The Passato Remoto is a beautiful verb tense in Italian full of irregular verbs and is used in a way that I find particularly poetic.
I would classify this tense as Advanced Italian for that very reason and due to the fact that you could very easily spend an extended period of time in Italy not using this tense all that often and get around just fine.
Like always, this blog post corresponds to my video on this very topic. You can click here to watch that video.
Let us now begin this lesson with taking a look at how we conjugate Regular Verbs in the Passato Remoto:
Parlare - to talk
io parlai
tu parlasti
lui/lei parlò
noi parlammo
voi parlaste
loro parlarono
Credere - to believe
io credetti / credei
tu credesti
lui/lei credette / credé
noi credemmo
voi credeste
loro credettero / crederono
Note: I did not go over the variations of -ERE conjugations in the video lesson, but I’ve included them here for reference.
Dormire - to sleep
io dormii
tu dormisti
lui/lei dormì
noi dormimmo
voi dormiste
loro dormirono
Here are now some Irregular Verbs conjugated in the Passato Remoto:
Essere - to be
io fui
tu fosti
lui/lei fu
noi fummo
voi foste
loro furono
Avere - to have
io ebbi
tu avesti
lui/lei ebbe
noi avemmo
voi aveste
loro ebbero
Fare - to do/make
io feci
tu facesti
lui/lei fece
noi facemmo
voi faceste
loro fecero
Dire - to tell
io dissi
tu dicesti
lui/lei disse
noi dicemmo
voi diceste
loro dissero
To help give you a feel for how this tense is used, I’ll now share this longer text with you with a few verbs in the Passato Remoto. This story is of an event that took place over 10 years ago, was a one-time event, and happened at a specified point in time.
Durante la mia prima lezione di italiano, la prof SCRISSE sulla lavagna il verbo parlare. Poi ci CHIESE, “qualcuno sa che significa?” Nessuno ALZÒ la mano. Io sapevo la risposta, quindi ALZAI la mano e DISSI “significa to talk?” La prof mi DISSE, “ma bravo Tom!”
In English:
During my first Italian lesson, the teacher wrote on the verb parlare on the board. She then asked us, “does anyone know what this means?” No one raised their (his/her) hand. I knew the answer, so I rose my hand and said “does it mean to talk?” The teacher said, “very good, Tom!”
To sum it all up, this beautiful tense is simply used to talk about the distant past. You can think of it being the equivalent to the English Simple Past if only the Passato Prossimo didn’t come around and take it’s place in modern-day Italian.