Learn Italian: L'hai contato tu il ricavato? No, l'ha contato Marco. - Did you count the proceeds? No, Marco counted them.

In Italian, placing the subject after the verb puts special emphasis on it. Here, the speaker is contrasting who performed the action: "Did you count it?" "No, Marco counted it." If you put the subject first (Tu l'hai contato?), it sounds like a simple request for information rather than singling out the person.

Why does the first sentence use both the pronoun L' and the noun il ricavato? Isn't that redundant?

Yes, it is technically redundant, but this is a very common feature of spoken Italian called right dislocation. The speaker uses the direct object pronoun lo (elided to L') to make the verb phrase flow naturally, and then tacks on il ricavato at the end just to clarify what "it" is.

Why does the past participle contato end in -o in both sentences?

When you use a third-person direct object pronoun (lo, la, li, or le) before a compound tense, the past participle must agree with it. Since L' stands for the masculine singular lo (referring to il ricavato), contato must take the masculine singular ending -o.

How does the word ricavato translate to "proceeds"?