Breakdown of I guardaroba dell'albergo sono sicuri.
essere
to be
l'albergo
the hotel (m)
sicuro
safe
di
of, from
il guardaroba
the cloakroom
Questions & Answers about I guardaroba dell'albergo sono sicuri.
Why doesn't guardaroba change its ending to become plural?
Guardaroba is a compound noun made of a verb (guarda, from guardare, to keep) and a feminine singular noun (roba, stuff or clothing). Compound nouns formed by a verb and a feminine singular noun are usually invariable, meaning their endings do not change in the plural. Therefore, il guardaroba simply becomes i guardaroba.
Why is the adjective sicuri masculine plural if guardaroba ends in an a and contains the feminine word roba?
How do we know this sentence is talking about more than one cloakroom if the word guardaroba looks the same?
You have to look at the agreement of the surrounding words to determine if an invariable noun is singular or plural. The plural definite article i, the plural verb sono, and the plural adjective sicuri all work together to signal that we are talking about multiple cloakrooms here.
Just as a quick refresher, why do we use dell'albergo instead of just di albergo?
When expressing possession in Italian, you almost always need the definite article along with the preposition di (of). Because albergo starts with a vowel, it takes the article l'. When you combine di + l', it forms the articulated preposition dell' (of the).
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