Question 1

Why is the verb piacciono (plural) when the person liking them, "your mother," is singular?

Accepted Answer

In Italian, the verb piacere works like "to be pleasing to." The things being liked—the novels and old movies (i romanzi e i vecchi film)—are the actual subject of the sentence. Since the things being liked are plural, we use the plural verb piacciono ("they are pleasing").

Question 2

Why does the sentence start with A?

Accepted Answer

Because of how piacere works, we are literally saying that the books and movies are pleasing to your mother. The A means "To". Whenever you name the specific person who likes something (instead of just using a pronoun like mi or ti), you must put a before their name or title.

Question 3

We usually put "the" before possessives in Italian. Why is it tua madre and not la tua madre?

Accepted Answer

You're right that we normally use the article for things like la mia macchina (my car). However, singular close family members (like madre, padre, fratello) are a major exception. With them, you drop the article and just use the possessive word (tua).

Question 4

The word film doesn't end in an -i or -e. How do we know it's plural here?

Accepted Answer

Words borrowed from other languages, like film, computer, or bar, usually don't change their endings in the plural. You can tell film is plural here because the words attached to it change: we see the plural "the" (i) and the plural adjective for "old" (vecchi).

A tua madre piacciono i romanzi e i vecchi film di questo attore?

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