Learn Italian: Ho assaggiato molti dolci; ne ho mangiati di squisiti, ma anche di orrendi. - I tasted many desserts; I ate some delicious ones, but also some awful ones.

Word

Ho assaggiato molti dolci; ne ho mangiati di squisiti, ma anche di orrendi.

Meaning

I tasted many desserts; I ate some delicious ones, but also some awful ones.

Part of speech

sentence

Pronunciation

Course

Italian

Lesson

Partitives with plural adjectives (ne... di)

Breakdown of Ho assaggiato molti dolci; ne ho mangiati di squisiti, ma anche di orrendi.

Questions & Answers about Ho assaggiato molti dolci; ne ho mangiati di squisiti, ma anche di orrendi.

Why do we say di squisiti and di orrendi instead of just squisiti and orrendi?

When you use the partitive ne to mean 'some of them' and describe that subset with an adjective, Italian requires the preposition di before the adjective. With ne, you must say ne ho mangiati di squisiti.

Why does the past participle mangiati end in -i? Doesn't the past participle with avere usually end in -o?

Normally, yes! However, when the partitive ne acts as a direct object, the past participle must agree in gender and number with the noun ne replaces. Here, ne replaces dolci (masculine plural), so mangiato changes to mangiati.

Is the second di before orrendi strictly necessary?

Yes. The sentence implies ma ne ho mangiati anche di orrendi. Even though we drop the verb phrase to avoid repetition, we must keep di to show that orrendi is still modifying the unseen ne. It tells us we are still talking about a subset of the desserts.

Could I express the second half of the sentence without using ne at all?