# Maria finished ironing and was tired



## stactom17

Ciao a tutti,

I want to write this sentence.  "Maria finished ironing and was tired."
I wrote, "Maria ha finito di stirare ed è stata stanca."
The correction was, "Maria ha finito di stirare ed è stanca."
I think that this says, "Maria finished ironing and is tired."

Grazie in anticipo.

Tom(asso)




> *Please put only the ORIGINAL sentence in the title, not your question, thanks.*
> How to choose a *thread title*


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## sorry66

I think it should be 'era' but wait for the natives!


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## Pietruzzo

stactom17 said:


> I wrote, "Maria ha finito di stirare ed è stata stanca."
> The correction was, "Maria ha finito di stirare ed è stanca."


You can't use imperfetto after passato prossimo. You need passato remoto/trapassato prossimo
Maria finì/aveva finito di stirare ed era stanca


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## sorry66

But that's 'Maria had finished ironing and was tired' and as for the other alternative, well, you don't use passato remoto in everyday speech so what's the real equivalent?


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## Pietruzzo

sorry66 said:


> you don't use passato remoto in everyday speech


Who told you that.? "Maria finì..." is what you say talking about the moment she finished ironing, if this is what the English phrase means.


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## sorry66

Pietruzzo said:


> Who told you that.? "


My grammar book! (The one I don't look at very often) It says 'passato remoto' is just written, not spoken.
But, say, you wanted to say 'ha finito' are you obliged to use 'è'? For me (and for stactom17) that makes it the present.


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## Pietruzzo

You must add a time reference in order to use passato prossimo.
Eg. Stanotte ho finito di stirare alle tre ed ero stanca.
The sentence as it stands in post 1 requires passato remoto.


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## sorry66

Ok, thanks, that's clear.


stactom17 said:


> The correction was, "Maria ha finito di stirare ed è stanca."


So the OP 'correction' is wrong or a different sentence altogether?!


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## Pietruzzo

sorry66 said:


> Ok, thanks, that's clear.
> 
> So the OP 'correction' is wrong or a different sentence altogether?!





stactom17 said:


> I think that this says, "Maria finished ironing and is tired."


So do I


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## sorry66

Thanks again!


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## Pietruzzo

I have to add that with verbs different to "being tired", you could also use passato pross.+ pass. pross..
Maria ha finito di stirare e si è sentita male


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## sorry66

Thanks, that's useful to know!


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## stactom17

Grazie a tutti,

So, for the original sentence "Maria finished ironing and was tired," is it possible to write, "Maria ha finito di stirare ed era stanca."?


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## sorry66

I don't think you've followed what's been said here!


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## stactom17

Trust me, I've been trying, but with suggestions being questioned and the original sentence being changed it was hard to follow.  So, if I add the time frames as suggested by Pietruzzo then ...

How about ... Stanotte Maria ha finito di stirare alle tre ed era stanca.


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## sorry66

I guess that's right!


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## Pietruzzo

stactom17 said:


> How about ... Stanotte Maria ha finito di stirare alle tre ed era stanca


That's okay, if that's what you want to say. Your  original sentence was quite different.


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## chipulukusu

stactom17 said:


> Grazie a tutti,
> 
> So, for the original sentence "Maria finished ironing and was tired," is it possible to write, "Maria ha finito di stirare ed era stanca."?


Hi, _Maria ha finito di stirare ed era stanca _is logically wrong. Past participle in this case in Italian is perceived as a sort of _present perfect _so it must be followed by a "_present imperfect_" which is the simple past: _Maria ha finito di stirare ed è stanca._
The right translation for your OP, as I see it, is

_Maria finì di stirare ed era stanca
_
It is perfect in the past followed by imperfect in the past. The act of ironing was finished, while the state of being tired was still going.

_Maria aveva finito di stirare ed era stanca, _though perfectly grammatical and nicely sounding, tells a different story. It doesn't say that ironing finished in that just moment in the past, but sometime before.

Things may go differently in English and little do I know, but this is how I see it.


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## Jasmyn

Ciao a tutti! 
Si potrebbe anche dire: 
_*Maria finiva di stirare ed era stanca.*_
Che ne dite, connazionali?


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## Pietruzzo

Jasmyn said:


> Ciao a tutti!
> Si potrebbe anche dire:
> _*Maria finiva di stirare ed era stanca.*_
> Che ne dite, connazionali?


Maybe you meant to say "Maria stava finendo...". In any case it has little to do with the OP case IMO


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## sorry66

Thanks, everyone! It's all been a bit of a revelation - I don't why I was told that I could get away with replacing the passato remoto with passato prossimo - from my point of view, it makes things easier, of course - but if it's wrong, it's wrong!


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## chipulukusu

sorry66 said:


> Thanks, everyone! It's all been a bit of a revelation - I don't why I was told that I could get away with replacing the passato remoto with passato prossimo - from my point of view, it makes things easier, of course - but if it's wrong, it's wrong!


Hi Sorry it is a bit of a regional issue here. In North Italy people cringe if you use passato remoto at all. They use passato prossimo for everything, but this way you lose the information of when something has just happened in this very moment. _Mi sono fatto male _is the same if just now and if in 1957.
In South Italy is almost the other way around and these may make things confusing for a non native speaker. _Ieri andai dal dottore _is normal for a Southerner but unacceptable for a Northerner. With all the grey scale between.


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## sorry66

Thanks, chip! Good to know! Maybe I'll just go on with the 'passato prossimo'; I like it for its relative simplicity.


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## Pietruzzo

chipulukusu said:


> I_eri andai dal dottore _is normal for a Southerner


This southerner would find it quite odd


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## You little ripper!

Pietruzzo said:


> This southerner would it find quite odd


Without an 'i' in 'ieri' I would also find it odd!


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## Pietruzzo

You little ripper! said:


> Without an 'i' in 'ieri' I would also find it odd!


My fault. I skipped an "I" while quoting @chipulukusu's post. I have corrected it


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## Archilochus

Hmmm.
_"Maria aveva finito di stirare ed era stanca, _though perfectly grammatical and nicely sounding, tells a different story. It doesn't say that ironing finished in that just moment in the past, but sometime before.

Things may go differently in English and little do I know, but this is how I see it."

Maria finished ironing and was tired.
Maria had finished ironing and was tired.

To me, the first sentence implies that she was tired* at the moment* she finished the ironing, while the second doesn't imply that close a temporal connection.


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## sorry66

I agree with you but in Italian it appears to be different:


chipulukusu said:


> _Maria finì di stirare ed era stanca
> _
> It is perfect in the past followed by imperfect in the past. The act of ironing was finished, while the state of being tired was still going.


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## Pietruzzo

Tiredness is a gradual process, most of the times. I don't think you are tired at the moment you finish the ironing and you are not a second before or a second after...


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## Archilochus

I didn't say, "she *became* tired at the moment she finished the ironing"


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## chipulukusu

sorry66 said:


> I agree with you but in Italian it appears to be different:


Maybe things are more complicated than I thought. Let's change the verb _essere stanca _with _sentirsi stanca. _No grammatical reasons here. It just sounds better.
_1) Maria aveva finito di stirare e si sentiva stanca - trapassato prossimo (indefinite) + imperfetto (indefinite) - _the moment is indefinite_, _the stress is on the perdurant condition
_2) Maria aveva finito di stirare e si sentì stanca - trapassato prossimo (indefinite) +passato remoto (definite) - _the moment is indefinite_, _the stress is on the spot feeling
_3) Quando Maria ebbe finito di stirare si sentì stanca - trapassato remoto (definite) + passato remoto (definite)
4) Maria finì di stirare ed era stanca - passato remoto (definite) + imperfetto (indefinite) - _the moment is definite_, _the stress is on the perdurant condition
_5) Maria finì di stirare e si sentì stanca - passato remoto (definite) +_ _passato remoto (definite) - _the moment is definite_, _the stress is on the spot feeling

3) is dfferent; it allows for a close temporal connection with a certain degree of causal relation. It doesn't allow for any use of an indefinite tense, in my opinion. _Quando Maria ebbe finito di stirare si sentiva stanca_ sounds inconsistent to me. I hope I didn't make things more confusing, as I'm no grammar pro at all!


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## Pietruzzo

Stiamo discutendo del sesso dei ferri da stiro o sbaglio?


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## ohbice

Una volta che ebbe finito di stirare, Maria si sentì stanca.
In my opinion o.p. lacks context. If the original phrase is an exercise, I'd say that "Maria finì di stirare ed era stanca" is the simplest and best translation (nonostante risieda nel nord del paese).
Ciao


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## sorry66

I agree with OB; the English sentence sounds like an artificial sentence from an exercise.
Pieutruzzo's comment is way over my head - I'm guessing it's a joke.
Thanks, chip, I'll mull that over.
I've always found the _trapassato remoto  _nightmarish and now you've also dug up the word _perdurant. _I'll sleep well tonight.


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## chipulukusu

sorry66 said:


> now you've also dug up the word _perdurant. _I'll sleep well tonight.



I suspect I would have been better saying _persistent _condition


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## Archilochus

Geez, all this reminds me of St. Augustine: If nobody asks me what time is, I know perfectly well what it is. If someone asks me what time is, I don't know what it is at all.


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## novizio

With some trepidation I ask, why is the passato remoto being used at all with "finished". What is the grammatical basis requiring the passato remoto rather than the past perfect? Other than what we have been taught here which is that the passato remoto is used in lieu of the past perfect in formal writing or possibly encountered in speech if referencing the very distant past, or in some area of Southern Italy like central Sicily, we have been taught that the passato remoto is otherwise the equivalent of the past perfect?


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## Pietruzzo

novizio said:


> With some trepidation I ask, why is the passato remoto being used at all with "finished". What is the grammatical basis requiring the passato remoto rather than the past perfect?


I don't quite follow you. Is " Maria finished ironing" past perfect? I guess it's past simple, which, as you know, can be translated with passato remoto, passato prossimo or imperfetto, depending on the context. The literal translation of the OP sentence as it stands  is "Maria finì di stirare e si sentiva stanca". The problem is that this sentence doesn't sound very natural in Italian, so other options have been suggested  (aveva finito, for example) but the past simple is not the equivalent of trapassato prossimo/remoto. Speaking of which, I think I haven't ever used trapassato remoto in my life.


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## ohbice

Ciao Novizio. If you want it plain, Maria ha finito di stirare ed è stanca is a smart way to translate the o.p. phrase. But in the original "was" is a problem, it is a past tense. Since Maria 1st "stops ironing" and 2nd "is tired", in sequence, you need a past "more past" to describe the action of ironing. The past more past is the passato remoto, that's in my opinion the reason you have to use it (if you want to translate correctly "was tired" as "era stanca").


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## london calling

sorry66 said:


> But that's 'Maria had finished ironing and was tired' and as for the other alternative, well, you don't use passato remoto in everyday speech so what's the real equivalent?


In BE we'd use the past perfect here, quite so. I agree with the others:

_Maria aveva finito di stirare ed era/e si sentiva stanca._


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## Jasmyn

Pietruzzo said:


> Maybe you meant to say "Maria stava finendo...". In any case it has little to do with the OP case IMO


No, intendevo proprio "_*Maria finiva di stirare ed era stanca*_" : uso dell'Imperfetto per indicare un'azione continuata e ripetuta nel passato.
Ad es: "_Maria lavava i piatti, puliva la cucina, finiva di stirare ed era stanca. Ogni sera andava sempre così."_

Riepilogando:
_*Maria finished ironing and was tired*_ = _*Maria finì/finiva di stirare ed era stanca.*_
_*Maria finished/had finished ironing and was tired*_ = _*Maria aveva finito di stirare ed era stanca.*_  (Giusto, London Calling?)
*Maria has finished ironing and is tired* = *Maria ha finito di stirare ed è stanca.* 
_*Maria finished ironing and felt tired = Maria finì di stirare e si sentì/sentiva stanca ; Maria finiva di stirare e si sentiva stanca.*_

Ciao


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## sorry66

stactom17 said:


> Maria finished ironing and was tired


You might hear a simplistic sentence like this in a children's story.


london calling said:


> Maria aveva finito di stirare ed era/e si sentiva stanca.


That's 'had finished'? It's true that would be more usual in a narrative.


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## Jasmyn

Yes, "Maria aveva finito" is "Maria had finished".


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## Archilochus

"You might hear a simplistic sentence like this in a children's story."

Or in Hemingway...


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## sorry66

Archilochus said:


> Or in Hemingway


Yes!


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## london calling

sorry66 said:


> You might hear a simplistic sentence like this in a children's story.


I've heard it from American speakers: some of them (not all of them, I'm not generalising!) use the perfect tenses far less than we Brits do: it's come up many times in the English Only forum.


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