10 votes
Accepted

"Io faccio" or "Faccio io"?

Both are short sentences consisting of two words: Io is “I”, the first-person pronoun; faccio is the first person of the present tense of the verb fare, “to do”. This said, both are possible Italian ...
DaG's user avatar
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7 votes
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Non abbiamo... "tutta la notte" vs "la tutta notte" vs "la notte tutta"?

The adjective tutto has a rather peculiar role in the Italian language in that it usually precedes the article relative to the modified noun. From the Treccani dictionary 1. a. Come agg., riferito ...
egreg's user avatar
  • 18k
6 votes
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The implication of word order (subj. + verb)

«The subject is usually not explicitly said» is an overgeneralisation. Of course the subject has to be mentioned at the very least the first time something new is mentioned, and then again, especially ...
DaG's user avatar
  • 36.6k
5 votes

Meaning of "non se ne parla"

“Si non ne parla” is ungrammatical. The negation must go before the reflexive pronoun, which is changed into se because followed by another pronoun (ne): non se ne parla that is, we/people don't ...
egreg's user avatar
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5 votes
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Is 'È oggi che c'è...' grammatically correct?

The sentence you proposed is an example of a construction called "frase scissa". Vittorio Coletti, in his book Grammatica dell'italiano adulto, explains: E tutte le volte che si spezza una frase ...
Charo's user avatar
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5 votes

How do you form questions in "passato prossimo"?

The problem you are facing here (which is the correct order of words) has nothing to do with the fact you are using the "passato prossimo" to construct the sentence, but with the use of the ...
Charo's user avatar
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5 votes

Contraddistinguere verso

Forse la frase può esserti più comprensibile se consideri "verso" insieme alla "noia". "Contraddistinguere" significa, di solito, "caratterizzare". La frase quindi significa che il libricino "evita la ...
Benedetta's user avatar
  • 3,866
5 votes
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Position of "ora"

Your phrase can be rewritten in many ways, all of them mantaning the same meaning: Il paziente ora è fuori pericolo. Il paziente è fuori pericolo ora. Ora il paziente è fuori pericolo Il ...
abarisone's user avatar
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5 votes
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Nome di un mobile particolare (nella camera da letto)

È piuttosto semplice, si chiama comò o cassettiera. Comò è un mobile a cassetti specifico per la camera da letto, cassettiera è generico, è un mobile a cassetti che può stare in qualsiasi stanza. Vedi ...
BakerStreet's user avatar
  • 1,759
4 votes
Accepted

Word order after a "perché" subordinate clause

After perché any kind of clause, with any ordering, can occur, as if they were main clauses. The three sentences in your example are all acceptable as main clause. Queste faccende sono il mio pane ...
DaG's user avatar
  • 36.6k
3 votes

The order of the subject and the verb in a particular sentence

The second version sounds quite unnatural. It's understandable, but verges on the ungrammatical. Even if you want to stress that it's Mario and Giovanni that are the focus of your sentence, you'd say ...
DaG's user avatar
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3 votes
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Ordine delle parole nell’espressione “ne si è bevuto molto”

"Se ne è bevuto poco" è quello che direbbe e scriverebbe qualunque italiano. "Ne si" sarà una forma arcaica o una licenza poetica in azione.
anotherOne's user avatar
3 votes

Difference between verb-subject and subject-verb

As a native speaker, I feel that in the first version: Perché è dovuto succedere questo? The stress is on asking why that happened in the first place. The thing was not meant to happened at all. ...
danidemi's user avatar
  • 206
3 votes

Non abbiamo... "tutta la notte" vs "la tutta notte" vs "la notte tutta"?

The first one is the correct one. Non abbiamo tutta la notte The second is wrong and the last one is formally correct, even though it may sound weird. If you are interested to go deeper about ...
abarisone's user avatar
  • 20.3k
3 votes

Non abbiamo... "tutta la notte" vs "la tutta notte" vs "la notte tutta"?

First one, definitely. The last one would seem more poetic. The middle one sounds broken.
Andrea Borgia's user avatar
3 votes

Which is the proper word order: “anima bellissima” or “bellissima anima”?

In Italian there is not a preferred order: both choices are acceptable, although they convey subtly different meanings depending on the context. A famous example is the commercial of the "Cinghiale" ...
Denis Nardin's user avatar
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2 votes

E se... cosa significa all'inizio della frase?

"E se" -- "Cosa accadrebbe se...?", oppure "E' possibile che...?", "Ti sembra ragionevole che...?". Quindi, sì, si può usare per "interrompere" una discussione con una proposta: A: "Andiamo al mare."...
LSerni's user avatar
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2 votes
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E se... cosa significa all'inizio della frase?

Di sicuro non è una frase che puoi usare per iniziare un discorso Prendiamo la seconda frase, potresti usarla in questo contesto: Alice è brava in matematica, Marco no. Marco dice a sua madre: "...
Igino Boffa's user avatar
2 votes
Accepted

Vengono anche loro? - explicit subject and subject inversion

"Pure" and "anche" must always be accompanied by the element they refer to. In the question "Vengono?", that is the implicit subject "loro". It is one of the few cases where the personal pronoun ...
Alan Evangelista's user avatar
2 votes
Accepted

Does the position of "ancora" affect its meaning?

There is no difference between the two phrases. Sometimes you can put “ancora” at the beginning of a phrase for emphasis. For example: Posso avere un altro piatto di pasta? Ancora ne vuoi?! ...
CB18's user avatar
  • 199
2 votes

Why is it 'quanto è lungo' instead of 'quanto lungo è'?

As a Central Italian, I find any construction of the form quanto + adjective + verb essere to be very strange-sounding, both in interrogative and exclamative sentences. I trust other commenters who ...
DaG's user avatar
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2 votes
Accepted

Why is it 'quanto è lungo' instead of 'quanto lungo è'?

In a (very) broad sense, the order of phrase elements in Italian is quite free, sometimes leading to slightly strange utterances, up to never heard ones, but still understandable. Undoubtedly there is ...
linuxfan says Reinstate Monica's user avatar
2 votes

Sono già passati quarant'anni vs Quarant'anni sono già passati - subject-verb vs verb-subject

TL;DR: The first phrasings are so unidiomatic to be ungrammatical, unless specifically meant for a reason. More precisely, we have here a construction with a so-called “unaccusative” verb. You can see ...
DaG's user avatar
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2 votes
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Posizione dell'aggettivo: nuova auto - auto nuova

In effetti, il significato di "nuova auto" e "auto nuova" è diverso. Spesso, quando l'aggettivo precede il nome ha una funzione descrittiva; invece, quando lo precede, ha una ...
Charo's user avatar
  • 38.8k
1 vote

Posizione dell'aggettivo: nuova auto - auto nuova

Da madrelingua, direi che sono compatibili ed è l'uso a essere contraddittorio.
Gabriele's user avatar
  • 254
1 vote

"Questa è riuscita a pararla"?

Questa la è riuscito a parare non è corretta in italiano e suona molto male (potrebbe essere usata in qualche espressione regionale, ad esempio provo ad ipotizzare in toscano, con elisione della ...
Nicola's user avatar
  • 339
1 vote

The order of the subject and the verb in a particular sentence

It's a subject-verb inversion needed to avoid any emphatic meaning. If you do not use such inversion it sounds very much emphatically: "quali espressioni Mario e Giovanni usano?" would mean: ...
thatsme's user avatar
  • 64
1 vote

The order of the subject and the verb in a particular sentence

It sounds just slightly less natural, even if perfectly correct. It depends on what concept you want to stress. Quali espressioni usano [...Mario e Gianni] is natural (and easy) because the verb is ...
linuxfan says Reinstate Monica's user avatar
1 vote

Word order in question sentence seems non-typical

Elaborated explanation is given in post referred in Charo's comment, so props to Charo, Ferdinand Bardamu and Treccani. Long story short, word order in questions might indeed vary depending on what ...
UtterlyRocked's user avatar
1 vote

Does the position of "ancora" affect its meaning?

Yes, it's the same. "Ancora" can be used in other expressions, such as "not yet", "more". Get a good dictionary. Non so ancora: I don't know yet. Ancora di più: More. Ancora!: More!
Chesterfield's user avatar

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