Italian verb decks for Anki
Free decks for Anki, the flashcard app that schedules each card just before you would forget it. Every card asks for one verb form: you type it, and the back shows the whole tense, an example sentence where there is a good one, and a link to the verb's full conjugation on Word Holder.
Every verb has its own page
Word Holder has a page for each Italian verb with its full conjugation in every tense and real example sentences for its most common forms: essere, avere, fare, andare… Every card in these decks links to its verb's page.
Browse all Italian verbs →Which past tense first?
Start with the passato prossimo. It is the past tense of everyday Italian, spoken and written: ieri sono andato al mare, ho letto il libro.
The passato remoto is the past of novels, stories and history: fu, disse, fece are on every page of a book. In parts of southern Italy it is also everyday speech. Learn it when you start reading.
Passato prossimo: irregular past participles
In the passato prossimo only the past participle can be irregular: fatto, detto, preso, messo. The other persons just change the auxiliary (ho fatto, hai fatto, ha fatto…), so these cards ask for io only, which is enough to fix both the participle and the auxiliary, avere or essere.
With essere the participle agrees with you: sono venuto or sono venuta. The cards ask for the masculine form and list the feminine on the back.
Starter · 25 verbs
The 25 most common verbs with an irregular participle · fare → ho fatto, venire → sono venuto
Passato remoto: the 1-3-6 rule
Irregular verbs in the passato remoto break in three persons only: io, lui/lei and loro, the 1st, 3rd and 6th forms. The other three are regular and follow from the infinitive. So these cards ask for exactly those three.
| io ebbi | noi avemmo |
| tu avesti | voi aveste |
| lui/lei ebbe | loro ebbero |
For readers, lui/lei and loro matter most: stories are told in the third person.
Starter · 25 verbs, 75 cards
essere → fui, fu, furono · dire → dissi, disse, dissero
Regular verbs: learn the endings once
A regular verb follows its conjugation's pattern in every tense, so one model verb teaches the endings for thousands of others. Each deck is one model verb, with every form in numbered sub-decks. Study 01 presente first and add the next sub-deck when it feels easy; in Anki, click a sub-deck to study only that one.
01 presente · 02 passato prossimo · 03 imperfetto · 04 futuro semplice · 05 condizionale presente · 06 imperativo · 07 congiuntivo presente · 08 congiuntivo imperfetto · 09 passato remoto · 10 gerundio
Some -ire verbs add -isc- in the present (capisco, capisci, capisce, capiscono); others don't (sento). Nothing in the infinitive tells you which, so learn both models.
How the decks were chosen
- Irregular means irregular in that tense. andare is irregular in the present (vado) but regular in both past tenses (sono andato, andai), so it is in neither past-tense deck.
- Most common follows the order of Word Holder's Italian verb list, which ranks verbs by how often they appear in Italian text.
- Starter, Core and Extended grow into each other. If you studied Starter and then import Core, Anki keeps your Starter cards and their progress and adds only the new verbs.
- Pronominal forms such as farsi or farcela are left out: they are the base verb's forms with a pronoun.
How grading works
Anki compares what you type with one form and marks the differences. Some cells have more than one right answer: sono andato and sono andata, ho vissuto and sono vissuto, vendetti and vendei. The back lists every correct form. If you typed one of them, the marked difference is not a mistake: you grade yourself, so press Good.
How to import
- Download a deck (an
.apkgfile). - On a computer, open it with Anki, or use File → Import. On Android open it with AnkiDroid; on iPhone, open it with AnkiMobile.
- Importing a newer version of a deck later updates your cards instead of duplicating them.
Conjugations from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA); example sentences from Tatoeba (CC BY) and the Leipzig Corpora Collection. A card shows a sentence only when the form in it can only be the one the card asks for.