Learn Hardcore Italian: Il giubbotto pesante mi protegge dal freddo. - The heavy jacket protects me from the cold.

In Italian, most descriptive adjectives follow the noun they modify, so giubbotto pesante sounds natural. Placing the adjective before the noun—pesante giubbotto—is grammatically possible but uncommon in everyday speech; it gives a marked, poetic or emphatic tone.

In mi protegge, what is mi and why does it come before the verb?

mi is the clitic pronoun for “me,” acting as the direct object of proteggere. In Italian, object pronouns (mi, ti, lo, la, ci, vi, li, le) precede a simple conjugated verb. Hence you say mi protegge, not protegge mi.

Why do we use dal freddo instead of da freddo or just freddo? What exactly is dal?

The verb proteggere requires the preposition da to indicate what you’re protected from. Because freddo is a masculine singular noun, it takes the definite article il, and da + il contracts to dal. So dal freddo literally means “from the cold.” You cannot drop the article after da, and writing da freddo would be ungrammatical.

Could I use a different preposition, like contro, instead of da?