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Why do we say:
Ho molte cose da fare!
Where in French, I woud say:
J'ai beaucoup de choses à faire!
Compared to French, the use of "da" here puzzled me.
If possible, I want to understand the intuition of choosing "da" and not "a".
Thank you in advance.
The construction with preposition "da" + infinitive can be used in Italian, among other functions, to indicate "che bisogna", that is, a necessity or something which is felt as very convenient. You can use "da non" + infinity to express "che non bisogna".
Here are some examples from the book Nuovo Contatto C1. Corso di lingua e civiltà italiana per stranieri (Loescher Editore, Torino) di R. Bozzone Costa, M. Piantoni, E. Scaramelli e C. Ghezzi:
un libro da leggere (= un libro che bisogna leggere)
un film da non perdere (= un film che non bisogna perdere)
In the same way, the sentence "Ho molte cose da fare" means "Ho molte cose che bisogna fare".
Often the particle "da" is used to denote the use or destination of something:
...and many more.
In this phrase, "molte cose da fare", the particle da suggests that the cose still are to be done, they are destined to be carried out.
This preposition is used also with other verbs:
On the other hand, sometimes the preposition "a" is used the same as in French, like in
but this usage is more found in ready-made periphrases than in constructions a speaker elaborates. Sometimes it is easy to understand why "da" is preferred, for example "bastone da passeggio" (walking stick) is not referred to as "bastone a passeggio", which would mean that the stick is taking a walk by itself (maybe accompanied by its owner!).
