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Mia sorella beveva l'acqua del bosco magico.

Mia sorella beveva l'acqua del bosco magico.
My sister drank the water of the magical woods.
From Lesson 107:Irregular verbs in the imperfect (facevo, bevevo, dicevo)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Mia sorella beveva l'acqua del bosco magico.

Why is the verb beveva and not "bereva"?
The verb bere (to drink) is irregular in the imperfetto. Instead of dropping the ending from the infinitive, it uses its old Latin stem, bev-, and adds the regular endings. For the third-person singular (she), that makes it beveva.
Could I say ha bevuto instead of beveva?
You could, but it changes the meaning! Using the imperfetto (beveva) sets a scene in the past, meaning she was drinking or used to drink the water. If you use the passato prossimo (ha bevuto), it means she drank it once as a single completed event.
Why is there no article before Mia sorella? I thought possessives usually need one, like "la mia macchina".
You are right about usually needing an article, but there is an important exception: singular family members. With words like sorella, madre, or fratello, you drop the article and just use the possessive (mia).
How is del formed in this sentence?
The word del is formed by combining the preposition di (of) and the masculine singular article il (the) which goes with bosco. Whenever di meets il, they merge into del.
English uses the plural "woods" here, so why is bosco singular?
In English, we often use the plural "woods" to describe a single forested area. In Italian, a single forest or wood is just the singular bosco. You would only use the plural boschi if you were talking about multiple separate forests.

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