Verbs In (–ire) That Add (–isc) To Their Roots

 

So far we have seen that conjugating verbs in the present tense is not that hard in Italian, it just takes a little memorization. The good news is that most verbs are regular and will follow the conjugations we have already learned.  However, there are some irregular verbs that change their roots even though they have the same ending as regular verbs.

In fact, there is a group of verbs like like finire (to finish) that place (–isc) between the root of the verb and the regular endings, for most of the conjugations in the present tense.

The most commonly used verbs in this group are:

Capire (to understand)

Preferire (to prefer)

Finire (to finish)

Pulire (to clean)

Spedire (to mail/send)

Costruire (to build)

 

So, let’s see how this works:

Normally if we wanted to conjugate finire in the present tense we would take –ire out and add the regular endings we learned two weeks ago.  But the verb would sound odd, almost comical: fino, fini, fine, … So, -isc comes to the rescue, and that’s why we have:

(io) finisco

(tu) finisci

(lui/lei) finisce

(noi) finiamo

(voi) finite

(loro) finiscono

 

 

Same thing happens with capire:

(Io) capisco

(tu) capisci

(lui/lei) capisce

(noi) capiamo

(voi) capite

(loro) capiscono

 

Now try to conjugate preferire, pulire, costruire and spedire; they all change the same way.