All’asilo is made from:
Together, they contract into all’ before a vowel.
So:
This is very common in Italian. You will often see prepositions combine with articles.
The apostrophe shows elision, which happens when a vowel is dropped before another vowel.
Here, the full form is based on allo asilo, but before a vowel Italian uses all’ instead.
So the apostrophe helps avoid an awkward vowel sequence and makes the phrase sound natural.
In this sentence, asilo usually means preschool, kindergarten, or sometimes daycare/nursery school, depending on the country and context.
It does not usually mean political asylum here. The context makes it clear that it refers to a place children go.
This is a very common learner question.
Italian often says andare a scuola without an article, but with asilo the usual expression is andare all’asilo.
So you should learn them as natural chunks:
Languages do not always use articles the same way with every place noun, so this is partly something to memorize.
Italian uses the present tense for habits and repeated actions, just like English does.
So La bambina va all’asilo ogni mattina means that this is something she does regularly, not just right now.
The phrase ogni mattina makes the habitual meaning very clear.
Yes, often it can.
Italian is a pro-drop language, which means subject pronouns and even noun subjects can be left out when the meaning is clear from context.
So if everyone already knows who you are talking about, you could simply say:
Va all’asilo ogni mattina.
However, keeping la bambina makes the sentence clearer and more explicit.
Not completely. Italian word order is more flexible than English word order.
The original sentence is very natural:
La bambina va all’asilo ogni mattina.
But these are also possible:
The meaning stays basically the same, but the emphasis changes slightly. Putting ogni mattina first gives more focus to the time expression.
A simple pronunciation guide is:
la bam-BEE-na va al-LA-zi-lo ON-yee mat-TEE-na
A few useful notes:
The double ll in all’asilo is pronounced more strongly than a single l.