Breakdown of Ieri le ho mandato gli elenchi e i cataloghi.
e
and
gli
the
avere
to have
le
to her
ieri
yesterday
mandare
to send (general)
il catalogo
the catalogue
l'elenco
the list (directory, roster) (m)
Questions & Answers about Ieri le ho mandato gli elenchi e i cataloghi.
Why is the plural of elenco spelled elenchi with an h?
The word catalogo is stressed on the third-to-last syllable. Shouldn't it lose the h in the plural, just like medico becomes medici?
You are right that nouns stressed on the third-to-last syllable usually drop the h in the plural. However, words ending in -logo have a special rule. If they refer to things (like catalogo or dialogo), they keep the hard sound and use an h to become -loghi. If they refer to people (like psicologo), they drop the h and become -logi.
Why do we use le here instead of la to say her?
Because the verb mandare (to send) takes an indirect object: you send something to someone. In Italian, the indirect object pronoun for to her is le. If it were a direct object like I saw her, you would use la.
Since we are talking about sending things to her, why is the verb ho mandato instead of ho mandata?
In the passato prossimo, the past participle only changes its ending to match direct object pronouns (lo, la, li, le). Because le in this sentence is an indirect object pronoun (meaning to her), the past participle mandato ignores it and stays in its default masculine singular form.
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