Learn Italian: È una bella canzone. La ascoltiamo spesso. - It is a beautiful song. We listen to it often.

In English, we put the object pronoun after the verb ('We listen to it'). But in Italian, object pronouns like lo, la, li, and le usually go directly before the conjugated verb. So 'We listen to it' becomes La ascoltiamo (literally: 'It we listen to').

Why do we use La for 'it' instead of Lo?

In Italian, 'it' must match the gender of the noun it replaces. Here, 'it' refers to la canzone (the song). Because canzone is a feminine noun, we use the feminine singular pronoun la. If we were talking about a masculine noun like il libro (the book), we would use lo.

Canzone ends in -e, so how do we know it is feminine?

Nouns ending in -e in Italian can be either masculine or feminine. You often have to memorize their gender, but the words around it give it away here! The article una and the adjective bella are both feminine singular, showing us that canzone must be feminine too.

Where is the word for 'to' in La ascoltiamo?

You do not need one! In English, we say 'listen to', but the Italian verb ascoltare already means 'to listen to'. Because of this, it connects to its object directly, with no extra preposition required.