Learn Italian: Cerchi la chiave nella tasca, ma è nel salotto. - You look for the key in the pocket, but it is in the living room.

In Italian, when the preposition in (in) is followed by a definite article like la (the, feminine) or il (the, masculine), they merge together into one word. In + la becomes nella, and in + il becomes nel. Since we are talking about the pocket (la tasca) and the living room (il salotto), we must use the combined forms.

I want to translate "look for" literally. Why isn't there a word for "for" after cerchi?

The Italian verb cercare already means "to look for" or "to search for". You don't need to add an extra word for "for". You just use the verb directly followed by the thing you are looking for: Cerchi la chiave (You look for the key).

The infinitive verb is cercare, so why does the "you" form cerchi have an "h" in it?

If we just dropped the -are and added the usual -i ending for "you", we would get "cerci". In Italian, "ci" is pronounced with a soft "ch" sound (like in "cheese"). To keep the hard "k" sound of the original verb cercare, Italian adds an h to act as a shield. So, cerchi is pronounced "chair-kee".

Where is the word for "it" in "ma è nel salotto"?