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matteo tironi.
User deleted
welcome back to Easy Peasy Italian, the forum where I attempt teaching Italian. Somewhat. Somehow. 
So, in part one we dealt with the pronouns as subjects, and we talked about when one should express them or not.
Well, today I have to give you a grief new....... I told you a little lie in one of the previous posts.
“black clouds start grouping behind me, and an enraged crowd holding pitchforks start chasing at me.....”
well, ehm.... I told you that Italian had no cases.... and I boasted about it.... well, I was wrong.
Italian does have cases, but just as far as pronouns are concerned.
Now, before you start getting on at me, let me point out that English has such cases too, in spite of them being much easier than Italian.
In English basically there is the subject case and the non-subject case (I and me, for instance).
Well, there is mine too, but let's leave it out for now.
So basically Italian has two split form for the non-subject case: the Akkusativ and the Dat..... ouch, that was close. No, we shouldn't call them like that, lest you want me to get a serious heart stroke.
Really, German is my nemesis and I'd like to think about it as less as possible.
So, let's not digress, we have the object-case and the indirect object-case.
I see her
(io) la vedo
I give her a pen
(io) le do una penna
can you see the difference? In the first sentence, in which her is the direct object, lei changes to la, whereas in the indirect object form lei becomes le.
Same her in English, different le/la in Italian.
ah, on a side note, I think it would be useful to know that while English often uses that/those in place of it/they as a pronoun, Italian does not allow it. therefore, every time that/those are a pronoun, you have to switch to the proper form of the third person's pronoun.
Fortunately, indirect and direct objects stay the same in all singular and plural first and second persons, but do have a change in the third persons.
So let's get down to them
English subject object indirect object emphatic pronouns
I io mi mi me
You tu ti ti te
He/he-it lui/esso lo gli lui
She/she-it lei/essa la le lei
We noi ci ci noi
You(plural) voi vi vi voi
They loro/essi/esse li/le loro/gli loro
note: the third plural person depends on the gender of the singular components of the group.
Loro is ok for both genders, while essi and esse (rarely used) are for objects and are masculine only
(essi) or feminine only (esse). Similarly, li and le are gender specific (li= masculine, le= feminine).
When a group is made up of both masculine and feminine nouns, it is described by declining everything in the masculine gender.
ex.
ho visto mia madre mio padre= li ho visti
I saw my mother and my father= I saw them.
well, that's it. I left out the reflexive pronouns for now, and wrote down the other forms.
In the first coloumn the is the English pronoun, in the second the Italian subject one, in the third the object pronouns, in the fourth the indirect object ones and in the fifth the emphatic ones.
“wait what? Matteo, you told us there were only two but now a new one popped out out of nothing”
Well, that one is not a true “case”. Let's call it a change that io and tu have to undergo when they are preceded by a preposition, like some sort of aestethic surgery in order to look good in front of them.
Examples.
Vieni con me?
Are you coming with me?
So molto su di te.
I know a lot about you.
So now you may be like “ok. But what about the indirect object? Isn't it introdoced by a preposition, like in English to?” sure, but if the indirect object is a pronoun then we can use two different ways:
the prep-way and the non-prep way.
Io ti do una mela
Io do una mela a te.
They both mean “I give you an apple”. But as you may have noticed, the phrasing changes quite a bit, and moreover the meaning changes slightly.
If I use ti, I'm talking about me simply giving you an apple, but if I use a te, I am highlighting the fact that I'm giving the apple to you, and not to someone else.
Yeah, kust like in the previous post: marking the difference. To you, and not to someone else.
As you may have already understood, we Italians really like marking these differences, so we took this particle's use a bit further.
Instead of using them only after a preposition, we decided to use them to express the direct object too, but of course in emphatic contexts only (that's why they are called emphatic pronouns).
Let's say there is a nice chick who's being courted by two guys, and she's uncertain about which one to choose. They both tell her to choose them.
Boy A:”scegli me, sono più ricco”
Boy B:”no scegli me, io sono più bello”
BoyA:”choose me, I am richer”
BoyB:”no choose me, I am more handsome”
what? I've just been told that the girl ended up slapping both their face and engaged another guy...... oh, but that's another story
So, can you see how I used me instead of the normal mi? Because the boys wanted to specify that the girl had to choose them, not someone else.
Moreover, note how I expressed the subject pronoun in the second sentence. Yeah, marking the difference.
Well, now one may think that this emphatic pronoun could replace all the other pronouns. Well NO.
It cannot replaced the indirect object pronoun by itself. It needs a (to) to work.
Ok, this is it..... what? You want to know why the sentence order got so messed up right?
Sure.
Ok so, as I've said in the introduction part, Italian is a SVO language (like English) and normally parts of the speech follow the same order.
Well, this is not the case if said parts of the speech are pronouns.
Let's make a comparison
normal sentence order:
Subject + verb + object + indirect object
Marco da una mela a Lucia
Marco gives an apple to Lucia
but if instead of an apple and Lucia we use it and her, the sentence changes like this
Marco gliela (gli+la) da.
And the new sentence order is
subject + indirect object + direct object + verb
WHAT? Are you whining about it not making sense? Yeah, I can hear you saying something like “man this sounds like a drunk spitting out words at random”
anyway, if you keep in mind the two sentence orders, you'll be able to handle this stuff in no time.
So, now that we're done.... ah, my phone is ringing
“Hi man it's Frank from New York talking”
“you're welcome man, is there anything you'd like to ask?”
“yeah, first of all I wanna say that it sure looks like a mess”
“ahaha, I know
”
“then, I want to ask you what if only one of the objects, either the direct or the indirect one, is a pronoun while the other is not”
“well, in this case the pronominal one takes the pronoun-position, while the other stays at its usual place”
“what?”
“well, like I give him an apple = (io) gli do una mela. Him goes before the verb because it is a pronoun, whereas an apple stays there because it is a noun. You know, I've just realized that they are called pro-nouns because they like going pro and coming before the verb
”
“ahahaha, man I'm not so sure about it XD anyway, thanks man, that was helpful”
“you're welcome and stay tuned on Easy Peasy Italian”
“bye thanks”
phew, thanks to Frank we have cleared this matter too, hopefully
now, all is let to say is explaining why the heck gli+la became gliela.
Well, when both the objects are a pronoun, the indirect one kind of changes its make up to look better, and at times they even (con)fuse.
So here's a brief recap
+ lo la le li
mi me lo me la me le me li
ti te lo te la te le te li
gli glielo gliela gliele glieli
le glielo gliela gliele glieli
ci ce lo ce la ce le ce li
vi ve lo ve la ve le ve li
gli glielo gliela gliele glieli
basically, the -i stem becomes e, but in the third persons where lui/lei/loro all become gli and add the other pronoun putting an -e- between them.
Ah, I almost forgot to say that when you use the prep/ emphatic pronouns, the sentence order does not change. It stays the same.
“Tu mi dai” and “tu dai a me” both mean the same, you give me.
Ah, one more thing before waving goodbye: when the verb is in the imperative or infinitive tense, the pronominal particles move (again) and go attaching to the verb's end, making the final -e drop.
If both are present, they still undergo their lifting but their also stick together.
es.
te lo do= I give it to you
dartelo= to give it to you (infinitive)
dattelo= give it to you(rself) (imperative, second singular person)
(don't ask me why the infinitive and the impertive forms differ, we'll talk about them in due time, just soak this cocept up for now)
So, I guess we can call it a day by now, therefore let's recap a bit:
1) italian has cases as far as pronouns are concerned. There are three “alternative versions” of the pronouns, the object one, the indirect object one and the emphatic one.
2) the emphatic one has three uses: it can replace the object to mark a difference, it can replace the indirect object (when used with a preceding it) for the same purpose and has to be used after any other preposition.
3) pronouns make the sentence order change. The normal order Subject+verb+object+ind. Object becomes Subject+ indirect object+ object+ verb. This only goes for pronouns, no matter what other noun the sentence contains.
4) when both the indirect object and the direct object are a pronoun, they undergo a restyling.
5) when the verb is in either the infinitive or the imperative tense, the pronouns make the final -e fall and stack up there.
So this is it. If you have any question, doubt or something don't be afraid to ask.
alla prossima
Edited by matteo tironi - 28/9/2014, 15:21
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the pronouns 2, level2the direct object and the indirect object case. |
