Word
Dov'è l'ufficio del direttore?
Meaning
Where is the manager's office?
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about Dov'è l'ufficio del direttore?
Why does the Italian sentence say "the office of the manager" instead of using an apostrophe 's'?
In Italian, there is no equivalent to the English apostrophe 's' for possession. Instead, you always have to use the preposition di (of) and flip the word order. So, "the manager's office" becomes l'ufficio del direttore (the office of the manager).
Where exactly does the word del come from?
del is an articulated preposition, which is a combination of a preposition and a word for "the" (a definite article). In this sentence, it combines di (of) and il (the) to mean "of the". We use il because direttore is a masculine singular noun starting with a normal consonant.
Why is it written as Dov'è instead of Dove è?
When dove (where) is followed directly by è (is), the final 'e' of dove is dropped and replaced with an apostrophe. This is done to make pronunciation smoother and faster, turning it into one fluid sound.