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Il proprietario affitta la casa a due studenti.

Il proprietario affitta la casa a due studenti.
The landlord rents the house to two students.
From Lesson 146:Possessive pronouns (il mio, la tua)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Il proprietario affitta la casa a due studenti.

Since this lesson is about possessives, why don't we use one like la sua (his) for the house?
In Italian, when it is obvious from the context who owns the object (like a landlord and the house they own), you often just use the definite article (la) instead of a possessive adjective. If you wanted to drop the word "house" completely and just say "The landlord rents his out", you would use the independent possessive pronoun and say: Il proprietario affitta la sua.
How do we know if affitta means he is renting the house out, or renting it from someone?
The verb affittare can mean both "to rent" (as a tenant) and "to rent out" (as a landlord). The preposition gives it away here: he rents it a (to) the students. If he were renting it from them, the sentence would use da (from) instead.
Why is the preposition just a instead of a combined preposition like ai?
We use the simple preposition a here because it just means "to two students". If we wanted to say "to the two students" (meaning two specific students we already mentioned), we would combine a + i (the masculine plural "the") to make ai due studenti.
I often mix up noun endings. Why does studenti end in -i, and what is its singular form?
The singular is studente (student). Remember that Italian nouns ending in -e in the singular change to -i in the plural, whether they are masculine (like lo studente) or feminine (like la notte).

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