Learn Italian: La moquette è molto sporca, la lascio smacchiare alla governante. - The fitted carpet is very dirty, I let the housekeeper remove the stain from it.

La moquette è molto sporca, la lascio smacchiare alla governante.

The fitted carpet is very dirty, I let the housekeeper remove the stain from it.

Breakdown of La moquette è molto sporca, la lascio smacchiare alla governante.

Questions & Answers about La moquette è molto sporca, la lascio smacchiare alla governante.

Why is the pronoun la placed before lascio instead of attaching it to the infinitive as lascio smacchiarla?

This is the strict rule for causative verbs like fare and lasciare. When they are combined with an infinitive, object pronouns must go directly before the conjugated causative verb (la lascio smacchiare) and cannot attach to the end of the infinitive.

Why do we say alla governante (to the housekeeper) if she is the one performing the action?

In causative constructions, how you introduce the person doing the action depends on whether there is a direct object. Because the verb smacchiare already has a direct object here (the pronoun la for the carpet), the person performing the action must be introduced by the preposition a (alla governante).

Moquette doesn't look like an Italian word. How do we know it is feminine?

It is a French loanword meaning "fitted carpet" or "wall-to-wall carpeting." In Italian, foreign words generally keep their original gender. French words ending in "-ette" are feminine, which is why it uses the feminine article la and the feminine adjective sporca.

How is the verb smacchiare formed?