Breakdown of Avevamo mangiato la metà della torta.
avere
to have
di
of, from
mangiare
to eat
la torta
the cake
la metà
half (noun)
Questions & Answers about Avevamo mangiato la metà della torta.
Why do we say la metà here instead of just metà?
In Italian, metà is a noun meaning "half." Just like you say "the rest" or "the majority" in English, Italian uses the definite article la before it when referring to a specific quantity, meaning literally "the half."
Could I use mezzo in this sentence to mean "half"?
Why is the verb avevamo mangiato instead of abbiamo mangiato?
Avevamo mangiato is the past perfect tense (trapassato prossimo), which translates to "we had eaten." You use this tense to describe a past action that happened before another past event. Abbiamo mangiato is the standard past tense ("we ate" or "we have eaten").
Since la torta and la metà are feminine, shouldn't the verb be mangiata?
No, the past participle mangiato doesn't change here. When a compound tense uses the helping verb avere (like avevamo), the ending only changes if there is a direct object pronoun before the verb (for example: L'avevamo mangiata - "We had eaten it"). Since the noun phrase comes after the verb here, the participle stays in the default -o form.
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