Learn Italian: L'acqua è troppo fredda.

In this sentence, troppo means 'too' and describes the adjective fredda (cold). When troppo is used as an adverb to describe how much of an adjective something is, its ending never changes. It only changes to match gender and number when it describes a noun, like if you wanted to say 'too much water' (troppa acqua).

Why does fredda end in an -a?

Fredda is an adjective describing l'acqua (the water). Since acqua is a feminine singular noun, the adjective must take the feminine singular ending -a. If we were talking about a masculine word like il latte (the milk), it would be freddo.

Why is it L'acqua instead of La acqua?

Acqua is a feminine word, so the word for 'the' is normally la. However, because acqua starts with a vowel, Italian drops the 'a' in la and replaces it with an apostrophe to make it flow better when speaking. This happens with both masculine and feminine words starting with a vowel.

How do you pronounce the 'cq' in acqua?

The cq combination in Italian makes a strong 'k' sound, exactly like a double consonant. You pause on the sound slightly longer than you would for a single letter, making it sound like 'ahk-kwah'.