As regards the North vs. South thing, Northern speakers tend to use the PP in any perfective situation, while Southern speaker tend to use the PR even for recent events. Keep away from both extremes in Standard Italian.
Ciao,
F.
Sorry but I strongly disagree with your assertion. You say:
well, people do not know anything about it mainly because "la settimana scorsa sono andato al cinema" not only is perfectly correct, but it's the only correct way of saying it in Italian.
How can be possibly correct if "
la settimana scorsa sono andato al cinema" is well indeed an event which has already taken place and has nothing to do with the present (from a "temporal" point of view). Even the article that you quoted explains that:
"Usiamo il passato remoto per manifestare il distacco, e quindi la lontananza, di tali avvenimenti dal momento in cui ne parliamo. Dobbiamo perciò intendere remoto nel suo significato etimologico di “separato”, “staccato”, “rimosso”; e prossimo come indicante vicinanza o attualità psicologica."
I thank you for sharing this piece of knowledge but unfortunately that writing (the entire piece not just this one above) does not solve one central question. Hold on please:
The passato prossimo is the preferred perfective tense in Italian. The preterite (passato remoto) is used to refer to remote events (both temporally or psychologically), and this of course is not the case with "la settimana scorsa".
The problem here is this adverb: TEMPORALLY. In Italian above all in the North we have lost this "rule", whereas for some reasons (which I simply do not know, sorry!
) you can find this "rule" in the South the same as it happens in Spanish (that's the reason why I quoted Spanish). For example if I say "Yesterday or The last week" we should use the PASSATO REMOTO because "that" time is up (precisely as it happens in English by the way).
Spanish (as I wrote) is painfully respectful when it comes to "rules". On the other hand Italian is not, another good example is the SUBJUNCTIVE which is unfortunately and gradually becoming extinct in our lovely language.
In Spanish you would indeed use the preterite here, but Spanish is a different language with different rules. In this respect, Italian grammar is much more similar to the French one.
Sorry but to some extent this sound to me even a bit "offensive", I do not really want to get above myself (I'm still an ignorant I'll be for ever!) but I've got a degree about foreign languages and I've spent some years abroad studying and working, and I do know that Spanish is "
a different language with different rules", and at the end of the day your explanation looks a bit poor to me.
Last but not least I do not want to look picky but to me you look a bit confused, take a look at what you wrote:
I'd say the overuse of passato remoto to refer to recent events (thus, "andai al cinema"), which is indeed a feature of Southern italian dialects, is wrong.
After that you said:
Ho scritto che sono entrambi usi regionali, non che uno è più o meno corretto dell'altro.
I can't either make head or tail of your (a bit incoherent) evaluation, you probably skimmed through my writing too quickly or whatever, ANYWAY, thank you for your attention I wish you all the best!
PS
Probably the moderator will lock the thread now (Apologize me for being wordy, please)!
Cheers
