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Eri biondo da adolescente?

Eri biondo da adolescente?
Were you blond as a teenager?
From Lesson 103:The imperfect tense of to be (ero, c'era)·Italian

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?
When using this da + [noun] pattern to talk about a phase of life or a profession, Italian drops the article entirely. It is always just da adolescente, never da un adolescente.
If I want to ask a woman this question, what changes?
You change the adjective to match her gender: Eri bionda da adolescente? The verb eri stays the same, and the word adolescente is identical for both men and women.

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