Breakdown of Eri biondo da adolescente?
essere
to be
biondo
blond
da
as a (child/teenager), when one was
l'adolescente
the teenager (m/f)
Questions & Answers about Eri biondo da adolescente?
Why do we use the imperfetto eri here instead of the passato prossimo?
We use the imperfetto (eri) because being blond as a teenager was an ongoing physical state in the past, not a single completed event. The imperfetto is the tense you need for describing what people used to look like or how things used to be.
Why use da before adolescente?
In Italian, the preposition da followed by a life stage means "as a...". So da adolescente means "as a teenager". You will also hear this in common phrases like da bambino (as a child) or da giovane (as a young person).
Why is there no article, like da un adolescente?