Breakdown of Stanotte ho dormito male.
male
badly
dormire
to sleep
stanotte
tonight (this night); last night
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Questions & Answers about Stanotte ho dormito male.
Doesn't stanotte mean 'tonight'? Why is it translated as 'last night' here?
You are right that stanotte is a combination of questa (this) and notte (night). However, in Italian, its meaning changes based on the verb. Because we are using a past tense verb (ho dormito), stanotte refers to the night that just passed, meaning 'last night'. If we used a present or future tense, it would mean 'tonight'.
Why is 'I slept' translated as two words, ho dormito?
This sentence uses the passato prossimo, the most common past tense in spoken Italian. It translates literally to 'I have slept'. To form it, you need a helper verb—here, ho (I have)—followed by the past participle of the main action, which is dormito (slept).
How do you form the past participle dormito?
Dormito comes from the infinitive verb dormire (to sleep). To make the past participle for regular verbs that end in -ire, you simply drop the -ire ending and add -ito.
Why use male here instead of a word for 'bad' like cattivo?
Male is an adverb meaning 'badly', so it is used to describe how an action was performed (how you slept). Words like cattivo are adjectives, meaning they describe nouns (like a 'bad dog' or a 'bad meal').