Learn Italian: Aveva molti mobili da vendere. - He had many pieces of furniture to sell.

Aveva molti mobili da vendere.

He had many pieces of furniture to sell.

Breakdown of Aveva molti mobili da vendere.

the piece of furniture

Questions & Answers about Aveva molti mobili da vendere.

Why is the preposition da used before vendere?

In Italian, when you want to express the purpose of a noun or what needs to be done with it, you use da followed by an infinitive verb (a verb in its basic dictionary form). Here, mobili da vendere means furniture to sell or furniture that needs to be sold.

In English, furniture is usually an uncountable word, but here it is plural (molti mobili). How does this word work in Italian?

Unlike English, the Italian word for a piece of furniture, il mobile, is countable. If you have one piece, it is un mobile. If you have several, you use the plural mobili, which is why it is paired with molti (many) instead of molto (much).

Why does the sentence use aveva instead of the passato prossimo form?

Aveva is the imperfect tense of avere (to have). The imperfect is used here because it describes an ongoing state or situation in the past (the condition of owning the furniture), rather than a single, completed event.

How do we know who had the furniture if there is no subject pronoun like lui?

Because aveva is the third-person singular form, it could mean he had, she had, or even the formal you had. Italians usually drop the subject pronoun when it is obvious from the context. Here, the English translation uses he as a default, but it could easily be she if we were talking about a woman.