Learn Italian: Ieri abbiamo visitato tutto lo zoo. - Yesterday we visited the whole zoo.

Ieri abbiamo visitato tutto lo zoo.

Yesterday we visited the whole zoo.

Breakdown of Ieri abbiamo visitato tutto lo zoo.

Questions & Answers about Ieri abbiamo visitato tutto lo zoo.

Why is the phrase tutto lo zoo and not just tutto zoo or lo tutto zoo?

In Italian, when tutto means 'the whole' or 'all of the', it must be followed directly by the definite article (the word for 'the'). The word order is always tutto + article + noun. You cannot skip the article or put it before tutto.

Why do we use tutto ending in -o here?

Tutto acts like an adjective, so its ending must match the gender and number of the noun it describes. Because zoo is a masculine singular noun, we use the masculine singular form tutto. If we visited 'the whole city' (città, a feminine noun), it would be tutta la città.

Why does zoo take the article lo instead of the usual il?

For masculine singular nouns, Italian uses the article lo instead of il when the noun starts with the letter z. It is also used for words starting with s plus a consonant, ps, or gn. That is why we say lo zoo.

Since abbiamo means 'we have', why doesn't the past participle visitato end in -i to match the plural 'we'?