Was there a time when some 1st person plurals ended with “-am”?

Question

I was reading an old document put on the web and saw “siam” where I expected “siamo.”I was about to report a typo when I realized that at least a third of the verbs were that way—“dobbiam” and “abbiam” per esempio.Was that ever normal long long ago?

Answer 1

Yes, that was a normal thing to do a long time ago in the Italian language. It is, however, also still done today in certain dialects that drop the last vowel sound, like the Neapolitan accent. Additionally, if you were reading a poem, sometimes the last -o would be dropped to shorten the number of syllables used in the line. Hope that answers your question! Let me know if you have any more questions about Italian, I'm happy to help!