21 Comments
I must clear that with myself. Mi ha pensato is actually "Lui mi ha pensato" or mean something else.Sorry but i'm little confused with this.
417
Are you having troubles with the unexpressed subject? Here it can be "lui" or "lei" and the object of the thought (in this case: the speaker) is a he "("pensato").
I don't think so. Only in "essere" forms, there is a match with gender.
Look at https://www.duolingo.com/comment/461310: "Also you have to remember that for the most part the part of il passato prossimo that changes (conjugates) with the subject is part 1 - the auxiliary verb (avere or essere). The past participle only changes if the auxilary verb is essere (which is only used for a small percentage of verbs)."
- 417
True, but the form where the past particle agrees with the gender of the speaker is also common. If the gender of the speaker is female, then the sentence can also be mi ha pensata. If it is a group of men, it would be ci ha pensati and, for a group of women, ci ha pensate.
The sentence without using "mi" would be "Ha (lui/lei/Lei) pensato a me" so I'm not so sure pensata would work here.
- 1450
Passato prossimo with avere agrees with the direct object if it is expressed with a clitic pronoun before the verb. For lo/l'/la/li/le/ne this agreement is mandatory, but for mi/ti/ci/vi, the agreement is optional:
Singular (mi or ti)
- Ha pensat
oa me = He/she thought about me (male or female) - Mi ha pensat
o= He/she thought about me (male or female) - Mi ha pensat
a= He/she thought about me (female only)
Plural (ci or vi)
- Ha pensato a noi = He/she thought about us (males and/or females)
- Ci ha pensat
o= He/she thought about us (males and/or females) - Ci ha pensat
i= He/she thought about us (at least one male) - Ci ha pensat
e= He/she thought about us (females only)
Formal you-translation is missing here: You have thought about me.
My dictionary doesn't give any other meaning to "Pensare" than "to think" but if you use that tried and trusted (!!) tool, Google translate, it comes up with "believe" as well. Safer to use "credere" penso Io :)
Pensare could mean believe as well, but mostly to start off an opinion. Credo che... or penso che... could be used interchangeably because even though they have different uses, both indicate this is a point of view that you stick to. But in this case, it would be strange to translate mi ha pensato as he believed in me. That might be better said as ha creduto in me or ha avuto fiducia in me.
This Italian sentence seems wrong. Where is the word "about" represented? Wouldn't it be more correct to write: Ha pensato di me?
- 417
'to think about' = *pensare a".
The sentence could be rewritten as ha pensato a me. But a me can also be written as mi (this also change its position in the sentence).
Therefore: ha pensato a me = mi ha pensato.
Yeah I agree with this, with a caveat. When "thinking" in Italian, you can think "that something...", or think "of something", but you think "to someone". So penso che sia vero, vs penso di sciare, vs penso a lei.
Ok, but "ha pensato di me" should also work since "di me" translates to "of me". "He thought of me" is equivalent to "He thought about me"
- 417
pensare di is only used in front of verbs (infinitive form) as you would do in English. Penso di andare a pescare: 'I'm thinking of going fishing'.
You don't pensare di about a person in Italian; that would only be pensare a.
To sum up: 'to think about/of someone' = pensare a.
It's not a direct translation to English though. You could say "He thought of me" or "He thought about me" in English, but in Italian it doesn't make sense to use "di." Just like it's confusing coming from English not to say "Ha pensato di me," it would be confusing for an Italian learning English, who would want to say "He thought to me". You could imagine sending thoughts to someone, if it helps.
