Breakdown of Leggo una poesia prima di dormire.
una
a / an (feminine)
di
of, from
leggere
to read
dormire
to sleep
prima
before, earlier
la poesia
the poem
Questions & Answers about Leggo una poesia prima di dormire.
Why does leggo have a hard "g" sound when the infinitive leggere is pronounced with a soft "g"?
The pronunciation of c and g depends on the vowel that follows. Before e or i (as in leggere), the sound is soft. Before a, o, or u (as in leggo), the sound is hard. This same phonetic rule is the reason masculine nouns ending in -co and -go sometimes need an extra h in their plural forms—to keep that hard sound!
Why use the infinitive dormire here instead of a gerund for "sleeping"?
In Italian, when a verb immediately follows a preposition like di (found in the phrase prima di), it must be in the infinitive form. Italian never uses the gerund (the -ndo form) after prepositions the way English uses "-ing".
I usually see prima meaning "first" or "earlier". Why does it mean "before" here?
While prima on its own can mean "first" or "earlier", combining it with the preposition di creates the fixed phrase prima di. You will always use prima di when you want to say "before" doing an action.
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