Questions & Answers about La mia gioventù era felice e spensierata.
Since this lesson is about wishes, how would I change this sentence to say "If only my youth were happy and carefree!" using magari?
You would use Magari followed by the imperfect subjunctive of essere (to be): Magari la mia gioventù fosse felice e spensierata! This expresses a strong, unfulfilled wish.
Why do we use the imperfect tense era here instead of the passato prossimo è stata?
The imperfect tense (era) is used to describe an ongoing state or a general characteristic in the past. Here, you are painting a background picture of what your youth was like, rather than talking about a completed, pinpointed event.
Gioventù ends in -ù, so how do we know it is a feminine noun?
Why does the adjective felice end in -e instead of matching the feminine -a ending of spensierata?
Felice belongs to a specific group of adjectives that end in -e in the dictionary. These adjectives do not change for gender, meaning they stay exactly the same for both masculine and feminine singular nouns.