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Chi è il mittente del pacco? Non glielo sveliamo!

Chi è il mittente del pacco? Non glielo sveliamo!
Who is the sender of the parcel? We are not revealing it to him!
From Lesson 130:Third-person combined pronouns (glielo, gliela)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Chi è il mittente del pacco? Non glielo sveliamo!

How does the combined pronoun glielo work here?
Glielo joins the indirect object pronoun gli (to him) and the direct object pronoun lo (it). When gli (to him) or le (to her) combine with a direct object like lo, they always fuse into a single word with an extra e linking them together.
What exactly does the lo (it) inside glielo refer to?
The lo refers to the entire concept of "who the sender is". When you use "it" to replace a general fact or a whole clause rather than a specific noun, you always use the default masculine singular pronoun lo.
Since gli usually means "to him", does glielo only mean "it to him"?
Surprisingly, no! The combined pronoun glielo is used for "it to him", "it to her", "it to them", and even the formal "it to You". You have to rely on the context of the conversation to know who is receiving the action.
Is there a trick to remembering the verb svelare?
Yes! Sveliamo comes from svelare (to reveal). It is built from the noun velo (veil) and the prefix s-, which often means undoing an action in Italian. So it literally translates to "to un-veil".
Why is it del pacco instead of just di pacco?
In Italian, you almost always combine the preposition di (of) with the definite article (the) when they appear together. Since pacco (parcel) uses the article il, they merge together: di + il becomes del.

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