How to Make Someone do Something in Italian?
In linguistics, this type of structure is called causative, because it indicates that a person or thing is causing another action to occur by someone or something else. Another example of causative structure is “to let“.
If you want someone to do something and want to “push” him or her to do it, in Italian you have to use the following structure:
fare + verb in the infinitive
For example: fare fare, fare mangiare, fare credere, fare vedere, etc.
The verb fare can, of course, be in any tense: past, present, or future, depending on what you want to say.
Let’s have a look at some examples:
La professoressa ha fatto scrivere un tema ai suoi studenti.
The teacher made her students write an essay.
Lei gli ha fatto capire che si sbagliava.
She made him understand he was wrong.
Quella ragazza vi ha fatto capire.
That girl made you understand.
How to use “Make (…) in Italian?
The use of Pronouns
When you use this structure in Italian, you need to use a direct or indirect pronoun depending on the main verb. Here, in fact, the verb fare behaves like an auxiliary verb, that provides modal information about the sentence and adds no any further semantic information to the sentence.
This means that the actual meaning – or semantic information – of the sentence is given by the main verb.
For instance, in the sentence:
Questo film mi ha fatto piangere.
This movie made me cry.
- The verb “fare” adds no meaning to the sentence, because this is given by the verb “piangere”.
Whenever you use “make (…)” in Italian, you must look at the main verb of the sentence and understand whether it is a transitive or intransitive verb in order to choose a direct or indirect pronoun.
What is relevant is that the choice of the pronoun is the opposite in this structure: you need an indirect pronoun with transitive verbs and a direct one with intransitive verbs.
For instance, the verb studiare (to study) is a transitive verb: if I want to say that I made her study history, I will have to say “io le faccio studiare storia” (I make her study history), where “le” is the indirect pronoun standing for “a lei” (to her).
Opposingly, the verb uscire (to go out) is an intransitive verb: if I want to say that I make her go out I will have to say “io la faccio uscire” (I make her go out), where “la” is the direct pronoun.
Why Does This Happen? A Linguistic Perspective
This phenomenon can be explained by the syntactic and semantic properties of the verbs and its interaction with the structure of sentences involving the verb “fare” (to make).
For the transitive verb “studiare” (to buy), the usual construction would need a direct object for what is being studied, but when it is used in a construction with “fare”, the focus shifts to the push that is given to the subject of the main verb to perform that action.
In the sentence “io le faccio studiare storia”, “le” (to her) is an indirect pronoun that refers to whom the push is given. This structure focuses on the action rather than on the object storia.
In contrast, for the intransitive verb “uscire” (to go out) the usual construction would need no direct object, but when it is used in a construction with “fare”, in Italian we use a direct pronoun that refers to the person being pushed to perform the action denoted by the main verb.
So, “io la faccio uscire” translates to “I make her go out,” with “la” referring directly to her, emphasizing the push of the action itself rather than to whom the action is directed.
Useful Combinations
Now that “ti ho fatto capire” (I made you understand) the structure, let me show you some common combinations:
- fare capire: to make (someone) understand
- fare credere: to make (someone) believe
- fare fare: to make (someone) do
- fare piangere: to make (someone) cry
- fare ridere: to make (someone) laugh
- fare sapere: to make (someone) know
- fare vedere: to make (someone) see
You’ll hear them a lot if you go to Italy or if you have Italian friends.
Now that you properly understood how to make someone do something in Italian, let’s learn about how to let someone do something!
