“Da tre anni” vs “Per tre anni” – What’s the difference in Italian?

When I first started learning Italian many moons ago, I clearly recall that one of the topics I struggled with the most was difference between the prepositions da and per when talking about periods of time or durations. Indeed, it is possible to translate for X number of years (to use a common example) as either da X anni or per X anni, and the difference depends completely on the surrounding context.

If you too are grappling with this topic, this is just the article for you. Hopefully, by the time you reach the end, the fog will have cleared and you’ll be able to use these two expressions just like a native speaker.

For the purpose of this article, let’s go with a time period of three years so that we can avoid throwing unnecessary Xs around.

What’s important to remember here is that the key difference is whether the three-year period is still continuing or is viewed as a completed duration.

You need to use da when something started in the past and is still happening now. In English, the equivalent construction is “have done” (present perfect) or “have been doing” (perfect progressive tense) whereas in Italian, you need to use the present tense. So, for example, you can say:

• Studio l’italiano da tre anni. = I have been studying Italian for three years. (literally “I study Italian since three years.”)
• Vivo in Italia da tre anni. = I have lived in Italy for three years. (literally “I live in Italy since three years.”)
• Lavoro qui da tre anni. = I have been working here for three years. (literally “I work here since three years.”)

One exception to this is the imperfetto tense, used when describing an action that had been going on for three years at a specific point in the past. This would normally be rendered as “had been doing” in English. For example:

• Abitavo a Roma da tre anni quando l’ho conosciuta. = I had been living in Rome for three years when I met her.
• Frequentavo l’università da tre anni e mi mancavano solo pochi esami. = I had been attending university for three years and only had a few exams left.

Per, by contrast, needs to be used when you are talking about a duration as a whole, especially when that period is finished or planned. In this case, you’ll see the passato prossimo used (e.g. ho studiato), as well as the futuro (e.g. studierò) and imperfetto (e.g. studiavo). Let’s look at a few examples:

• Ho vissuto in Italia per tre anni. = I lived in Italy for three years. (I don’t live there anymore.)
• Siamo stati insieme per tre anni. = We were together for three years. (We are no longer together.)
• Rimarrò in Italia per tre anni. = I will stay in Italy for three years. (planned duration)
• Abitavo lì per tre anni, e ogni giorno andavo al mare. = I used to live there for three years, and every day I went to the beach. (I don’t live there anymore.)

You’ll also see it used when making generic statements. For example:

• Devo rimanere in ufficio per otto ore. = I have to stay in the office for eight hours.
• Voglio provare a correre per un’ora, mi farebbe bene. = I want to try running for an hour; it would do me good.
• Non mi piace stare seduto per troppo tempo. = I don’t like sitting for too long.

Of course, as we’ve seen from the examples above, the duration doesn’t have to be counted in anni (years) – it could be secondi (seconds), minuti (minutes), mesi (months), tanto tempo (a lot of time), poco tempo (a short amount of time), and so on.

Heather Broster

Heather Broster is a graduate with honours in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, proficient in English and Italian, as well as Japanese, Welsh, and French to varying degrees of fluency. Originally from Toronto, Heather has resided in various countries, notably Italy for a period of six years. Her primary focus lies in the fields of language acquisition, education, and bilingual instruction.