Breakdown of Queste merci vengono prodotte dall'industria italiana.
italiano
Italian
queste
these (feminine)
venire
to come
da
by (agent of a passive verb)
la merce
the goods / the merchandise
produrre
to produce
l'industria
the industry (f)
Questions & Answers about Queste merci vengono prodotte dall'industria italiana.
Why does this sentence use vengono instead of sono for "are"?
In Italian, the passive voice can be formed using either essere (to be) or venire (to come). Using venire emphasizes the action itself—the ongoing process of producing—rather than a finished state. This "dynamic passive" is very common in formal or descriptive contexts. Keep in mind that venire can only be used to form the passive in simple tenses (like the present or imperfect), not in compound tenses like the passato prossimo.
Why does the past participle prodotte end in -e?
In any passive voice sentence, the past participle acts like an adjective and must agree in gender and number with the subject receiving the action. The subject here is queste merci (these goods), which is feminine plural, so the standard past participle prodotto changes to prodotte.
Is merci a masculine plural noun because it ends in -i?
Why do we use dall' instead of just da for "by"?
In a passive sentence, the entity performing the action (the agent) is introduced by the preposition da (by). Because industria is a specific noun requiring the definite article l' (since it starts with a vowel), da combines with l' to form the articulated preposition dall'.
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