Devi mescolare il latte e lo zucchero.

Breakdown of Devi mescolare il latte e lo zucchero.

e
and
il latte
the milk
dovere
must
mescolare
to mix / to stir
lo zucchero
the sugar

Questions & Answers about Devi mescolare il latte e lo zucchero.

In English we might just say "mix milk and sugar" without the word "the". Why does Italian use il and lo here?
In Italian, you almost always need definite articles (il, lo, la, etc.) before nouns representing general categories, ingredients, or substances. English often drops "the" in these cases, but Italian requires it!
Why is the article lo used for zucchero instead of il?
You must use lo (and its plural gli) for masculine words that start with the letter "z", or an "s" followed by a consonant (like studente). Since zucchero starts with a "z" and is masculine, it takes lo.
Wait, latte ends in -e. How do I know it takes the masculine article il?
Italian nouns ending in -e can be either masculine or feminine, so their gender just has to be memorized. Latte happens to be masculine. It is always best to learn these words along with their articles, memorizing it as il latte.
Since this lesson is about the pronoun ne, how would I use it if I wanted to say "You must mix some (of it)"?
To say "You must mix some of it", you can either put ne before the conjugated verb (Ne devi mescolare) or attach it to the end of the infinitive verb by dropping the final -e (Devi mescolarne). Because our current sentence explicitly names the ingredients instead of replacing them with a pronoun, ne is not needed here.

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