Breakdown of Le scarpe di mia madre sono marroni.
essere
to be
la madre
the mother
la scarpa
the shoe
di
of, from
mio
my
marrone
brown
Questions & Answers about Le scarpe di mia madre sono marroni.
Why is it di mia madre and not della mia madre?
Why does the sentence say le scarpe di mia madre instead of using something like an apostrophe 's?
Italian does not have an equivalent to the English apostrophe 's to show ownership. Instead, you always use the preposition di (of). You literally have to structure the phrase as the shoes of my mother.
Since scarpe is a feminine plural noun, why does the adjective marroni end in -i?
The singular word for brown is marrone. Adjectives that end in -e in the singular do not change for gender, only for number. When made plural, that -e always changes to an -i, regardless of whether the noun they describe is masculine or feminine.
Why does the sentence start with Le scarpe instead of just Scarpe?
In Italian, subjects of a sentence require a definite article (like il, la, i, or le) much more often than in English. Even though we say my mother's shoes in English without an article, Italian requires le (the) to introduce the specific noun scarpe.
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