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Ci siamo fatti accorciare i pantaloni entro la settimana.

Ci siamo fatti accorciare i pantaloni entro la settimana.
We had the pants shortened within the week.
From Lesson 302:Reflexive causatives (farsi)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Ci siamo fatti accorciare i pantaloni entro la settimana.

Why does this sentence use fatti accorciare instead of just saying abbiamo accorciato?
Abbiamo accorciato i pantaloni means you shortened the pants yourselves. By using the reflexive causative construction (farsi + infinitive), it changes the meaning to having someone else do it for you: "We had the pants shortened."
The verb fare normally takes avere in the past tense. Why does this sentence use siamo?
Because this is a reflexive causative. We added the reflexive pronoun ci to mean we had the action done for ourselves. In Italian, all reflexive constructions require the auxiliary essere in compound tenses like the passato prossimo, so abbiamo fatto shifts to ci siamo fatti.
Why does the past participle end in -i (fatti)?
When using essere as the auxiliary for a reflexive verb, the past participle of fare must agree with the subject. Here, the subject is "we" (representing a masculine or mixed group), so fatto becomes fatti. If a group of all women were speaking, they would say Ci siamo fatte accorciare i pantaloni.
Why use entro for "within"? Could I use in or tra?
Entro specifically means "by" or "no later than" a certain deadline, which fits perfectly here. If you used in una settimana, it would mean the physical work of shortening took an entire week to complete. If you used tra una settimana, it would mean the work will happen "a week from now."

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