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Dov'è il dizionario? Non lo ricordo.

Dov'è il dizionario? Non lo ricordo.
Where is the dictionary? I do not remember it.
From Lesson 73:Third-person direct object pronouns (lo, la, li, le)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Dov'è il dizionario? Non lo ricordo.

Why does lo come before the verb instead of after it?
In English, we say 'I do not remember it,' putting the object ('it') after the verb. In Italian, direct object pronouns like lo (it/him), la (it/her), li (them, masculine), and le (them, feminine) almost always go right before the conjugated verb. So, the sentence literally translates to 'I not it remember.'
How do we know to use lo for 'it' instead of la?
The word for 'it' changes depending on the gender of the noun you are replacing. Because il dizionario (the dictionary) is masculine, we use the masculine pronoun lo. If we were looking for a feminine object like a key (la chiave), we would use la instead: Non la ricordo.
What is the rule for using non with these small pronouns?
The negative word non always goes at the very front of the verb phrase. It stands right before the object pronoun. The strict order is always: non + pronoun + verb (Non lo ricordo).
Where is the word for 'I' in the second sentence?
In Italian, the subject pronoun io (I) is usually dropped because the verb ending already tells us who is doing the action. The verb ricordo ends in -o, which signals 'I remember'.
What does the apostrophe in Dov'è mean?
It is a contraction of Dove (where) and è (is). Because Dove ends in a vowel and è begins with one, Italians drop the e on Dove and add an apostrophe to make it flow more smoothly when speaking.

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