Mio cugino frigge le patate in padella prima della cena.

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Breakdown of Mio cugino frigge le patate in padella prima della cena.

• mio: my
• il cugino: the cousin
• la cena: the dinner

Questions & Answers about Mio cugino frigge le patate in padella prima della cena.

Why is there no il before mio cugino?

In Italian, when a possessive adjective (mio, tuo, suo, ecc.) directly precedes a singular family-member noun without additional modifiers, you normally drop the definite article:

• mio padre, tua sorella, nostro zio.
  You can still say il mio cugino (especially in more formal style or to add emphasis), but in everyday speech mio cugino is perfectly natural. If you insert an adjective (per esempio il mio caro cugino) or talk about plural relatives, the article comes back.

How do you conjugate friggere in the present tense, and why is it spelled with double g in frigge?

friggere is an -ere verb whose root ends in a hard g sound. To keep that hard /g/ before e, Italian doubles the g. The full present-tense conjugation is:
• io friggo
• tu friggi
• lui/lei frigge
• noi friggiamo
• voi friggete
• loro friggono

Without the double g, a single g before e would become soft (as in gente).

Why is le used before patate? Couldn’t we say delle patate or just patate?