Hi, I'll try to explain the differences. It quite difficult, you have the same problem that Italian people have when study differences between past simple and present perfect. The impertetto can be used: 1) to indicate actions happened in the past that were often REPEATED. Examples: quando ero bambino disegnavo spesso => when I was a child I often drew quando ero bambino guardavo la tv tutti i giorni => when I was a child I looked to TV every day 2) to DESCRIBE some situations happened in the past: mentre i bambini dormivano nessuno faceva chiasso => While the children slept nobody made a noise In this case please note that the action "studied" and the action "made a noise" happened in the same time, and both ran for a while. This is important to understand the differences with passato prossimo. 3) action happened in the past which took a while, without any expression of frequency: Ieri era molto freddo => Yesterday was very cold Take a care that the imperfetto indicates the action as seen during his execution. The passato prossimo is used to describe actions happened in the past and definitely FINISHED. Let's use the same sentences used above: 1) quando ero bambino ho disegnato una mela: this means that ONE TIME I drew an apple, NOT every day nor often, just one time. 2) mentre i bambini dormivano il papà è rientrato a casa dal lavoro: again, WHILE the children slept their father got back home, not every day and the action "è rientrato" has immediately finished. 3) ieri è stato molto freddo per tutta la mattina: here the concept is similar to the above n° 3 phrase, but you are indicating HOW LONG the cold took. To clarify, the sentence "i bambini dormivano a lungo " is different from "i bambini hanno dormito a lungo" because in the first case you are describing a situation (case n°2) , and in the second you are describing the action as definitely FINISHED . I know it is difficult, I don't know if I've been clear enough. In any case please ask for any doubt you can have (an sorry for the mistakes I made in English)

There are two main difference among the three examples (I let apart the negative adverb "non" which is a facultative element). 1° verb meaning 2° tense 1° Infinitive and verb meaning : voleva/voluto => volere => to want (it expresses a will) doveva/dovuto =>dovere => must, have to (it expresses an obligation) poteva/potuto => potere => can (it express the possibliity, the being able to doing) 2° When verb -ending is -v(o/a) the tense is the a) imperfetto When verb ending is -t(o/a) the tense is a b) participio passato/past participle. If the past participle is preceded by the verb "avere" we can have c) passato prossimo : if avere is at present :io ho (tu hai, egli/ella/esso/essa ha, noi abbiamo, voi avete, essi/esse hanno) d) trapassato prossimo : if avere is at the past (imperfetto) : io avevo (tu avevi, egli/ella/esso/essa aveva, noi avevamo, voi avevate, essi/esse avevano) e) trapassato remoto : if avere is at the simple past/passato remoto : io ebbi (tu avesti, egli/ella/esso/essa ebbe, noi avemmo, voi aveste, essi/esse ebbero) You are interested in a) imperfetto : an action which belongs to a near past and that, above all, is still going on in that past (in English it is translated with simple past or a progressive form like "was+ing" according the context and expressive necessities.) c) passato prossimo : the action belongs to a near past and is finished action (very much like English past perfect) non voleva = he/she did not want non ha voluto = he/she hasn't wanted to non doveva= he/she had not to non ha dovuto = he had not to non poteva= he/she couldn't non ha potuto = he/she couldn't When you translate from English into Italian you have to reason about the time in which the actions takes places in comparison to the others you are describing/reading. Usually il participio passato is the most common (in spoken language and short stories) but when the action flows in the past, imperfetto is mandatory. Non voleva andare a scuola ma ha dovuto/He/she didn't want to go to school but he/she had to. Ha voluto prenderlo anche se non poteva/He/she wanted to take it also if he/she couldn't You will meet (if not already) these same questions while learning French tenses (French has the same tenses of Italian, but luckily Italian is a little more complex in the use of subjunctive tense :D) so you could find helpful looking for "contrastive analysis of Italian/French tenses" (the key word is "contrastive", "contrastive grammar" is the expression) Here is a source (obviously in English) http://books.google.it/books?id=XQVfczef-U8C&lpg=PA1&ots=Fk1xIH_P7Z&dq=contrastive%20tenses%20italian&hl=it&pg=PA41#v=onepage&q=tenses%20&f=false And enjoy the conjugation tables at example here http://www.wordreference.com/conj/ITverbs.aspx?v=avere Have I given you some hints ?

The are many differencies between what we call "imperfetto" and "passato prossimo", above all in our everyday speaking, so I suggest that you stick with the basic rules and understand their general meaning before moving to further usages of these tenses. Generally, "mangiava" refers to something usual in the past. Mia nonna mangiava pasta ogni giorno a pranzo quando era viva. My granmother used to have pasta at every lunch when she was alive. "Ha mangiato", instead, is related to a specific action in the past. Mia nonna ha mangiato la pasta ieri a pranzo. My granmother had pasta yesterday at lunch.

I'm thinking that this is only a Columbus' egg :-) The negative adverb, the negative form, doesn't add or modify anything at all to the meaning of the verb. What changes is only the tense, but the field of action of the tense is limited to the tense itself. There isn't any particular nuance of meaning if not that caused by the tense used. Since that, you write, you already know the difference among the tenses imperfetto and passato prossimo, you don't have anything else to decode if not why one uses, or why choosing, an imperfetto instead of a passato prossimo and vice versa. Do you exactly remember the source/context that puts you in doubts in a such way ?