Italian -are verbs

1460 verbs in this group

The first conjugation is by far the largest group in Italian and the most predictable. Almost three quarters of Italian verbs end in -are, and nearly all of them follow the same endings in every tense.

Two spelling families are worth knowing. Verbs in -care and -gare add an h before endings that start with i or e, so the c and g keep their hard sound: cercare gives cerchi and cercherò. Verbs in -ciare and -giare do the opposite, dropping the i rather than doubling it: cominciare gives cominci and comincerò.

Watch the tu form of the imperative, which ends in -a for this group (parla!) while the present indicative tu form ends in -i (parli). That reversal is the single most common -are mistake.

The 150 most common italian -are verbs

Ordered by how often they appear in real Italian, so the ones worth learning first are at the top. Every entry links to its full conjugation in all 15 tenses.

Looking for a verb that isn't here? The full index covers all 2000 verbs in the database.

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Italian -are verbs

The 150 most common italian -are verbs

Other verb groups

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