So, for instance, if you hide something, the verb you are looking for is nascondere.Į poi, ho pensato di nascondere il corpo e. So I could also say, although it would be redundant in most cases:Īs we saw above, alzare means "to raise," but alzarsi means "to rise," "to get up." Sometimes the meaning of the two types of verbs can be close but different. Let's remember that the conjugation of the verb tells us who is involved. When we conjugate a reflexive verb, the si will change into a different reflexive pronoun according to the person, and it will be detached from the verb (but close by). For example, we have the transitive form of the verb alzare (to raise) but when it's reflexive, we have alzarsi (to get up, to rise). In the dictionary, a reflexive verb is presented with si joined to the end of the infinitive (and the final e is omitted). The reflexive is necessary in Italian when someone (or something) is both the doer and the receiver of an action. They are: mi (myself), ti (yourself), ci (ourselves), si (himself/herself/itself/themselves), and vi (yourselves). We talked a little about reflexive personal pronouns in Ci Gets Around. We hope this has helped in understanding anche se and perfino. Here next to me, there's a tree that is actuallyĬaption 20, Anna presenta - Villa Borghese Play Caption Qui accanto a me c'è un albero che ha addirittura You always look for the hair in the egg (you split hairs),Ĭaptions 29-31, Marika spiega - I segni dello Zodiaco Play CaptionĪ common synonym for perfino is addirittura. In the following example, Marika could have used anche (also, even) in place of perfino, but perfino gives a better idea of something pushed to its limit. This is perhaps because fu (was) starts with “F.”Ĭaption 46, Ti racconto una fiaba - Biancaneve Play Caption In the following example, persino was used. You might be right!Įven if he paid me three hundred euros. You might very well be thinking perfino would have worked better than persino in the first example above, since the next word starts with an s. The above example, which uses both perfino and fino, sounds much clearer with persino. We don’t say fra fratelli because to Italian ears, the two F’s sound bad together, even though they both are equally correct in meaning. A good example is: tra fratelli (between or among brothers). When speaking properly, Italians try to avoid cacofonia (cacophony), which is what happens when there are too many instances of one particular consonant all together. Perfino and persino may be used interchangeably to mean “even” or “to the point of.” We choose one over the other for reasons of eufonia (euphony), that is, harmonious sound, in other words, because it sounds better. I could even work until midnight, but I would never finish. Potrei lavorare persino fino a mezzanotte, ma non finirei mai. The following examples give us an idea of the difference between fino and perfino. So we can think of perfino as meaning “ to the degree.” Sino is another way of saying fino (and in fact perfino also exists). The first part is per which means “for” or sometimes “to.” Persino is stronger, with more extreme limits, than anche se. In the above example, we could also use the other word our subscriber asked about: persino se. Remember that where we see se (if), there might be a verb in the subjunctive lurking nearby. See this lesson about the subjunctive and conditional.Īnche se mi pagasse cento euro, non gli farei quel lavoro.Įven if he paid me a hundred euros, I wouldn’t do the job for him. In the next example, we use anche s e to connect a subjunctive clause with a conditional one. In the following example, we use se (if) in Italian but it doesn’t make sense to use “if” in English, so we need “although,” or the more emphatic “even though.”ĭopo mezzogiorno, cominciamo a dire "Buonasera",Īfter noon, we start saying "good evening,"Īnche se, in realtà, non è proprio sera, è pomeriggio.Įven though, actually, it's not really evening it's the afternoon.Ĭaptions 19-20, Marika spiega - L'orologio Play Caption The individual words themselves are easy enough - anche means “also” or “even,” and se means “if” - but let’s see how these words fit into sentences, and more importantly, which contexts translate with which English equivalents. Let’s examine anche se (although, even if). These word combinations have to do with connecting two ideas in a sentence.
#Perfino italian how to#
A Yabla Italian subscriber has asked about how to use anche se (even if) and perfino se (even if).