Many people, possibly including yourself, feel panicky about the grammar side of things. They feel, wrongly, that they should know about grammar and are embarrassed that they don't.

In fact you do know about grammar, because you use your own language accurately every day of the week, but you may be uncertain about talking about/describing grammatical concepts. If this is the case, why should you feel bad about it? If you haven't studied it, you won't know it!

It's just something you have to learn.

We do emphasise, though, that understanding basic grammatical concepts will help you a lot in your language studies. Having a grammatical framework helps you understand the function of the parts in relation to the whole, and, as time goes on, you will find it easier to construct your own sentences, express your own thoughts.

This section of our site gives you some basic grammatical background and we hope it will help you get more from your course.

There is lots more to say, but for the moment we have kept it simple. Look out for updates!

The way a verb is laid out is in a standard, conventional pattern, usually with the infinitive at the top. See the next section for the meaning of infinitive! After the infinitive, the verb is laid out as follows:

I - called the “first person”, when you are referring to yourself
You - singular, when you are talking to one person – the “second person”
He/She/It - “third person”

All of these are “singular” pronouns, because only one person is referred to. Then the pattern is repeated for the “plural” pronouns:

We - the “first person plural”, referring to yourself and another person or people
You - plural – when you are addressing more than one person, “second person plural”
They - a group of two or more people – “third person plural”

So, taking the verb EAT as an example, the layout in English would be as follows:

(to) Eat

I eat
You eat
He/She/It eats

We eat
You eat
They eat

The same conventional pattern is used for French, Italian and Spanish, though you should also read the section below on polite and familiar forms, to get a complete overview.

In English, as you can see, the forms of the verbs vary only minimally, but in other languages, especially Italian and Spanish, there is a different form for each person, for example, the Italian for eat is “mangiare”. And the verb goes like this:

Mangiare (infinitive)

Mangio
Mangi
Mangia

Mangiamo
Mangiate
Mangiano

You will notice that there are no pronouns shown here (I, you etc). This is because they are usually left out in Italian (and Spanish) for the very reason that the form of the verb shows you which person is being referred to – so the pronoun is redundant.

Although they may look obscure, grammatical terms such as “infinitive” were named for a reason. The infinitive of the verb is a non-finite form of the verb and is generally regarded as the core form.

Non-finite means not time-defined, so,for example, if you say:

He likes to eat.

Likes is finite (present tense) but to eat (the infinitive of eat with to in front of it) is non-finite. You can't have 2 finite verbs in the same verb group, so you can't, for example, say “He likes eats”.

One of them has to be non-finite.

In English we often give the infinitive form with “to”. To run, to have, to speak etc.

In French, Spanish and Italian, the infinitive form is usually given on its own:

Avoir (French, to have)
Ser (Spanish, to be)
Andare (Italian, to go)

In all three languages, infinitives and verbs in general tend to fall into categories, usually defined by how they end, for example in Italian we talk about –are, -ere, and –ire verbs, that is verbs that end in those letters. Examples would be:

MangiARE (to eat)
VendERE (to sell)
DormIRE (to sleep)

Reflexive verbs are used where you “do something to yourself”, eg I wash myself, you look after yourself, the child dresses itself and so on. Reflexive verbs are made up of the usual part of the relevant verb along with what is called the “reflexive pronoun” – in English this is myself, yourself, himself etc.

You should be aware, however, that, as a broad generalisation, more verbs are used in a reflexive way in latin languages than in English. For example, in French, “my name is” is expressed as “I call myself” - Je m'appelle – a reflexive verb. An Italian might say “mi informo” (I inform myself) to mean “I'll get some information” and so on.

There used to be a distinction in English between the “polite” or formal form of address and the “familiar” or informal form (thou/thee/they), but it has now largely disappeared, and we use “you” whether we are talking to a friend or a stranger in the street.

In French, Italian and Spanish, the distinction still exists, however, and is widely used, even though, in these casual days, the use of the formal form is less common than it used to be.

For those of you studying Italian and Spanish, the slightly confusing thing is that the polite form in the singular (that is, when you are addressing one person you don't know or to whom you need to show respect) is actually the third person singular, so it is as though you are saying “Does he/she want another glass of wine?” The reason for this is probably that by addressing someone directly, but talking to them as though they were a third person, some distance, and therefore respect, is established between the two people.

A pronoun is any word that in some way stands for (pro) a name (noun), so if we say:

Jack likes beer
He likes beer

He, in the second sentence is a pronoun, standing for Jack, who we now know is being referred to.

Subject pronouns stand for the name where that name is the subject of the sentence, so HE, above, is a subject pronoun, whereas if we say:

Jack likes beer.
He really likes it

IT, in the second sentence, is an object pronoun. Jack/he is the subject and beer is the object. Of course, in English, the third person subject and object pronouns happen to be the same – it, but in other languages they may not be.

There are different categories of pronoun, for example possessive, reflexive:

Possessive

Jack brought his dog to the pub.

In that sentence, HIS still refers to Jack, but in relation to his owning the dog. We wouldn't say: “Jack brought he dog” but if a foreigner said that we would still understand because we recognise the general category of word.

Reflexive pronouns go with verbs:

Jack's dog can wash itself.

Foreigners have it easy when learning English as far as plurals go, because we form the plural of nouns by just sticking an s (or sometimes es) on the end:

book/books
church/churches

not that English is without its irregular plurals:

child/children
ox/oxen
knife/knives

For those of you learning French and Spanish, the rule is basically the same:

French

Livre/livres

Spanish

Libro/libros

These languages also have some exceptions, but nothing too serious.

Italian is much tricker, because masculine nouns (which generally end in O in the singular) go to I in the plural:

Libro/libri

Feminine nouns (which usually end in a in the singular) go to E in the plural:

Casa/case (house/s)

These expressions denote the existence of something. We say “There is a bank on the corner” or “There are some cups in that cabinet”. French, Spanish and Italian have similar expressions, though only Italian has two different forms (like English)

French:

Il y a…

Spanish:

Hay…

Italian:

C'è… / ci sono…

There are two articles, the definite and the indefinite article. In English, THE is the definite article (so called because it refers to a definite thing – if we say “The table is wobbly” we are referring to a specific table) A/an are the indefinite articles (an is used before vowels – a table / an orange) They are indefinite because they refer more abstractly – if we say “I want to get a new table” we are talking about an as yet unknown table, not a particular one.

Unfortunately, because French, Italian and Spanish use gender (where every object is either masculine or feminine), the articles are more complicated than in English .

Eg, in French

Le stylo (the pen)
La table (the table)
L'orange (the orange)
Les stylos (the pens)
Les tables (the tables)

In Italian, it's worse:

Il treno (the train)
Lo zio (the uncle – when words begin with Z in Italian, the definite article is different)
La madre (the mother)

I treni (the trains)
Gli zii (the uncles)
Le madri

The word tense is, in a grammatical context, simply to do with time , and, through language, showing that we are referring to present, past or future (though there are some variations on this).

Tarzan may be happy to say “Me see Jane yesterday” and we understand what he means, but most of us would probably say “I saw Jane yesterday” (but don't tell Tarzan).

In English, we have so called “simple” tenses (I call them “only one bit” tenses) and “complex” (more than one bit) tenses. Examples :

Present simple - I eat

Present continuous – I am eating

In the second example, AM is part of the tense/time construction – that's its function – and it's called an auxiliary verb. Auxiliary just means, basically, extra/additional (when I was at school they used to call it a “helping verb”).

In French, Spanish and Italian, tenses are, of course, used, and basically in the same way – sometimes without auxiliaries (simple) and sometimes with (complex). Examples:

Je mange (I eat)
J'ai mangé (I have eaten/I ate)

Languages use tenses in very subtle ways, and learning how a new language employs tenses can take time, but you will get there. There is not total overlap between how, say, English uses different past tense forms and how Italian does.

A further small complication, if you are ready for it (if not, just skip this) is to do with transitive and intransitive verb use. Sorry, more annoying jargon. Again, a basically simple concept, however.

In French and Italian (but not Spanish, for some reason), you say the equivalent of:

I HAVE eaten

But

I AM gone

In fact, in old English, a similar distinction occurred – it has dropped out of of use now.

The reason for this (and when you are studying a language, just like anything else, it's good to know why) is that eat is usually used transitively, and go intransitively – in other words, you can put an object directly after eat, but not after go:

I eat meat – OK
I go the station – NO (you can say I go TO the station, but then station does not immediately follow the verb

Modal verbs are a particular category of auxiliary verbs. They add meaning to the main verb, having minimal intrinsic meaning of their own. They usually come with a second verb in the infinitive:

I can help. (Can is the auxiliary, help is in the infinitive)

Can here expresses willingness/ability

Another example of a modal verb would be must:

We must improve our sales figures.

Must expresses a strong need, compulsion.

French, Spanish and Italian all have modal verbs, but they are used in ways that are subtly different, so this is a generally difficult area. However, the basic rule that they usually go with another verb in the infinitive holds true:

French: Il peut venir.

He can come.

Peut come from the verb pouvoir (can/able to). Venir is the infinitive of the verb to come.

These are words like to, in, from, at, by etc.

Often they are thought of as relating mainly to physical location/position/relative position, but actually the tricky thing about prepositions is the way they are used in conjunction with other words, especially verbs. For example, we say in English, to succeed IN doing something. Why? God knows! But that's what we say. Equally, in French, Spanish and Italian, different prepositions are used with different verbs.

That's the end of this brief introduction. I hope you found it useful.