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L'insegnante aveva sempre molta pazienza.

L'insegnante aveva sempre molta pazienza.
The teacher always had a lot of patience.
From Lesson 105:The imperfect tense of to have (avevo)·Italian

Questions & Answers about L'insegnante aveva sempre molta pazienza.

Why use the imperfetto aveva instead of the passato prossimo ha avuto?
aveva is the imperfetto (imperfect) tense of avere (to have). We use the imperfetto here because it describes an ongoing characteristic or a continuous state in the past. The teacher consistently had a lot of patience, rather than a single, completed event of having patience.
How can we tell if l'insegnante is a male or female teacher here?
We actually can't! The noun insegnante ends in -e, which means it can be masculine or feminine. The article l' doesn't help either, because both lo (masculine) and la (feminine) drop their vowel and take an apostrophe before a word starting with a vowel. We would need more context to know the teacher's gender.
Why is sempre placed after the verb aveva?
In Italian, adverbs of frequency like sempre (always) and mai (never) are usually placed right after the verb. This is different from English, where we usually say "always had". So, aveva sempre is the natural Italian word order.
Why is it molta pazienza instead of molto pazienza?
While molto is often used as an unchanging adverb meaning "very", here it is used as an adjective meaning "a lot of". Because it describes the noun pazienza (patience), which is feminine and singular, it must change its ending to match, becoming molta.

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