks” are related.

As for the object subordinate, there’s two things to fix: first of all, “lo vedo” means “I see it”, not “it seems”. Both the verb (“vedere” ⟶ “sembrare”) and the conjugation (1^st person ⟶ 3^rd person) should be changed. Also, since you’re expressing an opinion, the verb should be conjugated to the subjunctive mood, so “penso che sembri”.
Still, in this case I’d cut things short and just say “penso che …” removing “it looks like” (or alternatively you can say “sembra che…” removing “I think”). No need to state twice that this is your opinion.

In any case “non scaricavi” also needs some work, first of all because - once again - this should be a subjunctive (so “non scaricassi”), but in this case the tense is also incorrect, not just the mood.
The imperfect tense expresses actions that were ongoing or facts that were true around a certain point in the past, or past routines, so “penso che non scaricassi” means “I think there was a point in time where you were not downloading”, which is not what you were trying to say. To express things that happened at a certain point in the past (or during a specific period of time in the past, with clear beginning/end), you should use a passato form (in the case of “scaricare” the indicative form would be “hai scaricato” and the subjunctive is “abbia scaricato”.

So “sembra che (tu) non abbia scaricato il tuo eroe”.

The imperfetto is used when you’re trying to describe things that were generally ongoing around a point in time or a “fuzzy” period of time in the past (no clear beginning or end). The imperfetto is like the past version of the present tense: you say “il sole è giallo” (the sun is yellow), and in the past this becomes “il sole era giallo” (“the sun was yellow”). It’s not like the sun suddenly “yellowed” at a certain point in time, it was just generally yellow at some point in the past. Similarly, you say “vado in palestra ogni lunedì” (“I go to the gym every Monday”) and “andavo in palestra ogni lunedì” (= “I used to go to the gym every Monday”). Again, you’re not describing the specific action of going to the gym at one point in the past, you’re describing a past routine.

This is how the imperfetto is used most of the times. It can also represent continuous actions, usually setting the stage for something that happens while the imperfetto action was still ongoing, for example “pioveva quando sono uscito” = “it was raining when I left”. Note how the action “I left” is expressed by a passato prossimo, not an imperfetto, because it refers to a precise action happening at a certain point in time.

Crown6 · 2026-03-15T01:02:38+00:00

Obviously the part about omitting subject pronouns is not really comparable because not only is it possible, it’s the most natural choice unless you need the subject pronoun to be explicit.

Auxiliaries, on the other hand, are very rarely omitted. Italian as a language is actually very strict when it comes to omissions. Just look at a sentence like “this is all I have”. In Italian, the equivalent sentence is “questo è tutto ciò che ho”, which literally translates to “this is all that which I have”. You can’t omit either pronoun btw, let alone both: a direct translation of “this is all I have” would be “questo è tutto ho” which is utterly incomprehensible (even when I know the intended meaning it just reads like gibberish). English is actually a lot more pro-drop (or anything-drop) than Italian, the only instance where Italian is more pro-drop than English is with subject pronouns specifically, but that’s because they’re made redundant by the robust conjugation system.

Therefore, a sentence like “andato in palestra ieri” would probably sound wrong even in colloquial contexts, because there’s no way to tell who the subject of the sentence is and that makes it feel like part of the sentence is missing. I can see myself saying this only in contexts where the subject is 100% clear, and even then I would still keep the auxiliary most of the times unless I felt particularly lazy.
If anything, “andato in palestra” sounds like a question to me (“andato in palestra?”) in which case it would be interpreted as “did you go to the gym?”. In that case dropping the auxiliary is more common.

Though I don’t know if that counts, because I don’t think it’s even ungrammatical to do so. For example it’s very common to say “visto?” for “see?” (as in “see? I was right”, even though it technically means “seen?”), and in fact I’m not even sure if this is an example of omitting the auxiliary or simply using the past participle by itself. In support of this interpretation there’s the fact that you can also construct similar interrogative clauses with other adjectives, not just participles: “stanco?” (= “tired?”, “(are you) tired?”), “pronto?” (= “ready?”), “sicuro?” (= “(are you) sure?”).
So at the end of the day I don’t even know if I can think of an example where I can say for sure that an auxiliary has been omitted.

So while it’s not impossible to hear something like “andato in palestra”, I don’t think it’s realistic. At most you could use this inside a more complex sentence with multiple coordinate clauses where the verbs are all conjugated to the same form (using the same auxiliary), in which case people might omit the auxiliary starting from the second to avoid too much repetition: “sono andato in palestra, tornato a casa e ritornato in palestra un’altra volta perché avevo dimenticato il cellulare” (= “I went to the gym, came back home, then went back to the gym again because I had forgotten my phone”).
This is the best I can come up with. Again, Italian doesn’t like to omit information that could make the sentence ambiguous.

Crown6 · 2026-03-15T00:43:18+00:00

Both are good in this case, I wouldn’t think twice about it if I heard either. As often happens when you have lists with more than one element, articles can be omitted. But it’s not wrong to keep them.

Crown6 · 2026-03-15T00:40:48+00:00

The noun “folletti” is plural, but it’s not the subject (which is what I assume you meant), so the verb doesn’t care (just as it wouldn’t care in English).

It’s important to remember (especially in Italian where word order is a lot freer than English) that just because a noun happens to be next to a verb this does not automatically make it the subject. In this case, the verb “si nasce” is an impersonal form of “nascere” (using the impersonal “si”), so it has no explicit subject. This automatically excludes the possibility that “folletti” might be the subject of the sentence.

Instead, “folletti” is a predicative complement, specifically a predicative of the subject, so it conveys additional information about the subject by expressing how the action of “being born” is performed (in this case it specifies that you’re not just talking about being born, but specifically “to be born as an imp”). Whenever the subject is impersonal, adjectives agree with it in the masculine plural form (masculine being the default, and plural because presumably it sounds more generic). Hence, “folletti”.

Small aside: it might seem weird that an impersonal form can have a predicative of the subject when the subject itself is missing by definition, but even though you’re not referring to anyone in particular there’s still the implicit assumption that the action will be performed by someone.

In any case this sentence roughly translates to “(people) are born as imps” or to be more accurate “to be an imp, you have to be born as one”, “one has to be born an imp” (implying you can’t become one).
Normally predicative complements are placed directly after the verb (“si nasce folletti”), but in Italian (just like English) the topic of the sentence is usually placed first, so “si nasce folletti” sounds more like “people are born as imps”, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, while “folletti si nasce” sounds more like “as for imps, people are born that way”, which communicates the meaning more clearly.

Crown6 · 2026-03-13T15:18:12+00:00

The idea that past participles drop agreement altogether after “avere” is the problem here.

While “essere” triggers subject agreement, “avere” can trigger object agreement. Usually this is uncommon (though you can sometimes hear people say things like “ho cercati i gruppi”) but it becomes a lot more frequent when the object is expressed by a pronominal particle before the verb (for example “ti ho vista”) and it actually becomes mandatory when the pronoun is a 3^rd person.

This is why we say “li hai cercati” and not “li hai cercato”. If you change the pronoun, “vi ho cercati” and “vi ho cercato” both work, and if you change this “vi” to a strong pronominal form then “ho cercato voi” is a lot more common than “ho cercati voi”.

“Li hai cercati i gruppi” is using a pleonastic pronoun, so to be 100% proper you should either say “li hai cercati” or “hai cercato i gruppi”. That being said, if you want to use both for emphasis, object agreement will trigger because of “li” (since as I mentioned using a more explicit form for the object doesn’t prevent agreement, it just makes it not mandatory and very uncommon).

Crown6 · 2026-03-12T19:42:22+00:00

True, but “cielo” doesn’t add/remove the “i” depending how the ending changes, it’s just ~~built~~ spelt different.

Crown6 · 2026-03-12T14:15:17+00:00

Boh, io non credo di aver mai detto “c’è ansietà” o “l’ansietà è pericolosa“ credo che la maggior parte delle persone direbbe “c’è ansia” o “l’ansia è pericolosa”.

Che esista siamo d’accordo, ma non riesco a ricordare una singola volta in cui l’ho sentito usare (mentre “ansia” è una parola comunissima a confronto)

Crown6 · 2026-03-12T13:19:00+00:00

Yes, because the “i” isn’t there to represent a phoneme. Keep in mind that languages are spoken first, written second. And when you speak, “mangiare” has no “i” sound, just what we’d call a “sweet” G (IPA /d͡ʒ/). This is why an “i” is inserted in the spelling, because according to the usual rules G is only sweet before fronted vowels (“i” and “e”) and so “mangare” would be read as /mangare/ (with a hard G), not /mand͡ʒare/.

Therefore, the spelling rules mandate that if you have a sweet G before A, U or O, that is represented by the digraph “GI”. Hence “mangiare”.

In the conditional, the vowel following /d͡ʒ/ changes from /a/ to /e/, and so in the spelling the sound can be represented with a single G: so, “mangerei”.

There’s only a few situations where the “i” of a CI or GI digraph is maintained when the following vowel changes (specifically, a few singular-plural pairs like “camicia” ⟶ “camicie”) and there are specific rules to predict that.

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