Questions & Answers about Hai voglia di una mela o di un'arancia?
Why does the Italian sentence use the verb for "to have" (hai) to mean "do you feel like"?
In Italian, physical states and cravings are often expressed with the verb avere (to have) instead of "to feel". The phrase avere voglia di literally translates to "to have desire of", which is how Italians say they feel like having or doing something. Why is the word di repeated before un'arancia?
The full expression requires the preposition di (avere voglia di). When you offer a choice between two things using o (or), it is grammatically clearer and very common in Italian to repeat the preposition for the second option, acting like "Do you have a craving for an apple or for an orange?" Why does un'arancia have an apostrophe, but una mela doesn't?
Both mela (apple) and arancia (orange) are feminine words, so they use the feminine article una (a/an). However, because arancia starts with a vowel, una drops its final letter and adds an apostrophe to make pronunciation smoother. Since mela starts with a consonant, una stays whole. If a masculine word started with a vowel, would it also use an apostrophe here?
No, and this is a common beginner trap! Only the feminine article una gets an apostrophe before a vowel. The masculine article for a word starting with a vowel is just un, which never takes an apostrophe. So you write un'arancia (feminine) but un amico (masculine). Learn Hai voglia di una mela o di un'arancia and more in Italian
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