Word
A quella bancarella avevo molto da guardare.
Meaning
At that stall I had a lot to look at.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of A quella bancarella avevo molto da guardare.
quello
that
avere
to have
molto
a lot of / much
guardare
to look at / to watch
Questions & Answers about A quella bancarella avevo molto da guardare.
Why do we use da guardare instead of just a guardare or di guardare?
In Italian, when you want to express the idea of 'something to do' or 'a lot to do,' you use the preposition da followed by the infinitive verb. Here, molto da guardare means 'a lot to look at.' You will see this pattern very often after words like molto, niente, or qualcosa.
The English translation says 'to look at,' but where is the 'at' in the Italian sentence?
Why is it avevo (imperfect tense) instead of ho avuto (passato prossimo)?
Avevo is used here because you are describing an ongoing state or situation in the past, which is exactly what the imperfect tense is for. You are setting the scene of what it was like at the stall, rather than talking about a single, completed event.
Why is it quella bancarella and not quel bancarella?