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Alternate Italian Pronouns | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6140 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 1 of 3 15 August 2009 at 1:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello. I am currently studying Italian, and up until this point, I have been ignoring the alternative Italian personal pronouns egli, ella, esso, essa, essi, and esse. So... what exactly is their use? Are they actually used, or are they archaic? Or are they merely only used in formal writing, like the French passé simple ? So, I guess I'm just asking what is their general use and what makes them different from lui, lei, and loro? Grazie mille
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 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6377 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 3 15 August 2009 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||
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They are mostly literary and no longer used in conversation (although the dialogues of my old Italian Without Toil from the 1950s are littered with them). Edited by newyorkeric on 15 August 2009 at 2:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| densou Senior Member Italy foto.webalice.it/denRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6130 days ago 120 posts - 121 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 3 of 3 15 August 2009 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||
Egli, ella, esso/a = he, she, it Loro, essi = they Lui, lei, esso/a = him, her, it Loro, essi = them egli/ella have been replaced by lui/lei in spoken Italian. (I'd say few still use them). But you could often find them in writing stuff. (not formal only) Esso/a, essi refer to anything non-human (e.g. a pet, an object) but nowadays we tend to use them just for abstract things and sticking with lui/lei for the rest. [e.g. a dog (cane) -PERSONAL gender unknown- you would use its noun gender (male word --> lui -formerly esso-) unless you are aware of it's male of female. E.g. MY dog] [warning: it's not a mistake to say "un cane femmina" (female dog) despite we have the term 'cagna' -rarely used- for describing correctly it] I hope I was able to put it as simply as possible. :S 1 person has voted this message useful |
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