Often, we find out that Italian has words that English does not have and that English has words that Italian doesn’t. Words that define slight shades of meaning or even big differences we were not aware existed until we were taught about it! You’ll say “I know!” but do you know the difference between to know and to know? What am I talking about? They’re the exact same word! But not in Italian…

Italian differentiates two kinds of “knowing:” sapere and conoscere, and there’s a big difference between the two! It might seem a little tricky at first if you, as an English speaker, have just been introduced to this big difference, and especially, if you have never been aware of this before you started leaning Italian, but follow me and I’ll help you out. There are two approaches here: a theoretical one and a more practical one, a sort of shortcut that can help you out most times. Let’s take a look.

First of all, not only are there two kinds of “to know,” there are also two kinds of sapere. The sapere that is probably the most commonly used is the sapere in the modal form: in this case it means “to be able to,” “to know how to do something” and it is used just as the other Italian modals volere, potere, dovere etc. This means that this kind of sapere is followed by an infinite verb. For example, if we want to say: “I know how to swim” we will use sapere conjugated at the first person singular (io) followed by the infinitive of the verb “swim” (nuotare): io so nuotare. The same thing works when asking about abilities or in general when asking if a person knows how to do something: sai nuotare? Sapere in this case has to do with a concrete, practical knowledge.

Before going to the second meaning of sapere, let’s take a look at the first use of conoscere. Conoscere is used when talking about people (that’s why we say: piacere di conoscerti/conoscerla when we meet new people), subjects, town, places, areas, restaurants and so on. It has to do with an active knowledge, that can be the product of a study. So you can say; non conosco Lucia (person), conosco poco Roma (city), conosco la lingua italiana (subject) molto bene.

So far easy peasy, right? Sapere means to know how, to be able to do and conoscere is a knowledge that you actively gained through an experience or studying. But in case you still get a little confused here’s a practical trick: in those two cases sapere is always followed by an infinitive verb – often times the “e” at the end falls to make the sentence flow better, so it becomes saper + infinitive – while conoscere is followed by a noun whether it is a person, an animal, a thing, or a place.

 The second kind of sapere is used in more complex sentences, it is used in the main clauses that introduces a relative clause and it is used to express passive knowledge – for this reason it is different from conoscere which refers to an active knowledge. Ok, let’s look concretely at what this means. The type of sentences I am referring to are sentences like: “I know (that) it’s hard” or “She knew (that) she was going to be punished.” Those sentence require the use of sapere because they are followed by another clause introduced by the che – that – in Italian and “that” in English – however, in English, “that” can be omitted. Let’s see how those sentences translate into Italian: “I know it’s hard” becomes so che è difficile, while “She knew she was going to be punish” becomes sapeva che sarebbe stata punita. It’s a passive knowledge, you do not know those things because you studied or you learned in an active way about it, you are reporting a knowledge. It’s a very fine line, but very important because it can make the difference.

However, there are times when it doesn’t really affect the conversation much, the difference between those two types of “know” simply adds extra information that might not be that important like in the case of Lucia conosce molto bene l’italiano and Lucia sa l’italiano. In the first sentence, Lucia knows Italian because she studied it, read in depth about it, researched, in the second sentence she learned it in a passive way, maybe because she was just spoken to in Italian or something along that line. Both sentences are understood and correct, they just imply something slightly different. Actually, I must admit that Italians, in those cases, have started to use much more sapere than conoscere. But if I you are a new learner, just stick to the rule, at least at first.

So let’s sum up what we’ve learned today: conoscere is used for active knowledge and you must use a noun afterwards, sapere is used for passive knowledge and you have to use a verb at the infinitive form or a sentence introduced by che afterwards. It almost seems easy put it this way. But maybe it is!

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