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?
Wait, latte ends in -e. How do I know it takes the masculine article il?
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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