Breakdown of Non giudico mai gli errori altrui.
non
not
mai
ever / never
giudicare
to judge
l'errore
the mistake (m)
altrui
of others / other people's
Questions & Answers about Non giudico mai gli errori altrui.
Why does altrui come after the noun, and does its ending change to match the plural errori?
Why do we need the article gli here when English just says "other people's mistakes" without "the"?
In Italian, nouns modified by possessive adjectives usually require a definite article. Since errori is a masculine plural noun starting with a vowel, it takes gli. Even though altrui comes after the noun, the noun itself still needs its normal article, just as it would in gli errori miei.
Could I say gli errori degli altri instead of using altrui?
Why is there a non before the verb if mai already means "never"?
Italian requires a double negative construction when words like mai (never) or nessuno (nobody) are placed after the verb. You must put non before the verb to make the sentence grammatically correct. You could only drop the non if you placed mai before the verb for emphasis, as in Mai giudico gli errori altrui, but that sounds quite poetic or theatrical.
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