Radio Arlecchino
April 9, 2007
Episode 2:  Narrating in the past - Great Caesar's Ghost
Great Caesar's Ghost

Great Caesar's Ghost

Today's episode, Great Caesar's Ghost, will help you understand the passato remoto: a simple, one-word, past tense that, just like the passato prossimo, is used to report completed actions or changes in states in the past.   While the passato prossimo is used for the 'recent' past, the passato remoto is used to talk about actions that took place in a relatively distant, or 'remote' past.   In contemporary Italian, the passato remoto has become a literary tense.   You will find it in fairy tales, short stories, and novels – and describing historical events in non-fiction biographies, histories, and encyclopedia articles.   Let's listen as Arlecchina and Colombina talk to the coliseum cats, the ghosts of Roman emperors!
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Download (right-click): ra_02.mp3  (MP3, 11:58, 7.02 MB)