In these times of hardship, people around the world are searching for ways to show solidarity with Italy on social media. In English, the hashtag #WeStandWithItaly has gone viral, but so has its Italian equivalent #SiamoConVoi (siamo con voi) which translates as We are with you.
Since many of you are probably unfamiliar with Italian grammar, let’s take a moment to break this phrase down into smaller parts:
Siamo (first person plural of essere in the present tense ‘to be’) + con (preposition ‘with’) + voi (‘you’ plural)
Below you can see the complete conjugation of essere ‘to be‘ in the present tense.
(Io) sono
(Tu) sei
(Lui/Lei) è
(Noi) siamo
(Voi) siete
(Loro) sono
I am
You are
He/She is
We are
You (all) are
They are
You may have noticed that the personal pronoun noi ‘we‘ is missing from the sentence siamo con voi. This is because in Italian, it isn’t always necessary to use personal pronouns due to the fact that the verb conjugation already reveals who the subject is. The only time it is important to include the pronoun is for emphasis or comparative purposes as in the example below:
Noi siamo con voi, ma voi non siete con noi!
We are with you, but you aren’t with us!
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.
