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Che cosa trovi in questo libro?

Che cosa trovi in questo libro?
What do you find in this book?
From Lesson 31:Question words (chi, cosa, dove)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Che cosa trovi in questo libro?

Why does "what" translate to two words here (che cosa)?
In Italian, che cosa literally means "what thing." It is the traditional and most complete way to ask "what?" However, in everyday spoken Italian, you will often hear people shorten it to just cosa (thing) or just che (what). All three are perfectly correct and mean the same thing here!
Where is the translation for "do you" in the Italian sentence?
Italian doesn't use helping words like "do" or "does" to ask questions. Instead, the verb ending tells you who is acting. The verb trovi comes from trovare (to find), and its -i ending is the standard "you" (singular) ending in the present tense. Because of this, trovi means "you find", "are you finding", and "do you find" all by itself.
Why do we use questo instead of questa for "this"?
Words like "this" in Italian have to match the gender of the noun they describe. Because libro (book) is a masculine noun, we use the masculine form questo. If we were talking about a feminine word, like casa (house), we would change it to questa casa.
Why isn't the word in combined with an article here, like nel?
You only combine in with the word for "the" to make words like nel (in the) or nella. Because this sentence says "in this book" and not "in the book", there is no "the" to combine it with. We just use the basic preposition in right before questo.

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