Breakdown of A mezzogiorno chiudo la porta e mangio un panino in giardino.
io
I
chiudere
to close
la porta
the door
in
in
Questions & Answers about A mezzogiorno chiudo la porta e mangio un panino in giardino.
Why do we say A mezzogiorno instead of just Mezzogiorno?
In Italian, time expressions normally require the preposition a (meaning “at”). So A mezzogiorno literally means “at noon.” Omitting a would sound incomplete, just like saying “noon” instead of “at noon.”
Why don’t we say alla mezzogiorno or al mezzogiorno?
Midday (mezzogiorno) and midnight (mezzanotte) are special cases: they never take a definite article after a. For other hours you say all’una (to the one o’clock) or alle due (to the two o’clock), but for noon you simply say a mezzogiorno.
Could we move A mezzogiorno to the end of the sentence?
Yes. Italian allows flexible word order with adverbials of time. You can say Chiudo la porta e mangio un panino in giardino a mezzogiorno. Putting it at the start, though, stresses when the actions happen.
What does chiudo mean, and why isn’t there io before it?
Chiudo is the first-person singular present tense of chiudere (“to close”). In Italian you usually drop the subject pronoun when the verb ending already makes the subject clear. So chiudo = “I close.”
Why is it la porta and not il porta?