Breakdown of Non l'avevo mica fatto apposta.
non
not
avere
to have
fare
to do / to make
lo
him/it (direct object)
mica
not at all / it's not like
apposta
on purpose
Questions & Answers about Non l'avevo mica fatto apposta.
What does mica add to this sentence?
The word mica is used to emphasize a negation, similar to saying "at all" or "in the least" in English. Here, non paired with mica turns a simple "I hadn't done it" into a much stronger, defensive statement. It often implies that the speaker thinks the listener might wrongly believe they did it intentionally.
Why is mica placed between avevo and fatto?
Why does the sentence use avevo fatto instead of ho fatto?
Avevo fatto is the past perfect tense (trapassato prossimo), which translates to "I had done". You use it to talk about an action that happened before another past action. If you simply wanted to say "I didn't do it on purpose" regarding a single, finished past event, you would use the present perfect (passato prossimo) and say Non l'ho mica fatto apposta.
What does the l' in l'avevo stand for?
It stands for the direct object pronoun lo (it). Whenever lo or la comes immediately before a form of the verb avere that starts with a vowel or an h (like avevo or ho), it drops its vowel and attaches to the verb with an apostrophe.
Is apposta a verb form?
While it looks a bit like a past participle, apposta is an adverb that simply means "on purpose" or "intentionally". It originally evolved from the phrase a posta, but in modern Italian it is always written as a single word.
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