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Italian sentence beginning with "E" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| PPCheng Diglot Newbie Taiwan Joined 4112 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 3 01 June 2015 at 7:31am | IP Logged |
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I have just started to learn Italian. I got that "e'" is the be verb for third person
singular, as in "Lui e' generoso." But some sentences starting with "e'" confuse me. Like " E' la penna di Marco." Could we say "La Penna E' di Marco" instead? (the pen is from Marco..may sound a little more straight forward since I assume "la penna" is the subject here. How could we analyze this sentence? Also, are there any recommended online resources to learn Italian? Some that would help me master the sentence structures and basic grammars? Thanks! Grazie~ Edited by Fasulye on 04 August 2015 at 10:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 3 01 June 2015 at 11:21am | IP Logged |
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I think both are correct, but with slightly different shades of meaning; the first is like "It's Marco's pen" and the second is more like "The pen is Marco's".
Maybe the confusion is because Italian usually drops the subject pronoun? So "è" can mean "is" but it can also mean "it is", "he is", "she is", etc. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 3 01 June 2015 at 11:27am | IP Logged |
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What you need is really some training in sentence analysis. And some facts about Italian, evidently, but that's the minor part of it. Try to imagine sentences as small boxes within boxes and maybe some lines to indicate whether one element is dependent upon another. Or try tree diagrams - this exercise can be done in several different ways.
The phrase "di Marco" is adjectival, which means that it can be used as an attachment to a substantive (in this case the pen), and that's the most common use of it - but it can also be used as a predicative with the verb "essere" ("è" is of course a form of this verb): 'something is something else'. And a sentence in Italian may not have an explicit subject which is the why you can use "è" without any subject in front of it. So your two sentences use "di Marco" in different ways: (questo) è [la penna [di Marco]] La Penna è [di Marco] Edited by Iversen on 01 June 2015 at 12:04pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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