Now that we’ve become well-acquainted with the imperfect subjunctive, we will introduce 4 more irregular verbs of the tense: bere, dire, fare, and tradurre. As we will soon see, they all have something in common that will facilitate the memorization of their (irregular) conjugation process!
The 4 verbs above--though irregular--simply borrow their stems from their imperfect indicative forms; the imperfect subjunctive endings simply attach to their roots:
| Bisognava che io bevessi dell’acqua. It was necessary that I drink water. Non vedevo l’ora che Maria mi dicesse tutto quello che era successo! I couldn’t wait for Maria to tell me everything that had happened! Non era probabile che facessero la spesa per noi. It wasn’t likely that they would go grocery shopping for us. Vorrei tanto che tu traducessi questo documento in spagnolo per me. I would really like you to translate this document to Spanish for me. |
Bere | Dire | Fare | Tradurre | |
...che io | bevessi | dicessi | facessi | traducessi |
...che tu | bevessi | dicessi | facessi | traducessi |
...che lui/lei/Lei | bevesse | dicesse | facesse | traducesse |
...che noi | bevessimo | dicessimo | facessimo | traducessimo |
...che voi | beveste | diceste | faceste | traduceste |
...che loro/Loro | bevessero | dicessero | facessero | traducessero |
The 4 verbs above--though irregular--simply borrow their stems from their imperfect indicative forms; the imperfect subjunctive endings simply attach to their roots:
| bere: beve- dire: dice- fare: face- tradurre: traduce- |