Learn Italian: L'insegnante sa quattro lingue. - The teacher knows four languages.

L'insegnante sa quattro lingue.

The teacher knows four languages.

Breakdown of L'insegnante sa quattro lingue.

Questions & Answers about L'insegnante sa quattro lingue.

Why do we use sa instead of conosce for knowing languages?

Italian has two verbs for "to know". Conoscere means to be familiar with a person or place. Sapere (the verb used here as sa) is used for knowing facts or having a skill. Knowing a language is treated as a skill (knowing how to speak it), so we use sapere.

Sa is the "he/she" form of sapere, but why doesn't it end in "-e" like a regular verb?

Sapere is highly irregular in the present tense. Instead of dropping the "-ere" and adding an "-e" (which would incorrectly make "sape"), the third-person singular form is simply sa. You will just have to memorize this irregular form!

Is l'insegnante a male or female teacher?

We actually can't tell from this sentence! Insegnante is a noun that ends in -e, so it uses the same form for both masculine and feminine. Because it starts with a vowel, both the masculine article lo and the feminine article la shrink to l', keeping the teacher's gender a mystery.

Why does the word for languages, lingue, end in -e?