Breakdown of Lei ha lavorato da cantante per cinque anni.
lei
she
l'anno
the year (m)
cinque
five
lavorare
to work
per
for / in order to / because of
da
as a (child/teenager), when one was
il cantante
the singer
Questions & Answers about Lei ha lavorato da cantante per cinque anni.
Why do we use da here instead of come to translate 'as a'?
While come can mean 'as' or 'like' for comparisons, da is the specific preposition used to mean 'in the capacity of' or 'in the role of'. It is the standard way to talk about working a certain job or being in a certain life stage, like da studente (as a student).
Why isn't there an article before cantante?
We previously learned to use da for time, so why does this sentence use per cinque anni?
This is a classic tricky spot! You use da for time when an action started in the past and is still happening now, which would require the present tense (for example, Lei lavora da cinque anni). Because her time as a singer is completely finished, we use the past tense ha lavorato paired with per to show the exact duration of that completed past action.
Does the word cantante change if a man is the singer?
No, the word cantante stays exactly the same for both men and women. Nouns ending in -nte (often derived from verbs) are usually identical for both genders. You can usually tell the gender from the article (like il cantante vs. la cantante), but here we drop the article after da and know her gender from the pronoun Lei.
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