Breakdown of È essenziale preservare l'essenza del nostro folklore.
essere
to be
nostro
our
del
of the; than the (di + il)
preservare
to preserve (protect from harm)
Questions & Answers about È essenziale preservare l'essenza del nostro folklore.
How could we rewrite this sentence using the current lesson's verb, tenerci, to say "We care about preserving our folklore"?
You would say Ci teniamo a preservare l'essenza del nostro folklore. Because tenerci means "to care about" or "to attach importance to," it captures a very similar feeling to calling it "essential." Notice that tenerci must be followed by the preposition a when linking to an infinitive like preservare.
Doesn't the impersonal phrase È essenziale usually trigger the subjunctive?
It does, but only when you introduce a specific subject using the word che (that). For example, "It is essential that we preserve..." would be È essenziale che noi preserviamo... (using the subjunctive). In our current sentence, because we are making a general statement without a specific subject, we simply use the infinitive preservare directly after the adjective.
Why is it del nostro folklore instead of just di nostro folklore?
In Italian, you almost always need the definite article before a possessive adjective. Here, the preposition di combines with the article il to form the articulated preposition del. You only drop the article for singular, unmodified family members (like mio fratello), which obviously doesn't apply to the word folklore.
Is the English loanword folklore treated like a normal Italian noun?