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L'oracolo disse la verità al mortale.

L'oracolo disse la verità al mortale.
The oracle told the truth to the mortal.
From Lesson 202:Historic past of irregular verbs·Italian

Questions & Answers about L'oracolo disse la verità al mortale.

What tense is disse and why does it look so different from its infinitive?
Disse is the passato remoto (historical past) of dire (to say/tell) for lui/lei (he/she/it). Dire is highly irregular in this tense. Instead of using a standard ending, the root changes to diss- for the first person singular (io dissi), third person singular (lui/lei disse), and third person plural (loro dissero).
Why do we use disse here instead of parlò?
Dire (which gives us disse) means "to say" or "to tell," which takes a direct object—in this case, what is being told is la verità (the truth). Parlare (which would become parlò) means "to speak" or "to talk" and doesn't take a direct object in this way.
Why does verità have an accent on the last letter?
The accent marks that the spoken stress falls on the final syllable. As a quick refresher, feminine nouns ending in -tà are invariable. This means they don't change their ending in the plural. If the oracle told multiple truths, it would be le verità.
Mortale looks like an adjective. Can it be used as a noun like it is here?
Yes! In Italian, it is very common to turn an adjective into a noun simply by putting an article in front of it. Here, the masculine article il (combined with the preposition a to make al) turns the adjective mortale (mortal) into a noun meaning "the mortal person."

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