Tutorial Transcript

Hi everyone and welcome back to my channel! In this video you will learn how to use "piacere", "bastare", "servire", and similar verbs in a sentence. In this video we take the verb "piacere" as an example, but keep in mind that all the information I share with you in this video can be applied to all the other verbs that work just like "piacere". Let's see what I mean. Italian language has a basica structure which can be described as follows: S V O, that is subject verb object. Subject, verb, object. This means that a sentence starts with the subject, followed by the verb, followed by the object. This is generally true, but when we use verbs like "piacere", "mancare", "servire", "bastare", etc. this structure is no longer relevant. With these verbs the general structure S V O is flipped over and so we have the following structure: O V S. The object comes first in the sentence, then there is the verb and the subject. For example: "I like pizza". In Italian I'm not the subject of this sentences, "la pizza" is. But as you can see from the example, the subject is not at the beginning of sentences, it is at the end. And this is confusing. Let's analyse this sentence more in depth: "mi", indirect object pronoun which means "to me"; "Piace", verb; "la pizza", subject. You can see that the verb "piace" is conjugated at the third person singular to make the agreement with the subject possible. The verb "piacere", as all the other similar verbs, can be conjugated at the third person singular and plural. Let's have a look at example sentences with the verb "piacere": The first example is: "I like dancing". the verb is singular because the subject is an infinitive verb, "ballare". "I like coffee", the same happens here, the verb is singular because the subject is a singular noun. Then, "I like cakes", here the verb is plural because the subject is a plural noun. Let's have a look at a few sentences that are more complex. "I like that you come visit me often", here we have the conjunction "che", which needs the subjunctive afterwards, we also have the verb "piacere", which expresses an emotion, so we have to use the subjunctive. It goes without saying that we need to use the present subjunctive because the sentence is at the present. "I don't like that you come visit me often", here we have a negative sentence with "not", but the negation doesn't affect the sentence too much, as we nonetheless have to use subjunctive for all the reasons we've explained before. "I like how you've decorated this room", here we have the conjunction "how", therefore we need to use the passato prossimo (an indicative tense), because "you have decorated" is a fact. The same goes for the negative sentence: "I don't like how you've decorated the room", the "how" is important here and it wants an indicative tense, even the sentence is negative. All this information is true for all the other verbs that work like "piacere", such as: "to be enough", "to be necessary", "to miss/to be left", "to interest", "to take", etc. Let's have a look at other example sentences, this time with the verb "bastare", to prove that it works the same way as "piacere". The verb "bastare" works just like the verb "piacere". Let's read the following examples: "it is sufficient to add salt to the water", "a bit of salt is enough", "all the ingredients we have are sufficient", "It's enough for me that you come visit me often", "it's not enough for me that you come visit me often", "it's enough for me what you've already done", "it's not enough for me what you've already done". Here the subject is the infinitive verb, here the subject is the undefined quantity, here the subject is the plural noun, here we have "that" followed by a present subjunctive. The same goes for the negative sentence. Here we have "quello che", which need an indicative tense. The same goes for the last example. We can make examples with the verb "servire" as well. The structure stays the same. All these verbs work the same. "I need a pen", "you need to study to move forward", "we need notebooks for the lesson", "it is necessary that you go to the supermarket", "it's not necessary that you go to the supermarket", "she needs what you've written", "she doesn't need what you've written". Now, I would like to explain the meanings of the two verbs "bastare" and "servire", in case you don't know what they mean. "Bastare" means "to be sufficient/enough", so if I say "basta" it means "it's enough/sufficient". "Servire" means "to be necessary" or "to need", so if I say "serve" it means "it's necessary" or "it's needed". I hope this video cleared up the confusion surrounding these verbs. If you still have questions, leave them down below, okay? Oh, one more thing: if you want to see more Italian video lesson, vlogs or grammar lessons, subscribe to my channel so you'll be notified when I publish a new video on my channel. Also, leave a comment below with suggestions for new future videos, maybe you want to see something specific, so let me know so I can do something about it! Thank you so much. Thank you for watching this lesson, I'll see you in my next one. Bye!

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