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Mio nonno aveva molti dischi.

Mio nonno aveva molti dischi.
My grandfather had many records.
From Lesson 105:The imperfect tense of regular verbs (-avo, -evo, -ivo)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Mio nonno aveva molti dischi.

Why do we use aveva here instead of the passato prossimo (like ha avuto)?
Aveva is the imperfetto (imperfect) tense of avere. We use the imperfect here because owning the records was a descriptive, ongoing state in the past, rather than a single event with a clear start and end. It describes how things "used to be".
Is avere a regular verb in the imperfetto tense?
Yes! Unlike its present tense, avere is completely regular in the imperfect. You just drop the -ere to get the root av-, and add the regular endings. For the "he/she" form, the ending is -eva, making aveva.
Why is it Mio nonno and not Il mio nonno? Don't possessive words usually need an article like il or la?
Usually, yes! But there is a major exception: singular family members. Because nonno (grandfather) is a singular relative, we drop the article and just say Mio nonno. If it were plural, you would need the article: i miei nonni.
Why does the plural word dischi have an "h" in it, when the singular disco doesn't?
In Italian, a "c" followed by an "o" makes a hard "k" sound (disco). However, a "c" followed by an "i" makes a soft "ch" sound (like in "cheese"). To keep the hard "k" sound for the plural, we must insert an "h". So, disco becomes dischi.

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