Breakdown of Nel diciannovesimo secolo, la città è cresciuta rapidamente.
essere
to be
la città
the city
nel
in the (in + il) / while / upon (doing something)
il secolo
the century
crescere
to grow
rapidamente
rapidly / quickly
diciannovesimo
nineteenth
Questions & Answers about Nel diciannovesimo secolo, la città è cresciuta rapidamente.
How exactly is diciannovesimo formed from the number nineteen?
To form ordinal numbers from 11 upwards, you take the normal number, drop its final vowel, and add the suffix -esimo. For nineteen, diciannove drops the final -e and adds -esimo, giving us diciannovesimo.
Why does diciannovesimo come before secolo instead of after it?
While most descriptive adjectives in Italian go after the noun, ordinal numbers (first, second, nineteenth, etc.) almost always come before the noun they modify. So it is il diciannovesimo secolo, not il secolo diciannovesimo.
Why does this sentence use è cresciuta instead of ha cresciuto?
The verb crescere (to grow) usually describes a change of state, so it takes essere (to be) as its helping verb in the past tense when the subject itself is doing the growing. Because it uses essere, the past participle must match the feminine singular subject, la città, which is why it ends in -a (cresciuta).
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