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Italian Pronouns | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| LaTorrePisa Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4699 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Studies: Italian, English*, German | Message 1 of 2 14 January 2012 at 9:49pm | IP Logged |
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When and where does one use lo,le,la,etc.
Ex: lo so, le posso fare una demanda Italiana? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mikonai Diglot Senior Member United States weirdnamewriting.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4930 days ago 178 posts - 281 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Swahili, German | Message 2 of 2 15 January 2012 at 12:45am | IP Logged |
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The important thing to remember is that pronoun replaces a regular noun. In
English the pronouns are "I," "he," "she," "we," "they," "you" and "it" if the pronoun replaces a subject (the thing doing whatever the verb is, performing the action). For objects (whatever is on the receiving end of an action) we have "me," "him," "her," "us," "them" and then "you" and "it" remain the same. There are a few other types as well. In Italian, of course, verbs have gender, so there's no real word that covers the pronoun "it." You don't have to bother including a subject pronoun in Italian, the way verbs work takes care of that, but you use object pronouns a lot. So if you have a singular object that has a masculine ending (typically they end in the letter "o") or you would use the pronoun "him" in English you use the pronoun "lo." If it ends with a feminine ending (the letter "a") or you would use the pronoun "her" (but not in the sense of "it's her car," because we call that the possessive and Italian treats those pronouns differently yet) you use the pronoun "la." Singular nouns are when you only have one, remember. There are also plural pronouns and they come in male, female and "you" also. English uses the same word for "you" no matter if you're talking to one or more people, but you can think of the plural "you" as some people in the south might say "y'all." The plural object pronoun you use here is "vi," and there are also two different words for "them" depending on whether the noun the pronoun replaces is masculine or feminine. Following usual Italian rules there are "li" and "le" respectively. So in your sentence, "lo so" translates to "I know it," because "lo" here translates to "it." In English we don't have to use a pronoun here, but in this situation you can. In the second part of your sentence ("Le posso fare una domanda italiana"), the pronoun "Le" gets to be troublesome. Italian has certain rules when using formal language, i.e. with people you don't know very well, instead of saying "you," you're supposed to use in the singular the pronouns for "she," because it also functions as the formal "you." In the plural it changes to "them," although I'm not sure if that's the fashion anymore. Anyway, it still replaces the noun, but in this case it's a meddlesome formal pronoun. In the end, you use the pronoun whenever you're referring to a noun, but not by it's actual name. They typically go before all the verbs (but after "non," if it's there). There are three other types of pronouns, and then two more "special" pronouns. One type is possessives, or in English "my/mine," "his" and "her/hers," "your/yours," "our/ours" "their." In Italian they all agree with the thing that's possessed, not with the person that owns it. For masculine singular nouns they are: My/mine: "Mio;" his/her/hers (and also the formal "you"): "Suo;" Your (singular): "tuo;" Your (plural): "vostro;" our: "nostro;" their: "loro." The endings change a little bit (except for "loro" which always stays the same) for the rest of the nouns, but you could find a better arrangement of these and other pronouns elsewhere. The next type is indirect object pronouns, and they can be tricky little things indeed. They're used after prepositions, such as "to," "for," "at" and so on. In Italian these also wind up before the verb, and if you have both a direct object pronoun and an indirect object pronoun they combine in certain ways to make a "double object pronoun," and it's one of the trickier bits to remember for me. I won't go into detail about any of that, but if you would look around I'm sure you'd find a better explanation than I could possibly give. The last type is reflexive pronouns, and they look mostly like the direct object pronouns, but are used for reflexive verbs, which are when the action is done to the doer of the verb. In English these all end in "self" or "selves." You dress yourself, for example. The word "you" shows up twice, first as the subject and then as "yourself" as a reflexive pronoun, and they both refer to the same thing. There are also two "special" pronouns in Italian that are multipurpose and have no equivalent in English. They are "ci" and "ne." "Ci" is used as the pronoun for "us," but it also gets work doing a few other things that I would fail at explaining this time of night ;) A good grammar book is priceless for precisely this sort of thing. Sorry for the overload of information! Italian pronouns are one of the more difficult things for me, so I've accumulated this mass of knowledge that I myself can't even apply very well. I'm happy to receive corrections from someone who knows better than I do. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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