Breakdown of Il cortile interno del palazzo è pieno di fiori in primavera.
Questions & Answers about Il cortile interno del palazzo è pieno di fiori in primavera.
In Italian è (with a grave accent) is the third‐person singular of essere (“to be”). Without the accent, e simply means “and.” So here è tells you “is”:
Il cortile interno del palazzo è pieno…
= The inner courtyard of the building is full…
In Italian most descriptive adjectives follow the noun. Cortile interno literally means “courtyard internal/inner.” Putting interno after the noun is the neutral, most common word order. Placing an adjective before the noun can add emphasis or a poetic tone, but here you want the normal descriptive structure:
noun → adjective (cortile → interno).
Del is the contraction of di + il. In speech and writing Italian typically contracts prepositions plus definite articles:
di + il → del
di + lo → dello
di + la → della
di + l’ → dell’, etc.
So del palazzo simply means “of the building.”
When pieno (“full”) indicates that something contains an indefinite amount of something else, you use di without the article:
pieno di fiori = full of flowers (some flowers, in general)
If you said pieno dei fiori, it would imply a specific set of flowers you both know about (e.g. “full of the flowers [we saw earlier]”), which is less common here.
Pieno is an adjective meaning “full.” It must agree with the noun it describes:
– sing. masc. = pieno
– sing. fem. = piena
– pl. masc. = pieni
– pl. fem. = piene
Here it agrees with cortile (masculine singular), so you use pieno.
Italian uses in + season without an article to express “in [the] spring, summer, autumn, winter.” So:
in primavera, in estate, in autunno, in inverno.
Using a primavera would sound odd. Also you don’t add la; you simply say in primavera.